Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson is a famously provocative broadcaster with the ear of President Donald Trump and a massive cable TV audience. The veteran of CNN, MSNBC and 'Dancing with the Stars' released his second book this month, titled 'Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution.' It debuted at #1 on the New York Times best-seller list.

In this exclusive excerpt, Carlson argues that American universities trying to create 'safe spaces' for black students are turning the Civil Rights Movement on its head by enforcing a new kind of segregation that's both fashionable and dangerous.

-------

If you wanted to run a country for the benefit of the people who lived there, you'd understand that in a society composed of many different ethnic groups, tribalism is the greatest threat to unity and order. Of course there will always be racism, because that's the nature of people, and you'd work to discourage it. But you would resist using the existence of racism as an excuse for your failures. You would never, for example, blame an entire racial group for the sins of its ancestors. That would serve only to embitter and divide the population. It might make your job easier in the short term. But over time it would wreck your country. The ruling class once understood this.

In May 2017, Harvard University held its first ever segregated graduation ceremony. Black students have attended Harvard since just after the Civil War, and for almost 150 years they graduated alongside their white classmates, a fact the school was proud of. But in 2017, the school discarded that tradition and created something called Black Commencement, held two days before the regular graduation ceremony. Hundreds attended. Spoken-word performers reminded the audience, 'we don't need the white men nor white girl pity.'

Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson argues in his new book that the legacy of identity politics includes tolerance for self-segregated minority groups in a way that turns the Civil Rights Movement's central goal on its head

Carlson recounts the story of UC-Berkeley students who commandeered a main campus gate and refused to let white students enter, demanding 'spaces of color' where they wouldn't mix

Carlson, host of 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' on weekday evenings, also points to race-segregated dormitories at some universities as surprising – especially because liberal activists support them instead of campaign against them

Press coverage was adulatory. Boston's local NPR affiliate described the event as an opportunity for black students 'to celebrate their triumphs and remember the obstacles they have faced.' The Boston Globe agreed. 'Unlike the cliched send-offs often delivered at commencements,' the newspaper explained, 'the speeches at this event spoke to the political and social concerns that students of color face at an elite institution.'

It's hard to overstate how strange it is to see establishment figures celebrating a black-only graduation ceremony. For generations, school integration was the one issue that united every right-thinking person in America. The educated class fought segregation everywhere they found it. They celebrated when the Brown v. Board of Education decision abolished 'separate but equal' schools nationwide. They supported James Meredith when he integrated the University of Mississippi. They despised George Wallace and other political leaders who fought to keep black and white students apart.

'Ship of Fools' is Carlson's second book; his publishing contract with Simon & Schuster's New Press imprint calls for at least one more

They weren't satisfied with schools, either. Idealistic young members of the ruling class led the integration of restaurants, hotels, theaters, and public transportation. They argued that all human beings were equal in dignity and rights. Everyone deserved to be treated equally in the eyes of the law.

They were right about all of this. Racial segregation was wrong, and not just because black schools tended to get less state funding. Segregation divided people on the basis of things they couldn't control. It suggested that a person's race, an entirely immutable characteristic, was the most important thing about him, and should determine how he was treated by others. Segregation was dehumanizing. It reduced the individual to a faceless member of a group.

It was also, its critics often pointed out, absurd. Beneath the skin, we're all the same. Civic leaders said that constantly in the 1970s and '80s. They recited Martin Luther King speeches to drive home the point.

For decades, racial integration was the central project of American elites. Some may believe it still is. But a remarkable transformation has taken place: Elites no longer oppose segregation.

They no longer insist on treating all races equally. Many instead call for segregation. They consider race the center of human identity. They demand that individuals be exalted or punished because of their skin color.

In the spring of 2018, CNN interrupted its ongoing coverage of the Russian plot to undermine democracy with a breaking story. According to several sources, Trump's interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, may have once endorsed the principle of meritocratic hiring. Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, apparently said out loud that diversity was less important than 'having the right person for the right job.'

Carlson, a longtime conservative political commentator, spoke Sunday during 'Politicon 2018' in Los Angeles

In 'Ship of Fools,' Carlson singles out Oregon's Reed College for endorsing 'Students of Color' campus housing where white students are not permitted to live

CNN made it clear that this was a scandal, if not a threat to the country. Skills-based hiring? In 2018? The network ran this ominous chyron beneath the coverage: 'Zinke angers many by saying it's more important to find the best people.'

Washington erupted. Zinke's spokeswoman did her best to quell the fury. She assured reporters that the rumors were false. Secretary Zinke, she said, absolutely does not hire employees on the basis of their skills or ability or experience. Instead, Zinke uses criteria like genetics and physical appearance to make the call. Ryan Zinke believes in diversity.

Journalists remained skeptical. 'Zinke has said he cares about excellence, and what's important is having the right person for the right job,' CNN reminded viewers. 'Statements like this reinforce the dated and bigoted thinking that diversity threatens quality.' These ideas 'threaten the security of the country.'

Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, recently returned from an acquittal in his federal corruption trial, released a statement equating meritocratic hiring with racism. Zinke, Menendez said, is trying to create a 'lily-white department.'

The UC-Berkeley campus 'was the site of some of the first student demonstrations against racial segregation in the early 1960s,' Carlson writes, but ths 2016 protests were 'staged in favor of segregation'

While nonwhite students blockaded the campus gates, white students had to climb down a hill and under a bridge to get to classes under an arrangement that the university administration supported and encouraged

If you've been following the evolution of elite views on race, this is all a little bewildering. It is precisely the opposite of what people like Bob Menendez were saying forty years ago. Meritocratic attitudes were once considered the answer to racism, not a manifestation of it. People should be judged on what they do, not on how they look or who their parents were or what their ancestors did. Our elites said they didn't believe in collective punishment or reward. They stood with the individual. That's why they opposed segregation.

In the fall of 2016, a protest broke out at the University of California, Berkeley. Protests over racial questions are common at Berkeley, and have long been. The campus was the site of some of the first student demonstrations against racial segregation in the early 1960s. But this protest was different. It was staged in favor of segregation.

Activists raised a banner that read, 'Fight 4 Spaces of Color.' They formed a human chain to block white students from entering the campus. 'Whose University? Our University,' they chanted. They demanded public spaces from which heterosexual whites could be excluded.

In the 50 years since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Carlson argues, racial integration has gone from a central socialpjustice idea to a casualty in the diversity wars

At the time, Berkeley already supported a number of race-centered facilities. The school funded an Equity Resource Center, the Fannie Lou Hamer Black Resource Center, the African American Student Development Center, the office of Native American Student Development, the Chicanx/Latinx Student Development, and the Asian/Pacific American Student Development space.

These facilities were designed for students of color, but they weren't officially limited to them. The protesters demanded space entirely off-limits to white people. Whites are a shrinking minority at Berkeley, at just 24 percent of undergraduates, but according to the protesters, any was too many. They demanded a segregated meeting area within the university's MLK student union. Nobody acknowledged the irony of banning people on the basis of skin color from a building named after Martin Luther King.

At the University of Michigan, students followed suit. They called for school administrators to 'create a permanent designated space on central campus for Black students and students of color to organize, and do social justice work.' Activists criticized the existing 'multicultural center' for not being 'solely dedicated to community organizing and social justice work specifically for people of color.' They wanted a black-only space, a segregated space. Similar demonstrations took place all over the country.

Once colleges accepted segregated public spaces, there was no reason not to segregate living quarters as well. The University of Colorado-Boulder now has housing exclusively for black students. So does the University of Connecticut. California State University, Los Angeles, maintains what it calls 'black focused' housing. Cornell College in Iowa has a dormitory for black students, which the school describes as 'a place of refuge for anyone who has felt discriminated against because of their race, sexuality, spirituality, gender, or ideas as a human being.'

The University of Iowa offers a 'Young, Gifted, and Black' community for students who seek to 'strengthen knowledge and empowerment of Black students.' Stanford has 'ethnic theme dorms' reserved for Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, and black students.

Carlson also recounts an episode in which Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's office was forced to deny that he made hiring deisions strictly on the basis of merit instead of factoring in racial quotas and other affirmative-action principles

Reed College, a liberal arts school in Oregon known for progressive politics, is at the forefront of segregating minority students. According to the school's website, its 'Students of Color Community' offers nonwhite students a place 'to heal together from systemic white supremacy, recover the parts of ourselves and our cultures that have been stolen through colonization, and dream new visions as we build vibrant, loving community together.'

While the race politics at most colleges are driven by students, many school administrators have become enthusiastic supporters of segregation on campus. When a group of black students at Northwestern refused to allow two white students to sit at their lunch table, the school's president, Morton Schapiro, defended the exclusion in the pages of the Washington Post.

'Is this really so scandalous?' wrote Schapiro in an op-ed, apparently forgetting the bitter battles liberals once fought to integrate lunch counters. 'Many groups eat together in the cafeteria, but people seem to notice only when the students are black. Athletes often eat with athletes; fraternity and sorority members with their Greek brothers and sisters; a cappella group members with fellow singers; actors with actors; marching band members with marching band members; and so on .... The white students, while well-meaning, didn't have the right to unilaterally decide when uncomfortable learning would take place.'

In other words, there's nothing wrong with segregation. It's the natural order; all groups want it, and you can understand why. Even eating lunch with members of another race is, as Schapiro put it, 'uncomfortable.' And that's now okay with the American establishment.

From 'Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution,' by Tucker Carlson. Copyright © 2018 by Tucker Ca rlson. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved.



