California State University has announced that it will provide segregated housing for the university’s black students in an attempt to provide them with a “safe space.”

Black students will have the option to move into a residential complex solely for “African-Americans.” The decision to provide segregated accommodations comes just nine months after the university’s Black Student Union presented a list of demands to the university’s authorities to challenge what they perceived as endemic racial discrimination.

Their demands included a “$30 million endowment to support black students financially,” an anti-discrimination policy combined with “cultural competency training,” compulsory “ethnic studies courses” for first and year second year students, as well as segregated housing for black students.

We have come full circle. The civil rights movement started out in the 1950s and 1960s as against white-black segregation. And now, half a century later, we’re back to full-fledged white-black segregation at California state schools.

In the old days, segregation was fueled by racism. Today, it’s fueled by supposedly enlightened, “progressive” political correctness. The truth? It’s still racism.

Racism happens when you make race the most important factor. If the civil rights movement had gotten this right, it would have urged the replacement of racism with individualism. Why didn’t they? Because most of the civil rights leaders were collectivists, not individualists. They tried to use the irrationality of racism as an excuse to impose socialism, social welfare statism, and all the things we see today in the programs of Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, Obamacare and all the rest. They won. These programs are here to stay, even if they drive America off the fiscal cliff into unimaginable bankruptcy.

Individualism would have liberated blacks and everyone from the irrationality and injustice of racism. But the welfare statists instead chose a route of victimization, whereby blacks continue to focus on their racial membership as the most important part of their personalities, souls and character. The victim mindset required membership in the gang or collective. But it’s the opposite of what authentic self-esteem, character and benevolence toward your fellow man require.

The problem with advancing collectivism to replace racism is that you end up with just another version of racism. Collectivism and socialism, to sell themselves, have to make people into victims. The only way to perpetuate victimhood is to tell people that white racists aren’t giving them the free benefits they deserve. Of course, in the process, these new civil rights racists did what the Ku Klux Klan could only have dreamed of doing: They made blacks and other impoverished minorities permanently dependent on the meager income of government.

Inevitably, this had to lead to bitterness. But in the bitterness there could have emerged true growth and enlightenment. How? By admitting their mistakes. The civil rights people could have concluded, “We were wrong. Socialism and collectivism are not the answer. Government is not the answer. The only answer is equal freedom, private property and wealth creation for all. From each according to his ability, and to each according to his ability. Individualism will liberate blacks.”

Meritocracy might have replaced the impoverishment of post-slavery and post-Jim Crow. Instead, generations of blacks now have been given nothing but mediocrity and dependence. No wonder they’re so angry and want to go off and live in their own racially designated dorm rooms. But to those who claim to care about civil rights, doesn’t this make you feel a little sick? And kind of like you failed?

Have the movers and shakers in the civil rights establishment learned anything? No way. They’re more embittered and angry than ever. And in their bitterness, they demand segregated, race-based housing at state-funded college campuses. Their gal in Washington, DC, Hillary Clinton, promises more spending on social programs than ever, ensuring that another generation or two of African Americans will stay on the dole, in one form or another.

In short: They’re exactly where they started. And they have nobody to blame but themselves.