Believe it or not, this week the University of Toronto gave its official blessing and taxpayer dollars for a black-students-only graduation.

No doubt administrators saw their actions as the height of enlightenment, the epitome of tolerance. Instead, what this was yet another step away from a truly inclusive society and into the middle of a racial and gender identity-politics minefield.

Until very recently, the goal of civil rights campaigners was a society in which the colour of a person’s skin (or their gender or orientation) made no difference to acceptance, promotion and equal treatment. Now, the goal is a colour-blind mainstream society that nonetheless has psychological and intellectual safe-havens where members of minority cultures can surround themselves only with people who look and think like them.

Should any mainstreamer seek even just to comment on these virtual sanctuaries, their inhabitants demand the unchallenged right to silence any criticism by shouting “racism,” “sexism” or whatever -ism will stomp down free speech.

The new, underlying philosophy of race and gender politics is inclusion for me, but not for thee.

Imagine if the blacks-only convocation were the university’s idea rather than the students’. Imagine if the UofT told black students they could only attend their own segregated ceremony. The outrage would be deafening and justified.

The ideological roots of one ceremony are not as far as you might think from the roots of the other.

Back in April, at ultra-funky, ultra-progressive Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., a “no whites” day asked all Caucasians to voluntarily remain off campus.

Technically, it was called a “Day of Absence.” But it was enforced with bullying. One professor who refused to stay away is now under threat of being fired after organizers complained he was a racist and oppressor for not caving in to their demands.

Members of all races are capable of racism. And you can use whatever euphemism you want for racism – i.e. Day of Absence – but it is still racism.

The UofT black convocation isn’t even in the same league as comments posted to Facebook last week by Johnny Eric Williams, a professor at Connecticut’s Trinity College. Williams, a professor of sociology who specializes in race and racism studies, wrote following the shooting of a white member of the U.S. Congress at a practice for a charity baseball game, “I am fed the f--- up with self-identified ‘white’s’ daily violence directed at immigrants, Muslims, and sexually and racially oppressed people. The time is now to confront these inhuman a**holes and end this.”

He included a link to an online essay that argued the two black policemen who saved Republican Congressmen’s lives should have “let them f---ing die.”

At the UofT, the racism was far more refined. But consider this: The very fact black students chose to have a blacks-only grad (rather than being forced to) is a sign most real racism is long gone. Most graduates would have been willing to have a black convocation only because they were not afraid of repercussions ranging from scorn to criticism and threats.

They were confident their blacks-only ceremony would not lead to a return of real legal and societal segregation. As such, holding their event with official approval is actually proof they’ve already arrived.

The big problem with the blacks-only convocation is that it feeds the cult of victimhood, the belief that racial and gender minorities have things so much worse than “whites,” especially white males.

Almost everyone encounters barriers to advancement, to educational achievement and success. When it happens to “whites” they have to chalk it up to bad luck, office politics, nepotism. They don’t get to play the race card.