Many Segregated Graduation Events to Choose From

Stu, the Jefferson Council’s social media guru, notes in the X post above that the University of Virginia continues to hold identity-based graduation ceremonies: one dubbed the LGBQT Lavender Ceremony and one the Multicultural Recognition Ceremony.

Although the Department of Education recently issued guidelines that forbid racially segregated graduation ceremonies, UVA is skirting the prohibition by changing the names and making them open to anyone: “Any graduating student is welcome to participate in these celebrations, regardless of identity.”

One young person, possibly a UVA student, responded to the Jefferson Council tweet, by asking, “Why do you care that gay people and minorities are getting together for a party? Who cares?”

Fair question. Why do we care?

Stu the guru responded: “It’s not about parties—it’s about public universities using taxpayer dollars to host de facto segregated events. When institutions claim to champion inclusion but separate students by race or identity, it undermines equal treatment, community cohesion, and federal civil rights law.”

That’s a good answer. I’d like to expand upon it a bit.

When we talk about dismantling Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI), it’s not because we’re against “diversity” or “inclusion.” Our beef is with “equity,” which, as practiced at UVA, places students’ demographic “identity” at the center of self. From the moment they undergo first-year orientation to the day they graduate, students are bombarded with an officially sponsored insistence that they define themselves by their race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and gender.

Students are free to define themselves any way they wish. However, the insistence upon demographic identity is not always a matter of free choosing. Students’ demographic identity is relentlessly hammered home in pursuit of official UVA policy, often in group settings that students have no way of avoiding.

To be sure, no one is coerced into attending UVA’s identitarian graduation ceremonies. But the obsession with demographic identity reflects an oppressor/oppressed paradigm that present an inherently divisive way of understanding the world. Once one bolts one’s personal sense of self to one’s race, religion, gender or sexuality, many political propositions flow naturally. It is the subtlest, though perhaps most effective, form of political indoctrination there is.

Some institutions are reversing course. As Stu the guru notes, Harvard University has decided to stop funding and hosting so-called “affinity” graduation ceremonies. But there’s no sign of that in Virginia.

UVA has loads of company. The College of William and Mary holds a “Khatalampay” ceremony for Asians, Middle Easterners and Pacific Islanders (whose cultures have zero in common other than being non-European), a “Lavender” celebration for LGQBTs, a “Donning of the Kente” ceremony for students of African descent, and a “Ceremonial Raices Celebration” for Hispanic students.

White W&M students are on their own. Apparently, they have nothing special worth celebrating.

That doesn’t sound very inclusive.

James A. Bacon serves on the Jefferson Council executive committee.