I’m tempted to say that Bernadette is bigoted, not racist, but that’s just me being a pedantic asshole. Instead I’ll ask if you’re okay with Thelma letting the situation stay the same in future years. It’d be possible to explain away during one year, perhaps, but if it kept happening things could become quite uncomfortable for Thelma, not to mention the tension among the kids in the school once they’re all hip to the situation.
I’m curious what distinction you’re drawing here. What’s the difference?
I’d say that it depends on who’s using it, and how (“context”). My Mexican-from-Mexico wife uses the Spanish equivalent: “espaldas mojadas” or simply “mojados.” If there’s a distinction, Latinos use it strictly for illegals, whereas some Americans use it for all Latinos (or perhaps they think that all Latinos are illegal, and thus the appellation applies).
But as an educator, I hold myself up to a standard. It’s Thelma’s job to set standards for her school. The scholarship should be tabled for at least another year if the lady wasn’t up front.
Does the rich girl have a thing against Latinos or just the immigrants?
What she is doing is not comparable to the NAACP because what the NAACP is specifically helping kids who are traditionally held back, whereas Bernadette is excluding another set of kids who are traditionally held back. So yeah, I think Thelma should probably refuse the entire thing and take it to the board.
Yah, but wetback from a non-Latino is usually applied to any Mexican as opposed to those who just have a distaste for immigrants.
The OP said “wetback” and “immigrant” together, sure, but I’m going to guess that Bernadette is not a Latino with papeles. 
You don’t think racists/bigots deserve to be embarrassed? :dubious: I’d tell the committee EXACTLY why the scholarship was dumped.
Sure it is. There are three solutions to your hypothetical:
1. Say Nothing. Not ideal, but there’s the very real possibility that Bernadette could cancel the scholarship if Thelma tells her what she’s doing isn’t right.
2. Thelma tells Bernadette she has to make the process fair Whether through the use of anonymous student codes or officially announcing that the scholarship is for African-Americans only, something has to be done.
3. Thelma says “Yeah, I fucking hate those spics!” And then they have a good cackle at their bigoted ways.
I grant that option 1 isn’t an evil choice, but every teacher I know would pick option 2 without even thinking about it. Option 3 is purely to illustrate how ridiculous this choice is.
That said, if Bernadette is that bigoted, it never would have got to the essay-reading stage as someone somewhere along the line would have asked her about the audience for her intended scholarship before it was ever publicly announced.
Skald, I think you’re on the right track. Thelma should tell her friend, without rancor, that if she’s going to discard all Hispanic surname entries to start, she, Thelma, can’t be involved. Bernadette is welcome, more than welcome, to offer the scholarship. But if she’s not willing to choose on the basis of blind essays (i.e. no names, just numbers), then it cannot be even distantly connected with any school employee, most especially herself, the principal. I’d also point out that Bernadette was welcome to offer her scholarship to citizens and legal immigrants only, but openly - she couldn’t just go tossing names out because they might be illegals. Independently, Bernadette can administer her scholarship in any way she chooses, but not in direct association with Good Times High School. Thelma needs Bernadetter to understand that if Thelma were to be associated with it would put her own career seriously at risk. Bernadette, if she’s any kind of friend, should respect that.
If I were Thelma, I’d also be highly tempted to point out that many of the students she’d chosen to eliminate were in fact perfectly legal immigrants. I’d also tell her that at one of the first jobs I ever worked, the two Latina (although not illegal) employees there had Irish surnames, while the Spanish sounding surnames we had were not Latino, so her standard of elimination was pretty faulty if her purpose was to eliminate illegal aliens. Last, but not least, I’d suggest that if Bernadette was quite certain that she was unwilling to consider Latino students, she should offer her scholarship for African-American students only, since the number of non-African-American, non-Latino students at FEHS was negligible.
I dunno, in my scholarship book there were plenty of scholarships that’d you see and know who the recipient would be. Also, I’m making an assumption here from what I’ve personally observed, but the smart kids tend to stick together. We looked at the scholarships together and tipped each other off to one that fit perfectly. I don’t see a massive amount of tension coming from this.
Hmmm.
If we switch the hypo to Principal Maria, her friend Juanita, and a declaration that Juanita won’t be helping any coons, only Hispanic students, does that change anyone’s opinion?
Well, I don’t think “coon” in today’s vernacular means anything other than a racoon, so no, my opinion doesn’t change.
Now, seriously, do people still use “coon” for blacks?
Why should it? People are allowed to offer any scholarships they like, to, as someone above pointed out, left-handed red-haired girls who play the xylophone and speak Romanian. We need not admire the restrictions, but they’re perfectly acceptable legally and morally, since no one is morally obliged to give scholarships at all. What they aren’t supposed to do is to say that the scholarships are open to all students, and then eliminate candidates on the basis of some arbitrary and inaccurate standard. In Skald’s case, that standard was last name, but if your Juanita chose to eliminate African American students, the last name trick might be a little more difficult. Still, the point is, the principal can’t be associated in any way with any scholarship whose criteria for qualification is not openly stated. I don’t see how whether it’s Latinos or African Americans or Lithuanian belly dancers who are being excluded makes any difference.
Around here, “wetback” is used to refer to illegal immigrants who have crossed the Rio Grande. And the race/origin of the user doesn’t matter much. Now, immigration status DOES seem to matter, as people who are here illegally and/or have relatives who are here illegally don’t like the term “wetback”. No matter who uses it, it’s considered a slur or insult or hate word. If we want to insult someone of Hispanic origin, but don’t know his/her immigration status, we prefer to use “beaner” or “spic”. And yes, that’s also a slur/insult/hate word.
I’d like to point out, too, that just having a Hispanic last name doesn’t mean that the person isn’t AA. There are a lot of black Hispanics. There are also women who have a child, and then marry someone with a Hispanic last name. Bernadette might very well be eliminating a lot of black kids who are as purely black as any AA is likely to be…that is, these kids might have some white blood, but not any Hispanic heritage. And of course the Hispanic name might come from a grandfather or great grandfather, and the kid is of primarily black heritage.
I’d ask Bernadette to consider these facts, and to consider changing the rules. If she just wants black females to get the scholarship, that’s OK. If she wants all recipients to be legal residents of the US, that’s OK. These things can be determined. But I’d probably urge Bernadette to have the essays assigned numbers, without the real names of the writers on them.
Thelma’s not much of a best friend if she doesn’t already know her friend is a bigot, that kind of thing generally comes out over the years.
Anyway, the right thing to do is to tell Bernadette to keep her damn money. Either that, or threaten to expose her bigotry to the press if she doesn’t change her criteria. Bang goes any possible public legacy of nice-old-biddy philanthropy.
And hell, no, Thelma shouldn’t stay her friend. Racist bigotry (which, let’s be honest, is all that current US anti-immigrant bigotry is) is on the (short) list of insta-bounce behaviours for me (along with homophobia, misogyny, theft from me and certain sexual deviances)
I don’t really believe in race, but even if I did, I wouldn’t consider Hispanic one.
No, it isn’t, because the issue of what to do about the money is separate from whether Thelma wishes to remain Bernadette’s friend. My point was that the question is broader than you are making it, not narrower.
Maybe. I didn’t realize a certain ex of mine hated Mexicans until long after we’d dated, cohabited, and broken up. There simply had never been occasion for it to be an issue, in part because the Hispanic population of Memphis was quite low when we were together.
Which helps who, exactly?
Bernadette’s independently wealthy and retired in her forties. She’s hardly an old biddy, and she may well have no reason to give a fuck about public opinion. And a lot of people are going to be on her side anyway.
Your privilege, I suppose,
Who gives a fuck? The way the story is told, Thelma’s thought process right now should be “Holy shit! This racist bitch is going to ruin my career!”
Remaining friends or not is the hypothetical after this one. After Thelma has made her decision from the very short list of choices I already posted.
I still say keeping quiet is the best course of action. However, I am also a child of the ‘sacrifice the few for the sake of the many’ school of thought.
Do you mean that Thelma should stay quiet just the first year, or in perpetuity? Because doing the latter will cost here ere long; she’s too closely intwined in the scholarship program to avoid it, and if even two years go by without any Hispanic kids getting a full ride, the shit will hit the fan.
I’d say she should dump both the scholarship, and the friendship. Quite aside from the moral considerations of being friends with a racist (and whether or not Bernadette is prejudiced against all Latinos, or just illegal immigrants, the fact that she’s willing to treat all Latinos as illegal immigrants makes her racist in my book) Bernadette as selfishly allowed her prejudices to threaten her friend’s career. Her, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you,” attitude is bullshit. If Thelma hadn’t figured it out, and the story broke after a couple of years of handing out the scholarship, would anyone believe Thelma’s cries of “I didn’t know she was doing it!”
Bernadette’s a bad person, and a bad friend. Thelma needs to make as much distance between them as she can.