Affinity Groups: The Left’s New Term For Segregation

If ever a Leftist policy has an unpopular term or connotation attached to it, progressives simply rename it and pretend things are different.

Abortion turns people off? Call it “choice.” Illegal immigrant sounds bad? Call them “undocumented workers.” People don’t like riots? Call them “peaceful protests.” No one supports a death tax? Call it an “estate tax.”

One of the latest examples can be found in education, the business world, and government training programs: Affinity groups.

On its face, there’s nothing seemingly wrong with the term. Affinity groups have been around for centuries, typically involving people who naturally organize into groups based on shared characteristics and interests. Think of the Freemasons or sororities to something more nebulous like your friend group. People have been sorting themselves into groups for as long as humans have existed.

But a certain type of affinity group has risen in the past decade or so, one that isn’t about people coming together, but about separating people based on one specific characteristic: Skin color. This used to be called segregation, but that term rightfully brings up negative feelings, so it has now been rebranded under the guise of affinity groups.

One can tell that the basis for the separation is nefarious when one skin color is singled out for shaming and derision. The Daily Wire has covered numerous examples of this. At the end of the Trump administration, the Department of Education determined that “affinity groups” separated by race were a form of segregation. As The Daily Wire’s Chrissy Clark explained:

Racial “affinity groups” are used in both K-12 and higher education institutions across the nation. They separate students and staff by race in hopes of giving black people a “safe space” to discuss their experiences with racism while providing a separate space for white people to learn about their “white privilege.” 

A whistleblower teacher in Chicago filed a complaint about the affinity groups in the Evanston-Skokie School District and the U.S. Department of Education began an investigation, finding that the school district segregated white administrators and administrators of color for certain training programs. The school district had also directed staff to consider a student’s race during disciplinary action.

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) found the policies discriminatory.

“These materials would have led students to be treated differently based on their race, depriving them of a class free from racial recrimination and hostility,” OCR enforcement officer Carol Ashley wrote. “Such treatment has no place in federally-funded programs or activities, nor is it protected by the First Amendment.”

The Biden administration, however, suspended the investigation after President Joe Biden issued an executive order purportedly in the name of equity and gender rights. The actual outcome ended up being the implementation of racist trainings which told white people they were to blame for society’s ills while painting everyone else as victims and ensuring biological men could win women’s sports competitions. (“Equity” and “gender rights” are also used to cover the Left’s discrimination.)

Chicago is not the only place in America instituting similar policies, as Clark wrote:

Elon University in North Carolina hosts a weekly “white caucus” meeting for white students to “unpack race and systemic oppression.” The University of Kentucky separates its Resident Assistants into training groups based on race. “One for RAs who identify as Black, Indigenous, Person of Color, and one for RAs who identify as white.”

The list goes on. Michigan State University offered affinity groups for teachers at a conference that forced white people to accept their “white privilege.” Madison West High School in Wisconsin offered segregated Zoom links for parents to discuss police brutality. Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, mandates monthly “anti-racism” trainings that separate people by skin color, telling white people they can’t simply not be racist, they must be actively “anti-racist” by accepting their implicit bias and white privilege.

As I wrote years ago, colleges and universities were toying with the idea of segregated dorms, calling them “safe spaces” for people of color – the idea itself planting harmful racism and bias in the minds of students who might think they simply aren’t safe around white people.

America decided decades ago that segregation was bad, so why do Democrats want to bring it back?

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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