'Cowards' aplenty in academia

by Walter E. Williams

Attorney General Eric Holder said the U.S. is "a nation of cowards" when it comes to race relations. In one sense, he is absolutely right.

Many whites, from university administrators and professors, to schoolteachers, to employers and public officials, accept behavior from black people that they wouldn't begin to accept from whites.

For example, some of the nation's most elite universities, such as Vanderbilt, Stanford and the University of California, have yielded to black student demands for separate graduation ceremonies and separate "celebratory events."

Universities such as Stanford, Cornell, MIT and Cal Berkeley have, or have had, segregated dorms.

If white students demanded whites-only graduation ceremonies or whites-only dorms, administrators would have labeled their demands as intolerable racism. When black students demand the same thing, these administrators cowardly capitulate.

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