Education

Trustafarian rich-kid college brings back separate-but-equal race segregation

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Ritzy Hamilton College in upstate New York is bringing back the disgraceful legal doctrine of separate but equal for its minority students.

The leftist hothouse has announced an event entitled “Real Talk: A Dialogue about Internalized Racism” that is “open to people of color only.”

The brochure explaining the event states:

“Conversations about race in the U.S. mostly focus on race relations between white communities and people of color. However, people of color are also prone top [sic] internalize racist messages about their own community, and about other races/ethnicities/people of color. This conversation allows people of color to come together and examine how we may have accepted racist attitudes toward other racial groups and our own racial/ethnic communities, and move towards healing and mutual respect. In order to create a safe space, this program is open to people of color only. A similar conversation for white students, faculty and staff is planned for the spring semester.”

The brochure also notes that dinner will be provided. “Please contact Amit Taneja for more information (ataneja@hamilton.edu).”

The discussion is scheduled to take place on Thursday, Sept. 26 at 4:15 p.m. at the school’s Bristol Center (named for the co-founder of global biopharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb).

There will also be a joint session involving both “people of color” and white people at some future time, notes Legal Insurrection, the website that broke the story.

Hamilton history professor Robert Paquette told Legal Insurrection that the school’s director of diversity and inclusion, Taneja, is using school funds “to host an event on campus segregated by ‘color.'”

Paquette added that “Orwell would have understood.”

According to Hamilton, Taneja “was born and raised in India.” Presumably, then, he is a person “of color” who can attend the racially segregated event.

However, the brochure makes no effort to define the categories of “people of color” or “white students.”

In an effort to help students at Hamilton, The Daily Caller has researched the issue and found a number of outdated American laws defining “people of color.”

For instance, a flatly discriminatory anti-miscegenation law passed in Florida in 1865 proclaims that “every person who shall have one-eighth or more of negro blood shall be deemed and held to be a person of color.”

In Plessy v. Ferguson, a shameful and long-discredited decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that states can constitutionally enact “separate but equal” public facilities which segregate by race. The Supreme Court overturned the doctrine in Brown v. Board of Education some 60 years ago.

According to Hamilton College, the school’s Class of 2017 is seven percent Asian-American, eight percent Hispanic and a desultory four percent black. Three percent of the students are described as multiracial.

The cost for tuition, fees, room and board at the small, elite bastion of the liberal arts and sciences approaches $58,000 per year. Hamilton’s endowment exceeds $635 million (or roughly the nominal annual gross-domestic product of the Northern Mariana Islands).

U.S. News and World Report ranks Hamilton #14 among national liberal arts colleges in the United States.

Follow Eric on Twitter and send education-related story tips to erico@dailycaller.com.