A recent Portland State University diversity, equity and inclusion summit separated participants by identities—such as “White,” “Black,” “Native American,” and “Latinx”-- allegedly to help facilitate various discussions, according to a report in The College Fix. And those were just some of the labels placed on tables at the event.

According to a slide show from the event, posted by the university, participants were instructed to “Please sit at the tables that most align with your salient identities. You are also welcome to self-define multicultural and intersectional tables that extend beyond single definitions.” Well, that shouldn’t engender any confusion or chaos!

Katy Swordfisk, media relations manager for Portland State, told The College Fix that the day=long gathering was “built on a series of affinity convenings that took place earlier in the year.”

“Affinity convenings?”

Swordfish Swordfisk added via email, “Participants were invited to sit at a table that resonated with their identity (including Black, Latinx, White, Native American and Multicultural, as a few examples) for the first part of the day and shifted to tables by discussion topic later in the day.”

Is it not enough that some schools now have separate dorm rooms and graduation ceremonies for different races and even sexual identities? What’s next, separate bathrooms, buses, and drinking fountains? That sure would be “progressive!”

Men can use women’s bathrooms, however, and vice-versa. But let’s seat Blacks, Whites, Jews, Christians, conservatives, progressives, gays, lesbians, the Two-Spirited, and pansexuals at different tables. To facilitate conversations! Also, let’s separate those with long hair, short hair, blue eyes, and brown eyes from each other while we’re at it. But where would, say, a black lesbian agnostic sit?

Can the place settings from one table be used at another? Or are they separate, too? And isn’t the whole damn thing moot if one can self-identify as whatever one wishes? I would ask where this all will end, but, channeling my inner Paul Harvey, the answer is—or should be-- “too obvious to require elaboration.”

Into how many more groups can these imbeciles divide and splinter us? This is the reverse of what the country was founded on and intended to be. Instead of e pluribus unum (out of many, one), Democrats now follow the credo: ex uno multis…out of one, many. To the rabid intersectionalists, we are not all Americans, we are nothing more than members of a tribe or tribes. They wish to pit neighbor against neighbor and see our society ever further atomized, so it is easier for them to control us.

And, tragically, it is working. In large part due to our colleges and universities.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is a sham. And anything but helpful. Or inclusive.

Image: David Wilson, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0