The dream is dying. I'm not going to repeat myself by going over the litany of examples of how our country has progressed towards racial equality; if you can't see it you don't want to see it. But in the last seven years we have taken huge steps backwards in 'race relations'.

There is the usual furor over the lack of blacks in head coaching positions in professional sports, although I don't hear a lot of complaining about the dearth of black coaches in hockey or soccer. And this year the complaining about not enough minorities, aka blacks, in the major Oscar categories. Of course the complaints are always based in arguments about equality; equal representation for minorities.

Isn't it funny (not in a good way) that black activists don't want equal representation in 'their' award festivities? BET awards didn't feature one non-black that I could see. In fact, in the promo for the NAACP Image Awards, the host says the reasons to watch are because blacks are nominated, blacks will win, 'blacks". So I guess equality and all of those catch phrases only work when blacks want to be part of something else and not when they have their own celebrations, teams, etc.

Back when Michelle Obama attended Princeton, she was part of an activist group called 'Third World Center' or TWC for short. The group's board was reserved exclusively for black students and they claimed every white person was racist even if they didn't know it yet. Sound familiar?

When Princeton's administration decided to force students to room with a student of another ethnicity, TWC's members were livid. They argued that forcing black students to room with non-black students would harm the support system available to black students. Princeton ultimately caved.

Fast forward 35 years and TWC is alive and kicking. Chapters at NYU, UC Berkeley, Oberlin, Claremont McKenna, and several other colleges are making similar demands. They are calling for 'safe spaces' devoid of anyone but black students or other specific students of color; so they may be segregated from white students. The claim is that campuses dominated by whites are oppressive, discriminatory, and represent institutionalized racism. The group wants entire dorms or at least entire floors for example dedicated only to students of color.

Doesn't have separate but equal facilities go against everything that Dr. King and others fought for? Didn't Brown v. Board of Education make it clear that separate but equal was not acceptable? The Civil Rights Act of 1964 said the same thing. Integration was the only acceptable solution. Can you imagine if white college students demanded segregated facilities? It would make national news and those students would be excoriated and ostracized; rightfully so.

But that is the state of our society thanks to our educational system these days. Equality really doesn't mean equality, does it?