To start off, I would like to say I am not racist at all, however, when I think about this certain situation, it does not make sense. Why are African American’s allowed to have their own college funds, beauty pageants, television channels, and schools, yet it is not considered racist. Why does the word racist only describe views toward African Americans? If we had “White Entertainment Television,” would African Americans protest that it is racist?
We already have White Entertainment Television. It’s called the Paxson network. 
Let’s say culture A makes up 80% of the population and culture B makes up 20%. “Popular Culture” then would be composed mostly of the tastes and preferences of culture A. For most processes, including market demand, the majority rules, so more things will tend to me tailored to what A wants, with some allowance for B’s desires. If people of A find others of A more attractive, then members of B will rarely if ever win beauty pageants (which should be done away with, anyway). But marketing and meeting of preferences will not follow an 80-20 split, especially, if A spends more per person, so A will win out over 90% of the time. Note that this is all without any prejudice, opression of B, or any concious decision to exclude B…it’s just how things work out. So while popular culture and the overall market is not completely homogeneous, it still fails to meet B’s specific tastes and preferences. So group B institutes parallel but smaller scale institutions to more fully meet its needs, to the exclusion of A, whose needs are adequately met by popular culture. The problem then is that group A sees that overall culture includes B (unaware that it is to too low a degree) but that the B subculture excludes A. A sees this as an advantage to B at A’s expense, while B still feels excluded (or less included) in popular culture and still isn’t having its demands adequately met.
That’s the general theory. Whether or not it does or should apply in the real world is debatable. I’m still trying to figure out why people imagine there is or should be a connection between melanin and taste in music.
pinqy
No, but we damn sure got yer White Trash Entertainment! WWF, Jerry Springer, Judge Judy. Like to see Chyna go two falls out of three with Ol’ Jude!
More to the point, there are no “white people”. “White people” means those people without any identifiable ethnicity. Kind of like saying “blank” people.
For instance, do you know the difference between a wop and a bo-hunk? Hows about between a cracker and a peckerwood?
With the exception of B.E.T., every single thing you mentioned was started at a time when blacks were not allowed to participate in “white” activities. Those organizations provided the only way for blacks to have any similar venue in which to participate.
Since that time, black colleges have allowed whites to enroll (I don’t actually know that they ever prevented whites from attending, unlike the mainstream schools that did exclude blacks).
The Miss Black America pageant continues simply because the people who organize it would have to find real work if they allowed it to die. (It is probably dying, now, since we have actually had black Miss America winners. It is also possible that a white girl could enter the pageant at this time, although I do not follow beauty pagants closely enough to know whether one has tried.)
Black scholarships are no different than scholarships for students of Irish, Slovenian, Polish, or Greek ethnic backgrounds. Since the slavers destroyed the ability of their cargo to identify themselves as Ibo, Akan, Mossi, Ewe, Ga-Adangme, Gurma, Ewe, Fon, Yoruba, Hausa, Fulani, or any of the other groups from whom slaves were taken, their common ethnic characteristics are their appearance and the common fate of their ancestors. If descendants of German immigrants can set up scholarships for their ethnic group, (and they do), why should blacks be denied the same opportunity?
B.E.T. was purely a financial marketing strategy. In the age of cable TV, when pundits were claiming that soon all TV would be made up of small niche-driven viewer groups, one guy had the intelligence to see that he could make a buck by orienting his broadcasts to blacks. Since he recently sold the network for a very nice sum, I would say that he judged correctly. Good old American capitalism at work.
In fact, there is nothing that blacks are “allowed” to do that whites are prohibited from doing. If whites want to set up their own broadcast network, no one will stoip them except the existing white networks that will fight them tooth and nail for advertising revenue.
It’s called a name that, according to many, does not happen, does not exist, is not politically correct, and, according to some, is justified retribution: reverse discrimination.
Wait until the age of PC is over, then the fur will fly. I listen to a talk radio station that for years refused to allow racial jokes or comments aired. Then, one day, the host pointed out that since the program makes fun of all races, nationalities, sexes and sexual orientation equally, that to discriminate against African Americans because of political correctness was wrong.
Since then, people are allowed to make racial comments on the air towards all races. I’ve heard more black jokes there than I have in years. Black callers, who used to call in and rant about how badly the White man treated them suddenly stopped calling in when white callers started pointing out reverse discrimination.
This station got onto the current Jessie Jackson cheating thing, pointed out that Jessie screams racial discrimination, points out how the black man is being put down, how corrupt the white man is, steps in whenever he can to embarrass any white president, fights corruption among blacks and his finances come from charitable organizations so he can do good works.
Like offer around $40,000 of that money to his lover to keep her mouth shut. Funny, she is not a charity in need of funds.
Jessie, it was observed, jump in to ‘assist’ children of color in disasters, fights for black children accused of killings, runs over seas to help black cities in ruins, but walks right on past any white people in the same situation.
Reverse discrimination.
Like several black people have said on TV, it might not be fair, but it is retribution against the white man and that makes it OK.
Adventurious82, whatever your problems with Jesse Jackson, the points raised in the OP have nothing to do with racism (except as they may have originated in a racist period in economic self-defense). They are simply examples of people who happen to be black doing what white people do all the time. (The beauty pageant is the single, anachronistic exception, but I am not aware that it prevents white contestants, either.)
Tom: Do you just cut ‘n’ paste your answer to this question by now? You’ve fielded it so many times on these boards, you must be getting sick of having to repeat yourself! 
Nice job dispelling the misconceptions, as always.
And “Black People” are simply people of ALL identifiable ethnicities.
Ridiculous, Elucidator. People are not crayons.
Maybe you’re not, but you try telling that to Burt Umber!
[sub]What? Burnt umber? Oh.
Never mind.[/sub]
Because they shouldn’t et the germans do it either. We have a little thing about not discriminating about matters of birth, and this clearly does this. Perhaps instead of creating a higher inheritance tax, we lower the inheritance tax (which is as non-discriminatory as any gift-giving holiday) and tax the shit out of these race oriented funds.
But tom, capitalism keeps the poor man down, and never works for minorities. Surely your facts must be wrong!! (I don’ know that you said this but people definitely have here)
You know there are scholarships based on height?
The NAACP also gives scholarships to “white” students.
There is a grand total of one “white” student at the nearby “black” college. The local news did a piece about him. As I see it, it’s not the “blacks” who are being exclusionary.
May I question the OP? So what!? What difference does it make? Why care? Please don’t tell me that you actually feel discriminated against. Please don’t tell me that black scholarships have hurt you somehow or Latvian or German or any other. Please don’t try to tell me that BET has discriminated against you. Oh I see it’s a matter of perception, you think this is discrimination. Perhaps it is, so what? We discriminate all the time. You know, I like Cocker Spaniels and don’t care for German Shepards, so what? I’ve discriminated. The question is have I hurt German Shepards just because I prefer Cocker Spaniels? How is it that any of this has hurt you? What damned difference does it make except to give you some off the wall justification for your own intolerant feelings.
Geez! Next time you want to debate this I suggest you do a search this question has been posed before and we have already addresed it, ad nauseum.
Needs2know
Yeah, seperate but equal was never a problem. We can discriminate so long as no one gets hurt, or misses opportunity, or has an unfair advantage.
Nope. It is simply a matter of the rights to associate and the right to spend one’s money where one wants to.
If any group wants to get together and spend their own money to support whomever they wish, they should be entitled to do so. (Of course, that means we give up campaign spending reform.)
If they choose to offer a service or product on the market, they have no right to limit who has the opportunity to avail themselves of that service or product.
Scholarships (and even those ridiculous beauty contests purport to be conduits for scholarships) are of the first category: people spending money where they wish.
Colleges are an example of the second situation. No college may bar entry to an applicant seeking an education for reasons of birth. And, in fact, black colleges are more than willing to accept the tuition of anyone who shows up and meets the normal entrance requirements.
(Just so my position regarding the earlier comment on B.E.T. is clear (and the smiley has been noted) :
Capitalism has never kept any minority group down as a minority group. Pie-in-the-sky “pure” capitalism is as capable of keeping down the masses of people as “pure” socialism is. A system that is routinely adjusted to avoid the worst (new) abuses of either system will probably provide the greatest benefit over the longest time.
There are historical examples of societies who oppressed minorities while hiding their discriminatory practices behind the rhetoric of socialism or of capitalism, but the economic system itself did not select any minority group for oppression. Socialism did not identify Soviet Jews as undesirable any more than capitalism identified black Americans as undesirable.)
I think the deal with college funds is that, as others have mentioned, any group could go about raising money for any group that they felt like. The difference is that people will question the motivation of anyone who attempts to start a “White College Fund”. As there is no specifically white problem with college funds, people will justifiably suspect that this is simple bigotry. In the case of blacks, many of whom are trapped in a cycle of poverty, there is a justifiable reason for doing this. But again, this applies to private citizens. The government doing such things gets us back to the afirmative action debates.
The television issue is simpler yet. The fact that the BET is called that is merely a convenience - they are identifying themselves to their expected constituency. In terms of programming they are no different than any other network that identified a niche in the market that they felt they could appeal to. The fact that this niche happens to be black is completely irrelevent. If someone found a niche that happened to be completely white and made a network to cater to it it would also be OK. (Again, if it was named WET people would again be justified in seeing racism).
Every time I see the words "Black, African American, Affirmative Action, BET, WB… in a GD thread, I think to myself, just how am I oppressing caucasion people today.
So on behalf og Black America (the right to speak for all Blacks is a pre-established rule that any black person in a public setting is speaking for the group) our Agenda.
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Educate our children: ( as tomndebb pointed out) college educations were once exclusively reserved for whites. Those college funds, and colleges you mentioned were an attempt to correct that. They still exist because there are still a lot of poor people in the inner city unable to get a decent shot at college (oh and you don’t have to be black to get a scholarship or attend one of those colleges). Similar funds have been set up in the past and are still occurring. Bill gates recently established a fund for poor communities, strangely enough i haven’t seen a thread dedicated to how discriminatroy that is, oh well.
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We occasionally we’d like to see people who look like ourselves on TV. (Preferably like we really are, not dealers, criminals and prostitutes). It seems a few TV producers have caught on to this novel concept and created shows for Black audiences, and hey even a network.
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Beauty Pagents (see 1 & 2 above)
“As there is no specifically white problem with college funds, people will justifiably suspect that this is simple bigotry.”
Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by “problem.” And I don’t mean semantics, either. The white college fund is government grants and loans, same as for every other color and religious group. So there is no specific color problem as far as college funds go.
That these other racial groups also have additional funds available to them is considered by some to be bigoted. It wouldn’t bother me except, of course, that it sounds bigoted. United Negro College Fund, gee, who gets to receive that?
Pell Grant. Well, that obviously is intended to help only white kids who don’t need it because they aren’t in a “cycle” of poverty, eh stuffinb? But, there is an uncharictaristically high number of black people in poverty percentage-wise. Check it out: http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/poverty99/table5.html
Depending on what we are considering as income it can be as much as almost 3 times more blacks than whites. Ouch!
I don’t feel oppressed by the black man, I just see a double standard sitting in a chair marked “equality.” Sorry pal, that spot is taken.
[sub]a double standard is like a siamese twin only with the normal number of limbs and head[/sub]
aynrandlover Excuse me but I fail to see how a private program designed to get more blacks into college is bigoted, you’re going to have to enlighten me with statistics/cites that don’t already prove the point that it’s neccesary.