By Kira Davis

8:12 am, September 10, 2016

In 1938, Lloyd Lerner Gaines, a young Black scholar from Mississippi, filed a suit against the University of Missouri School of Law after being denied entry because he was “colored.” The Supreme Court eventually ruled that under the “separate but equal” clause Mississippi had the obligation to either admit him or establish a separate law school to accommodate people of color.

Mississippi chose to do the latter. The NAACP planned to challenge the inadequacy of the school, as was their strategy against the tone-deaf “separate but equal” laws of the day. Unfortunately, Gaines never saw this suit completed: He disappeared under mysterious circumstances before he could be deposed in 1939. Gaines’ case is held in high regard as a major milestone for integrating higher education to this day.

In a stunning and deeply saddening move, Cal State Lost Angeles (typo intentional) joins other schools like UConn and Berkeley in imposing the “separate but equal” rules the NAACP and Lerner fought so hard against.

A list of demands that the Black Student Union (BSU) delivered to the school included a “housing space delegated for black students” in hopes of providing “cheaper alternative housing” for black students and a “safe space” for them to congregate. Cal State has acquiesced.

Segregation is alive and well…and black.

That sound you hear is Gaines rolling over in his unmarked grave. Martin Luther King, Jr. too. This is vile.  As a black person, this makes me feel ashamed and embarrassed for this generation of black students who are supposed to represent the culmination of all that blood, sweat and tears our civil rights forefathers shed so many years ago.

What would Gaines say? These black students have voluntarily chosen cheaper living accommodations over integration, as if black people living in cheaper housing while white folks live in more expensive housing has ever resulted in an equalization of circumstances.

We have historically black colleges and universities in this country and they serve their purpose. They present a strong history of black education and also are required by law to admit students of other races should they apply.

This is not what the Cal State BSU has created. They have created a situation where where they will effectively be separate and unequal. They’ve volunteered to sit at the back of the bus.

On behalf of black mothers who work hard everywhere I would like to take this opportunity to apologize profusely to Rosa Parks for wasting her work.

Black pride is one thing. Black isolation is quite another and extremely dangerous.

Our original forced isolation created an environment where black men like Gaines who had the courage to fight for equal access could suddenly “disappear” never to be heard from again.

Today in 2016, black Americans enjoy the most freedom and government support we have ever received in the history of our people in this nation. There are those still living among us today who can remember what it felt like to have hoses and dogs turned on them just because they wanted to eat lunch at the same counter as a white person.

Today my son and daughter can go to whatever school they want as long as they meet their academic requirements—and in some cases even if they don’t, thanks to affirmative action and other quota laws. They can study any field they wish and by law cannot be rejected from any school based on their race.

Thank you once again, Mr. Gaines.

The Cal State BSU might be within their rights to demand certain conversations be held or to request more minority faculty. Their demand for what basically amounts to their own self-imposed ghetto is beyond absurd—it’s offensive. I don’t even care what white people think about this. It’s offensive to me and to my children and to those who came before us.

It’s even more offensive that the Cal State administration bowed to these whiny, spoiled, over-indulged segregationists. Had it been my call to make I would have told those special snowflakes to pound sand and get over themselves. I’d tell them to read about Lloyd Lerner Gaines if they want to know the difference between a microaggression and real racism. I’d ask them if they were taught to piss on the graves of their grandparents, because that’s basically what they’re doing here. It will backfire horrifically if this trend is allowed to continue.

But what is most offensive is that these sadly misguided, immature social justice warrior wannabes are setting the stage for my own children to have to endure the dreadful consequences of segregation, when we have taken great pains to raise them to believe they belong anywhere they set their feet.