Shawn Barry/ Contributing Writer
A black only graduation is racist. According to ADL, an activism group, racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics.
Racial separatism is the belief, most of the time based on racism, that different races should remain segregated and apart from one another.
So now that the definition of racism is out of the way, it stands that an all black graduation is self segregation and it is a backwards way of thinking.
Segregation has a long history in the United States and all over the world. People fought to stop segregation across the planet, and the fight to stop racism is still ongoing; so there is no reason that people should be choosing to segregate themselves.
It undermines what great activists were trying to achieve.
It’s like you were telling them that their work wasn’t necessary. We should have just kept the status quo; white people should have kept segregating black people instead of black people segregating themselves from white people.
This brings up so many logistics issues like what if your friends are white so you can’t walk across the stage with them, is it optional or mandatory, who counts as black because Indians, natives and caribbean people are considered black worldwide.
Black people shouldn’t have their own graduation. White people shouldn’t have their own graduation. History tells that that is a bad idea.
Everyone should just graduate together. There is no reason to hold a black only graduation. Anything that describes apart of a person’s being followed by the words only is a separatist thing to do.
Black only, white only, men only, women only, English speakers only, Spanish speakers only, parents only, children only.
Various amount of meanings can come out of categorising people so let’s not go down that road. From the back of the bus, to not the back of the bus, to willing back to the back of the bus.
Really people.
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