# don't care about 'minority' firsts **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 22, 2017, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749 "2017-03-22T12:18:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2017, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/21 "2017-03-22T21:02:09Z")
I think it gets overdone sometimes. The first ‘first’ is notable, so are a few more, but the first ‘labeled person’ to eat pretzels in every state capital is not newsworthy. It should be insulting to someone with a real accomplishment getting noted only for being a first ‘label’ to accomplish that instead of being a person who has done something few others have. While it’s a common way to mark the changes in society we can’t become so invested in it that we forget the goal is point where such mentions are no longer necessary or interesting. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2017, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/22 "2017-03-22T21:38:04Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > It’s news because society is changing. Twenty years ago, the idea that Texas A&M would vote for a gay student body president would have been absurd. Now, it’s just not a big deal–and the fact that it’s not a big deal is what’s news. As an Aggie, I’ll say that I was more than a bit surprised to see this. The school has long been a rather conservative, religious and rednecky place, with a surprisingly large contingent of rural small-town people. That said, I think it’s more reputation than reality these days; even when I was in school some 20-25 years ago, there were black student leaders, on a campus that was something ridiculous like 5% black (or possibly even less). And the school/area has apparently (as told to me by a gay Aggie friend of my wife’s who I met after we were out of school) long had a quite vibrant gay community, although it was never very prominent or visible in the sense of didn’t have Pride Parades down Texas Avenue in College Station or anything like that. Electing a gay student body president is kind of what I’d expect by now, actually. But I’m not surprised it’s news either. ---
**Author:** ![The\_King\_of\_Soup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@The\_King\_of\_Soup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_King_of_Soup)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2017, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/23 "2017-03-23T17:16:32Z")
I completely agree with the OP. Do you know how many thousands of people graduated from Little Rock Central, Ole Miss, and UGA before Ernest Green, James Meredith and Charlayne Hunter-Gault came along? And yet _they’re_ considered special, somehow. Not only was Susan B. Anthony about the umpteen-millionth person to cast a ballot in this country, she did it _illegally_, so it shouldn’t even count (in fact, it literally didn’t), but we put her on a coin like she invented voting. Why should the accomplishments of the real “firsts” be diluted through the historical accident of women and minorities suddenly being allowed to duplicate their achievements at some later date? ---
**Author:** ![SantaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/da6949/32.png) [@SantaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SantaMan)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2017, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/24 "2017-03-23T20:08:31Z")
[The Onion has a comment about this…](http://www.theonion.com/article/area-teen-quickly-running-out-of-chances-to-be-fir-33521) ---
**Author:** ![drewder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@drewder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewder)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2017, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/25 "2017-03-23T21:12:03Z")
It is the racism of low expectations. ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2017, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/26 "2017-03-23T21:50:17Z")
> [@Spiderman](#): > > Every time I hear of some politician (or political appointee) being the first \_\_\_, I have to wonder if they were the best, most qualified or if their being \_\_\_\_ was part of the reason that they got the position. I have this reaction occasionally, too, but I have it more frequently in the other direction: when I hear of some politician or business leader or college president or whatever being the 47th white man to hold the position, I wonder if their being a white man was part of the reason that they got the position. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2017, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/27 "2017-03-23T23:51:42Z")
> [@The\_King\_of\_Soup](#): > > I completely agree with the OP. Do you know how many thousands of people graduated from Little Rock Central, Ole Miss, and UGA before Ernest Green, James Meredith and Charlayne Hunter-Gault came along? And yet _they’re_ considered special, somehow. Not only was Susan B. Anthony about the umpteen-millionth person to cast a ballot in this country, she did it _illegally_, so it shouldn’t even count (in fact, it literally didn’t), but we put her on a coin like she invented voting. Why should the accomplishments of the real “firsts” be diluted through the historical accident of women and minorities suddenly being allowed to duplicate their achievements at some later date? I think you’re missing the entire point. Being the first X to Y has nothing to do with all the non-X’s who had ever Y’d. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/28 "2017-03-24T00:11:43Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > It’s not about minorities, it is just a subset of Trivia. Like, Flame Delhi was the first major league baseball player born in Arizona. OK, people born in Arizona are “a minority” – they’re just not “a protected class”, so nobody gets touchy about it. > > So, the operative word here is protected class, not minority. > [@TriPolar](#): > > I think it gets overdone sometimes. The first ‘first’ is notable, so are a few more, but the first ‘labeled person’ to eat pretzels in every state capital is not newsworthy. It should be insulting to someone with a real accomplishment getting noted only for being a first ‘label’ to accomplish that instead of being a person who has done something few others have… Good points. I recently started working at a company where the majority of workers are “protected class” minorities and I have found myself playing up my “ethnic white” status more often than I historically have done. Some of it is my own rediscovery of my heritage, but there is also a temptation to be seen as a “fellow minority” in some way rather than as “the oppressor”. Someday, I’m going to earn some meaningless minority ‘first’ in order to boast about it - maybe “The first Pennsylvania Dutch person to hang glide across the entire Aleutian Islands chain”. Yeah, I’ll do that and then make a hex sign of it. And a barnstar. Then I’ll become the first PA Dutch person to air-drop a barnstar onto each of the Aleutian Islands. Yay ethnic minorities! We can do anything! Of course, this is despite the fact that the only thing that was particularly PA Dutch about my childhood was finding great-grandma’s stash of German reading material one time. No one else could read it and she never talked about it with me. ---
**Author:** ![igor\_frankensteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/839c29/32.png) [@igor\_frankensteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igor_frankensteen)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/29 "2017-03-24T00:11:58Z")
> [@Sigene](#): > > I’ve lived my entire life seeing and hearing about the ‘first woman to do…’ or the ‘first african american…’ or the ‘first openly gay person to do…’ > > Excuse me, but I’m kinda tired of it. I just don’t think its news. Perpetuating the idea that I should be amazed about this just smacks of sexism, racism or whaterver ism. > > These are people, they have people abilities, they can do whatever they want. Here’s the latest i see from CNN. [http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/21/us/texas-am-openly-gay-student-body-president/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/21/us/texas-am-openly-gay-student-body-president/index.html) > I’m no longer either amazed or heartened to hear of such accomplishments…they are as mundane and boring to me as hearing that someone from Belton Texas is A&M’s student body president. > > So, how long or what will it take for you all to go; ‘meh’ not a big deal. I don’t care. I understand your resentment, Sigene. However, I think you owe yourself some more thought on it, to improve your understanding of both yourself, and of what you are actually observing. First yourself: your gripe is identical to the older children in a family, who are no longer noticed for their minor accomplishments, and are grumpy about their younger siblings getting praised for “first steps,” and “first self-toileting” and so on. Recognizing that that’s what you’re doing, might help you not to. In the bigger picture, you have nothing valid to complain about, for the most part, because the fact that it isn’t special when YOU do any of those things, doesn’t mean that it’s not special when someone else does them for the first time. It is. As to what you are observing, there’s more than one thing going on. I think there’s basically two things. ACTUAL “firsts,” and media advancement sort-of “firsts.” The second kind are the ones that I would side with you on, in that they aren’t the result of the actual person accomplishing the “first,” feeling any sense of value about it. What’s actually going on is ANOTHER child-like competition. Some reporter saw that other reporters were getting lauded for “announcing” a “first ever by whatever,” and they want to get patted on the back for celebrating an “important first” as well. So they go prowling down every side street, until they find some poor slob who they can claim is “special,” so they can announce that they discovered the first ever whatever. It’s that second kind that I get annoyed by myself, because those stories are obviously never about the actual person accomplishing the “first,” they are about the REPORTER. ---
**Author:** ![boffking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/858c86/32.png) [@boffking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boffking)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/30 "2017-03-24T00:20:53Z")
I hate how esoteric these firsts get in baseball. The announcers always have to grasp at straws to make it sound historic. This is the first time a shortstop born in Southern Japan hit an RBI triple against a Canadian pitcher on a Friday during game two of the NLCS! Who cares! ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/31 "2017-03-24T00:29:39Z")
Boy, don’t watch the Amazing Race. Everybody is a first. Meet Bob and Michelle from Wichita Kansas. Michelle is the first 26 year old English Welsh Scottish 1/16th Norwegian American with an astigmatism to compete on the Amazing Race! Michelle: “I just wanted to prove that if you follow your dreams and never give up you can do anything. I also wanted to show that 26 year old English Welsh Scottish 1/16th Norwegian Americans with astigmatisms can do the same things other people do!” ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/32 "2017-03-24T00:33:59Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Boy, don’t watch the Amazing Race. Everybody is a first. > > Meet Bob and Michelle from Wichita Kansas. Michelle is the first 26 year old English Welsh Scottish 1/16th Norwegian American with an astigmatism to compete on the Amazing Race! > > Michelle: “I just wanted to prove that if you follow your dreams and never give up you can do anything. I also wanted to show that 26 year old English Welsh Scottish 1/16th Norwegian Americans with astigmatisms can do the same things other people do!” I’ll be the first Pennsylvania Dutch Irish Appalachian Scots Puritan Bahamian American between 35 and 40 who knows at least 5 but not more than 10 programming languages and who got an “A” in his first semester of middle school math to compete! Descendants of the survivors of the Great Famine of Ireland can accomplish anything! ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/33 "2017-03-24T02:34:36Z")
I think it’s a positive sign of the times that the OP is underwhelmed by these firsts, truly. Dad and I watched **42** yesterday, and while it was a good movie just because of the plot, my mind wandered a bit. The Jim Crow laws that he and his wife encountered back in the 40s didn’t end until 1965. And honestly, it has always blown my mind that they were _ever_ a thing. This is sort of remarkable because I was born in 1977 and grew up with the sense that having non-segregated facilities is normal, and that the Jim Crow era was wrong. Twelve short years is all it took (if even that) for the new status quo to seem perfectly normal to people who hadn’t lived under the old one. Society must’ve done quite a shift for there to be no noticeable trace of resentment of losing the old ways to be around for us to detect. Granted, it might have been different in the South, but people pretty far north were pissed off about Jackie not too terribly long before then. If we’re getting to the point that firsts no longer inspire awe, good for us. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/34 "2017-03-24T04:40:58Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I think you’re missing the entire point. Being the first X to Y has nothing to do with all the non-X’s who had ever Y’d. Whoosh. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/35 "2017-03-24T04:54:38Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Boy, don’t watch the Amazing Race. Everybody is a first. > > Meet Bob and Michelle from Wichita Kansas. Michelle is the first 26 year old English Welsh Scottish 1/16th Norwegian American with an astigmatism to compete on the Amazing Race! > > Michelle: “I just wanted to prove that if you follow your dreams and never give up you can do anything. I also wanted to show that 26 year old English Welsh Scottish 1/16th Norwegian Americans with astigmatisms can do the same things other people do!” Isn’t this how so many books can be the “No. 1 bestseller?” They’re “bestsellers” in a somewhat forced, specific, very narrow, category. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/36 "2017-03-24T05:32:54Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > It is the racism of low expectations. I completely agree with this, and with the OP. The whole “first Black dogcatcher/mayor/senator/president” thing is totally demeaning. It implies that the minority group in question is inferior in some way, and that one of them has finally succeeded at something that “normal” people have been doing all along. If I were a member of that minority group, I would find it totally offensive. It’s like saying, “Wow, you’re pretty smart, for a girl!” ---
**Author:** ![Sigene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df788c/32.png) [@Sigene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigene)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/37 "2017-03-24T13:55:45Z")
I want to make a clear distinction here. I’m NOT offended by these accomplishments, I’m certainly NOT resentful. I’m bored with them. They aren’t news to me. I don’t care that podunk Utah elected its first black mayor…its not a big deal to me. ---
**Author:** ![The\_King\_of\_Soup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@The\_King\_of\_Soup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_King_of_Soup)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/38 "2017-03-24T14:08:33Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > Whoosh. My fault. I wasn’t clear, and sarcasm in this forum is in questionable taste anyhow. Perhaps **robert\_columbia** could become the first of his heritage to fail to secure a decent mortgage because of redlining. That would be an accomplishment. ---
**Author:** ![planetcory](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/planetcory/32/1032_2.png) [@planetcory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/planetcory)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/39 "2017-03-24T14:26:44Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > It implies that the minority group in question is inferior in some way, and that one of them has finally succeeded at something that “normal” people have been doing all along. Replace ‘inferior’ with ‘oppressed and disenfranchised’ and maybe you’ll better understand why we’re invigorated by such achievements. ---
**Author:** ![Sigene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df788c/32.png) [@Sigene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigene)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749/40 "2017-03-24T15:13:37Z")
> [@planetcory](#): > > Replace ‘inferior’ with ‘oppressed and disenfranchised’ and maybe you’ll better understand why we’re invigorated by such achievements. This an interesting point, that I can appreciate. How does one define ‘oppressed and disenfranchised’? Do you assume because they are gay or black or female that they are automatically oppressed and disenfranchised? Is it not possible at all for a white heterosexual male to fall into this definition of oppressed and disenfranchised because of who they are? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-care-about-minority-firsts/782749.md?page=3)