The Most Repulsive Thing I Have Read In Quite A While

All signs point to an impending escalation of the military conflict with Iran.  Forces are being forward deployed, B1B bombers are getting involved (again) and discussions of “regime change” have resurfaced.  Certainly that is the…big…news of this morning.  But it is news from our university campuses that really moved me this morning as I read something I never thought I would see.  The good news is some, not much, but some, of the anti-semitism is being brought to rein.  However, it was one particular story this morning that made my heart sink to the bottom of my feet.

Here’s the beef:

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will “aggressively” crack down on colleges and universities that continue to offer race-based “affinity” housing, a department official told The College Fix.

Wait!…Wha???

Often referred to as “affinity” housing, some universities offer special residence areas for students of specific racial or ethnic identities. Universities often tout these specialized housing options as a way to promote diversity, community, and belonging….

In 2016, Cal State LA started offering “Black-only” housing options. Additionally, UC Berkeley’s housing website displayed “‘a picture of black students’ in a segregated dormitory.” The picture was accompanied by a quote that says, ‘I enjoy being around peers who look like me,’” according to the letter.

This is perverse in ways I never thought possible.  I cannot imagine a course on the history of the United States that does not, somewhere along the way, show a picture of the “Whites Only” signs that were quite prevalent across the South when I was a boy.  In fact, the university history course I took, roughly  a decade after such signs disappeared, showed the signs with the kind of repulsion generally reserved for the proverbial “sign-of-the-devil.”  And yet our universities, our enlightened institutions, find “Blacks Only” perfectly acceptable?!?!?!?!?  At some point all reason and memory had to be jettisoned for this to happen.

Isaiah said it best:

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

“Woe,” and now apparently the wraith of HUD.

I guess you have to be old, and have spent time in the segregated South (I qualify on both counts) for this news to have the kind of visceral impact it did on me.  More than 20 years ago now I sat on a criminal trial jury in Los Angeles.  It was in the immediate aftermath of the O.J. Simpson trial and talk of race was everywhere.  In those deliberations I experienced reverse racism first hand.  After the trial concluded I wrote:

There was a time, sadly, when the law did not apply equally to all people in our nation. It is our great national shame; fortunately, it is not true any more. More importantly; however, the solution to that former gross injustice lies not in changing what people group gets the benefits of that unequal application – it lies, rather, in assuring EQUAL application.

“Blacks Only” is just as wrong, just as repulsive, as “Whites Only” ever was.  I reflect on Isaiah’s condemnation of this sort of perversion and I contemplate if even C.S. Lewis who imagined the perversions a demon can wreck in our lives and the disillusion of a university into a hot bed of perversity could have dreamed this one up.

Satan must be proud of this one – We; however, should be deeply ashamed.