COLUMBIA, GEM OF EMOTION

My uncle Pat and a wonderful collection of cogent analogies usually very colorful. My favorite one dealt with the experience with which we muddle through the successes and feel- good times. It went like this:

"When you're plowin'  that gassy old mule on a July day and your sweat maked your hand slippery on the shares and the furrowes  slant away.. And you see all weeping willow beckoning from its springside haven,  and the breeze from the willow branches caresses your brow as you head for the spring.... You can be sure that when you had your drink and you head back to that pitiful smelly old mule, the breeze will almost stop... And it will  always be blowing up your backsides on the way !"

And so it is with our diverse, melded civilized (??) Community in the United States.

Columbia University, diadem of the Ivy League, sojourn of the literati,  protector of still-all-woman Barnard College, jewel of   Manhattan and sometime tutor of our presidents...Yea, the bastion of liberal political philosophy and activism has announced plans to  lead us all back to:

*(gasp)*

SEGREGATION !

In this strange playbook of community organizers, activists  Columbia will hold a "Retreat" for "persons of color" at Barnard  and the total Columbia University undergraduate population on November 11  next.

All transportation, lodging, food and discussion material will be supplied free of charge to all attendees.

No white people will be allowed.

Thus, the academic entity that produced this nations most dedicated abolitionists and freedom fighters, from Alexander Hamilton to Barack Obama, will be the flagship that dares to  lead its haughty followers, Princeton Harvard Yale Cornell and Brown back into the fetid mine-filled savage sea-swirls of  race-separation Supremacy.

Well, we should have seen it coming.  When the NAACP was founded, more than hal f the founders were WASPS.  I remember Dr. Benjamin Mayes   calling them "our courageous comrades."

But the NAACP and the BLM movements  have wandered into exclusionary territory... As any perusal of daily news will plainly show. Apparently the bright lights of academia  will  not be outdone. This retreat beckons and entices Native American Indians, and anyone of African and Asian extraction, all Latino / Hispanic students and, of course, it abjures them  to "announce their pronoun" on their application to attend. 

It sounds all very complicated and precious. It will be interesting to see how all these young pointy heads filled with mush respond to senseless segregated exclusionary and virulent hate.

Let's all keep an  eye "out" and an ear to the ground in mid-November. Back to the Future!