The Department of Education’s (DOE) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) launched an investigation into race-based groups at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), according to medical watchdog group Do No Harm.
The OCR reportedly opened the investigation after University of Michigan professor emeritus and Do No Harm senior fellow Mark Perry claimed that the medical school’s “Racial Affinity Caucusing Groups” violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits race-based discrimination. The groups “are a space for UCSF residents and fellows to deepen anti-racist work and process the impact of racism on ourselves and our community,” according to the university’s website.
“RAGC recognizes that the work that Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) are doing to process, heal, and dismantle racism is different from the work tha[t] white people need to do,” the website reads. The groups are led by a “facilitator” to guide participants through a discussion about their “experiences of racism and bias.” (RELATED: California Medical School Under Federal Investigation For Operating Race-Based Clerkship)
“Separating medical school residents and fellows by race to ‘deepen anti-racist work’ is not only illegal according to Title VI, but is a morally objectionable racist practice that will only serve to ‘deepen and promote racism’ at UCSF’s School of Medicine,” Perry told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “That type of racist segregation at UCSF is an unfortunate step backwards in time to the 1950s and 1960s when that type of segregation was the norm, and which motivated a major civil rights movement and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to end those racist practices.”
Based on my complaints with the OCR, nearly US 100 colleges and universities agreed this year to change, discontinue or stop promoting 170 female-only or BIPOC/Black-only programs, awards, fellowships, and scholarships to correct their violations. https://t.co/qAA3zS1WAa
— Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) December 31, 2022
Participants are invited to “self-identify” when choosing a group and may attend multiple groups, according to the website. The groups are divided for those who identify as “Black/African American,” “People of Color” and “white.”
Perry argued in his complaint letter to the OCR that “[i]n violation of Title VI, the University’s [Racial Affinity Caucusing Groups] are treating individuals differently by segregating and separating on the basis of race and color.”
“The fact that the OCR has opened a federal civil rights investigation of UCSF’s racist practices demonstrates that the Title VI complaint I filed was timely and contained sufficient evidence of illegal race-based discrimination to open a federal investigation,” he explained to the DCNF. “Based on previous OCR findings that racial affinity groups violate Title VI, I expect the OCR to rule against UCSF and find that its ‘Racial Affinity Caucusing Groups’ are a form of illegal racial segregation that will have to be discontinued.”
The DOE and UCSF did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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