SegWay

No, not the latest scooter craze, I'm talking about segregation in schools. Actually, I'm not really talking about it. Aaron Hanscom is: Consider the case of Mount Diablo High School in Concord, California. Mount Diablo's website states that students will "celebrate diversity by being respectful to all walks of life." In keeping with that ethos, last month the school divided students by ethnicity for separate assemblies.

School officials explained that the purpose of segregating the students was to talk about test scores, recognize achievements and celebrate different cultures. Spanish was presumably spoken at the Hispanic assembly because student Ronald Mares said, "When I went to the assembly, I'm Hispanic, but I don't know how to speak Spanish, so I couldn't connect." Freshman Jason Lockett was disappointed with the African-American assembly, at which the words "Black Power" were projected overhead. "It was to compare us and say how much dumber we were than everybody else," Lockett told the Contra Costa Times. Good gravy...this is supposed to be an advance? Political correctness has so turned on itself that it is now advocating segregation?

Actually, you could see this one coming a long way off. I've often noted the practice, on high school and college campuses alike, of self-segregation by minorities. Note: I've noticed it, I'm not saying that it's necessarily right or wrong. But what I always thought more curious was the increasingly splintered campus map: it seemed like school administrators could put another notch on their buckler if they could find another obscure minority to separate into their own little entity. The phenomenon could have been worse; at least at USC we had football to bring us together and they do push the whole notion of the "Trojan Family."

But it wasn't so long ago that the institution of Black Student Unions on campus was seen as controversial because it would be a kind of tacit segregation. Now, we have Asian and Pacific Islander Associations, the Taiwanese Association, the East Asian Cultures Club, the Hawaiian Islanders Student Organization, and so on...the celebration of diversity has been increasingly exclusive. Follow that to the extreme and you realize that it's not so far-fetched to forbid those other kids to attend your heritage assembly.

Speaking of which, why the hell are they having heritage assemblies anyway? And what about those with Latin American heritage who resent the term Latino? What if they want their own unique Nicaraguan heritage celebration? How dare the school district trample on their unique culture by lumping it together with everyone else south of the border?

Actually, to continue with that thought, and this stream of consciousness I've devolved into, just imagine if, instead of a Danish Day or Oktoberfest, your school had a "European Day." What the hell would that mean? And yet no one bats an eye when you celebrate "Latino Heritage Day." Yeah, as if the struggles and histories of all those little nations to the south are identical. What unbelievable condescension. Whoever cooked that up is a jackass. Welp, I'm swearing. Time to hang up now.