Black Students at Harvard Are Holding a Separate Graduation Ceremony
“This is not about segregation”
Supporters say this is about community but it’s nearly impossible to get past the optics. Should every group of students start holding separate ceremonies?
BET News reports:
Here’s Why Black Harvard Students Are Holding Their Own Graduation Ceremony
Getting a diploma from Harvard is one of the biggest accomplishments a person can achieve, but for some, it can come as a bigger task than for others.
Aside from studying and taking grueling tests, if you’re a minority, the outer pressures of society make the already challenging coursework even more difficult. Knowing this, Black members of the class of 2017 decided to form an individual ceremony. It’s the first of its kind at the school in recent memory and took nearly a year to plan.
The separate graduation is an effort to highlight the aforementioned struggles and resilience it takes to get through those.
“This is an opportunity to celebrate Harvard’s Black excellence and Black brilliance,” Michael Huggins, a soon-to-become Masters graduate from Harvard’s Kennedy School, told The Root. “It’s an event where we can see each other and our parents and family can see us as a collective, whole group. A community.”
“This is not about segregation,” He added. “It’s about fellowship and building a community. This is a chance to reaffirm for each other that we enter the work world with a network of supporters standing with us. We are all partners.”
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Comments
Just to give some context – 2/3 of the ‘black’ students at Harvard are actually the children of African and Caribbean immigrants, and another 10% are the children of mixed-race couples.
That’s just so racist against American Blacks.
Just like Obama……
SNARK!
I would be offended if I were black and wasn’t allowed to participate in the real graduation ceremony. Did none of the blacks say, “Hell, no!” on this crap?
There seems to be an assumption here. They’re having a separate graduation ceremony for black graduates. I see nothing saying that black graduates are prevented from attending the normal graduation ceremony.
Hopefully, the black graduates for this year at Harvard will avoid this stunt like the plague.
I’m just speculating but am willing to bet the blacks who took real majors will be in the main graduation ceremony. The one set aside for blacks will be for the grievance studies majors.
Some of us went to jail in the 60’s to ensure that all of us, black, white, whatever, would be treated the same; no separate living quarters, no back-of-the-bus, no different treatment – Period! A lot of effort, pain, some ruined lives, even some deaths, and this is what our efforts have come to … voluntary segregation as pernicious in its way as any we fought to end.
This is damned sad!
So these black Harvard graduates, in their never ending battle for inclusion and fair treatment, are now demanding and getting their own special graduation ceremony. How is this fair and inclusive? How does this show themselves to be equal?
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What this shows is an in-your-face statement about how they are the ones with privilege, how they do not want inclusion, and how this justifies even more demands to make up for their “issues” wrought upon them by everyone else.
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I wonder, should we ever get to the point where every white person is occupying positions of subservience and every black is at the pinnacle of the food chain, will they still complain about being victims?
Bull Conner must be smiling in his grave.
I’ve heard more than one northerner mumble about how the South was right.
But racial segregation started in the North (Boston and New York City) way before the Civil War…….
“This is not about segregation,” He added. “It’s about fellowship and building a community. This is a chance to reaffirm for each other that we enter the work world with a network of supporters standing with us. We are all partners.”
That sounds like the reason a graduation ceremony is held for. You know, the one the university holds at the end of each semester.