"find there's not so much difference between us"

He's on to something. Identity politics requires there be a great difference between us. Finding out there isn't could be a problem for the left.

Hence issues like cultural appropriation and microaggression/trigger when the issue is difference versus the same. If a gay person isn't triggered by, say, referring to a bundle of sticks for burning by its proper name, he's not going to be a reliable lefty voter.

Better Off Ted did an episode on racial sensitivity and took it to extremes.

Andy Richter Controls The Universe also did an episodeon racism and the ridiculousness of sensitivity training.

Identity politics requires there be a great difference between us.

This is key.

And thanks, Conan. Big writing day, but I have to look at those.

"find there's not so much difference between us"

Or maybe one of the main points of integration is learning to CELEBRATE big differences instead of despising them? Such as when Christians learn to see the beauty in Jewish holidays? (One good "primer" on this would be Sydney Taylor's "All-of-a-Kind Family.") It doesn't mean that non-Jews have to adopt those holidays if they don't want to, after all. Nor should non-Christians have to celebrate Christmas if they don't want to (yes, I know plenty do - Anne Frank's family did, for one, even in hiding). That includes not giving Christmas presents even to little kids.

Also, I wish I could remember who said this, but someone said that real tolerance is when not when you think "wow, they're just like us, sometimes" but when you think "wow, sometimes I'm just like them - and I never realized it before!"

My point is: We have to ask just how much minorities are being pushed to give up in the name of the melting pot. Of course, religion should not be an excuse for, say, failing to do the basic requirements of one's job.

I remember on "Murphy Brown," she says on the phone:

"Let me see if I got this right. I don't have a secretary today because you can't work on a Jewish holiday, but you can't remember which Jewish holiday it is? No, I'm sorry, Ms. McCall, Rosh Kippur doesn't quite make it."

My point is: We have to ask just how much minorities are being pushed to give up in the name of the melting pot.

The only thing they are asked to give up is the primary allegiance to their ethnic group / religion

Which is as it should be

"Integrated schools and close living arrangements foster interracial friendships that might not otherwise occur, and that is "the main reason America's changing today," Holmes said. "When you mix, magical things happen that nobody can anticipate....""

Like a lopsided crime rate, encouraged by public policy that silently demands that "equality" (in quotes because of an interesting hoax) can never, in fact, appear while it loudly exclaims the opposite?

Here is the hoax.

What segregation offers today, to some people is "safety", in that competition in society is bad, and that some people should not have to deal with it: a massive "safe space" full of puppies, kittens and unicorns will allow all to thrive!

What some people don't seem to realize is that there is already a kind of segregation in place, for real... I'll leave it to you to figure out why that is.

"Decades of unrelenting propaganda have trained us that blacks bear no responsibility for anything."

I remember a William Raspberry column years ago. He had given a speech at a HBUC and was doing a session with a handful of students. He asked them why they chose to go to a HBUC and one said that she chose it because there were no white people.

But, he said, you will deal with white people after graduation, why hide away where you'll get no experience in dealing with them.

She replied that with a HBUC, if she got a bad grade, she didn't worry that the professor was prejudiced. She knew she deserved it and needed to work harder.

Some people thrive on diversity, some would prefer to avoid it. So long as no force (of law or of arms) is involved I see nothing wrong with either choice.

"She replied that with a HBUC, if she got a bad grade, she didn't worry that the professor was prejudiced. She knew she deserved it and needed to work harder."

I sort of get that... but it's a false reassurance because it only focuses on one kind of prejudice. All kinds of bias exists, not just the ones that make the news and shape politics. How does she know she didn't get a bad grade because the professor was prejudiced against women? Or maybe she was a darker shade than the professor? Or maybe the professor was from the Caribbean? Or maybe he disagreed with her politics? Etc. If you're going to play that game, you have to play it all the way. Or you could, y'know, assume that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the professor is fair and the grade is deserved, no matter what the professor's ethnicity is. But I guess that constitutes tribal disloyalty.

Not to pile on, but she is more likely to get a better grade due to being dark colored than to get a worse one. And that 'positive' discrimination has long term consequences where after that professor is long gone. Instead her coworkers assume she can't do her job because she wasn't held to the same standard as they were.

The premise behind special dorms for minorities is that either: A) they hate whites (which is pretty shitty), or B) they are so fragile they can't handle being around people of a different color--now who is racist?
Black colleges existed because blacks could not get accepted at regular schools, not because they were "safe spaces". The traditionally black colleges have been struggling for years since their reason to exist is diminishing. If blacks are going to insist on their own dorms and insist that white profs are against them, then they should retreat to these black colleges.