I have a dream...

It seems that Earl Warren's 1954 words striking down the doctrine of "separate but equal" were, at least in principle, wrong. Of course, in the past, educational facilities for black students were certainly separate but not even remotely equal – that was a fiction created by white racists principally in the southern states of the old Confederacy.

UCLA's Afrikan (their word) Students Association (ASU) has made its own long list of demands which, they say, will create a more "welcoming environment" on campus for black students. "Time and time again, we see UCLA administration pushing our issues under the rug. UCLA continues to fail students of color by not responding or taking any steps to improve the campus climate," the ASU said in a statement adding, "This university has a history of poor racial climate, and we, as the Afrikan Student Union, will not take it any more."

The "separate but equal" doctrine has been revived by these demands – the creation of "a separate Afro-house residence for black students and faculty, the creation of an exclusive "Task Force" designed for and comprising only black students and faculty members and a massive increase in funding for the ASU itself. They thoughtfully suggested that an initial grant of $30 million could get the ball rolling to address these "demands".

The university was given three weeks to respond and, naturally, it did.

Vice-chancellor Janina Montero announced that she, and the university administration, were "open to many of the ASU's demands including exclusive funding for the ASU, revision of the school's anti-discrimination policies, an 'Afro-house' for black students, a black students advisory board for campus diversity, increased enrollment of black students and the creation of a Black Student Leadership Task Force.

UCLA's brother/sister campus, the University of California, Berkley, already not only has segregated housing for black students but for other racial minorities such as Asians and Hispanics.

Racially segregated housing and facilities for students at American universities is not new although it is accelerating.

The University of Connecticut has already established a residence hall for black men called the Scholastic House of Leaders and it is supposed to provide a "safe space" for them. In fact, it is a new ghetto, the type of which their parents and grandparents fought so strenuously to escape.

Lawyers have pointed out that segregation of student facilities violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act which the Federal Department of Education enforces and which prohibits race segregation at federally-funded universities. So, to avoid this little legal technicality, universities which establish these segregated facilities have to rely on grants from private sources – usually left-wing and progressive private funding bodies. It also helps that the Education Department looks the other way although this could be about to change - read on.

In fact, as far back as the 1960s, American universities have caved in to demands from black students to provide racially segregated campus housing and other facilities. Cornell University, a privately funded university in New York State, established its black-only student residential hall called Ujamaa in 1972 and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston established black only residences in 1975, calling it Chocolate City.

One black student at Cornell in the early 1970s and now a law professor at the University of San Diego has been quoted by the New American Civil Rights Project as saying that he refused to live in the black only accommodation. "Universities talk a lot about diversity and the need for students of different backgrounds to be exposed to each other but when they support racially-themed dorms, which simply increase racial tension on campus, it's hard to take these schools seriously."

On the eve of Independence Day (July 4) President Trump announced that "affirmative action" policies introduced by the Obama Administration which encouraged the use of racial categories to grant or deny university places were now withdrawn.