According to the root, 125 Black students at Harvard are planning a “Black Only” graduation ceremony.
Graduating from Harvard University is a huge accomplishment for any student, and the commemoration of that event should be something that will be remembered for a lifetime. For black graduate students in 2017, that memory will come in the form of an individual ceremony, the first such ceremony in recent history.
The event, which took nearly a year to plan and is scheduled for the morning of May 23, is an effort to acknowledge the struggles and resilience that black students have had to possess in order to thrive in higher education, an environment where minorities are typically underrepresented.
It is certainly a huge accomplishment for all of these young men. Seeing minority students graduating from an institution such as Harvard should bring a smile to everyone’s face.
“This is an opportunity to celebrate Harvard’s black excellence and black brilliance,†Michael Huggins, who is graduating with a master’s in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, said. “It’s an event where we can see each other and our parents and family can see us as a collective, whole group. A community.
“This is not about segregation,†Huggins added. “It’s about fellowship and building a community. This is a chance to reaffirm for each other that we enter the work world with a network of supporters standing with us. We are all partners.â€
Now my issue with this is not the “black only” graduation ceremony. I don’t mind this at all. My issue comes in the fact it is an atrocious double standard. If Whites graduating from Harvard decided they wanted to hold a “Whites only” graduation we would see a social uproar. The phrase  “This just goes to show we still haven’t overcome Racism” would be thrown around and the kids branded as Racist or better yet full of “White Privilege”
Let’s hold people of all colors, all races to the same standard and stop creating a veil a safety for certain groups.
