Suzanne Fields has a good article about how colleges continue to allow (and encourage) segregation in housing, etc. I found this comment insightful; the student came to Amherst on his way toward becoming human, and was persuaded while there to be a Latino. This is called higher education.
"A Latino student gives away the insidiousness of this
approach, describing how he found his blood roots at Amherst: ’For me, there’s
more consciousness of my background as a Latino male,’ he says. ’Before I came
to Amherst, I wasn’t thinking about race or class or gender or sexual orientation, I
was just thinking about people wanting to learn.’ "