Public University in West Virginia Abandons Officially Racially Segregated Courses:
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports:
Marshall University has ... removed racial restrictions from an orientation course for first-year students. Last year’s listing for University Studies 101 (UNI 101) stated that certain sections were limited to “African American Students Only.” Thanks to FIRE’s intervention, several sections of UNI 101 this coming fall will focus on “African American Student Issues,” but will not exclude any student based upon race or ancestry....
Last October, FIRE won a similar victory at Arizona State University (ASU), where a professor had limited his English class to “Native Americans only.” ...
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I've read the FIRE releases concerning the ASU case, but no mention was made of this type of issue.
English for Speakers of French, or English for Speakers of Arabic, or English for Speakers of Russian, is a great idea, and isn't racist. French-speaking is not a race, and one assumes French speakers from Haiti and from France would both be included in that class.
The class referenced at the FIRE article was not an English for Speakers of Other Languages class. It was a college English class that was only open to people of a certain ethnic background.
Big difference.
1. The Importance of Limiting Viewpoints
One wonders about the viability of viewpoint-restricted classes, such as "African-American Studies for Strong Supporters of Affirmative Action Only" or "Feminism for Feminists."
On the one hand, viewpoint-restricted classes defeat the purpose of free-flowing debate. On the other hand, a professor could reasonable conclude, "Every time I run this class, we get bogged down debating affirmative action, so next semester let's run a class where we all agree on the point, so we can get to other, more interesting issues."
2. The Importance of Permitting Viewpoints
I want to run a class where people are free to express their viewpoints. Every semester, I have a student who says something along the lines of, "All the problems in black society are caused by the white people." Then, the white kid in the class feels singled out and go file a complaint that we are engaging in racist hate speech, and it ends up in the student newspaper. Since the class will involve content that white people will find offensive, why not permit their exclusion?
At the most extreme, 20 black students expressing their personal viewpoints by the synchronized yelling of "Kill Whitey!" in a class with one white student is definitely threatening, prosecutable hate speech. Take out the white guy? Not so much.
While this scheme isn't particularly evil, there are two problems with it. The first is that college classes are not supposed to be a support group or safe space - a class should facilitate the discussion of various viewpoints, not exclude certain viewpoints from the discussion altogether. And while any student has the right to present a viewpoint, he does not have the right to have no one challenge him.
Also, I see no reason why the support group function can't occur in a non-classroom setting.
The second issue is that the classroom discussion of the history of the particular group will likely be somewhat diminished by the absence of other members of the university community.
In addition to all of this, there are going to be at least some members of other groups interested in a class focusing on the target group, and they shouldn't be deprived of being able to learn something about the other groups.