She could solve any problems with future scholarships easily by anonymising the essays.
For this one, she could let Bernadette make her own bigoted choices, but write her an email laying out clearly that she thinks it’s wrong and would have taken steps to ensure it didn’t happen had she known in time. That might mean Bernadette decides to take her scholarships elsewhere, but it might not, and it would cover Thelma’s back.
I’d feel weird about it–not just because they have this feelings but that they’re fine with casually dropping racial slurs into conversations. It shows that they aren’t apologetic or ashamed of their bigotry. Plus, the fact that they’ll just use that kind of language casually makes them look incredibly crass. Not the kind of person I want to associate with.
Plus, the first time you hear a friend utter a racial slur won’t be after a friendship of 30 years. Thelma would have known Bernadette was a racist long before this.
People change.
No one becomes a racist overnight.
I’d disagree. The rule/respect of law plays into it for me. You’re here illegally? Well, screw you. I don’t care what country you’re from. All the same, I absolutely, 100% agree with open borders and free movement. But that’s not the law. And as mentioned above, my wife is Mexican. So am I a bigot?
Now I’m my denying that there is bigotry involved for lots of folks, but to make a blanket statement is as short-sighted as bigotry or support for immigration limits.
The person that gives out scholarships can put any strings on the money they wish. It’s been that way and still is that way. I personally always get pissed when solicited for donations to race specific scholarship donations and would never give to one. The principal should not be a champion for the scholarship if she can’t live with the conditions set for receiving the money.
By “Black”, is the rich bitch referring to people with a certain skin color or have roots from certain parts of Africa or are American citizens? Because there are lots of Hispanics that have very dark skin or happen to have non-Hispanic names.
Hmmm - I never thought shit would hit the fan if no Hispanic students got the scholarship.
Does Thelma have to put her personal approval behind it? Can’t she just say a donor came forward to create a scholarship and chose this particular school? The wording in the OP confuses me - were the two together for their high school grad or their college grad? If Bernadette graduated from the same high school, then she has a viable reason for choosing that particular school. If Thelma is particularly concerned, she can make her vice-principal the one associated with the scholarship.
Sorry, I might be missing some differentiation between scholarships in the US and Canada.
This is an extraordinarily difficult question. I can’t even characterize Bernadette as a bitch. She is giving of her own money to send six people to college. I admit, I don’t even care that she is excluding illegal Hispanics. It’s her money, it’s her right, I say…and I bet the six people won’t care, either. And I wouldn’t want to give my money to illegals, either, says the immigrant.
What troubles me more is her unhesitating admittance of said, and also involving her close friend without having any idea of whether her friend agrees or not. The former is phenomally stupid. The latter is just…unfair to her friendship. As has been said, Thelma could get in serious trouble if this gets out, because most people don’t share my opinion - that it’s completely her own money to do with as she wishes.
Thelma should withdraw from the situation entirely, or ask that the scholarship be limited. Can you not ask for a citizenship requirement ahead of time? That would solve a lot of the problems.
In the end, I don’t think there’s an easy answer. I would have a hard time calling for it to be shut down. That is, in a very literal way, taking money away from six young people for my own high ideals and morals.
I just don’t know. It’s a difficult situation all around.
Wouldn’t it all come down to Citizenship issues anyways?
Plenty of non-American students (some already resident, some coming to the US specifically for school) at most American colleges. Don’t see why it would come down to citizenship.
Society as a whole. Either B. caves, or she becomes an object lesson.
Note, I’m not just talking about a newspaper article that says she removed Hispanics from consideration. I’m talking about a tabloid headline like “Wealthy Black Woman Calls Honors Student at Alma Mater a Wetback!”
I don’t know, social ostracism is a powerful weapon.
And they’d be assholes too.
MrDibble, Bernadette wants to exclude illegal aliens from her scholarship program, not use the skin of Mexican-Americans for lampshades. Her choice of words is unfortunate, and her mechanism for identifying illegals is inaccurate and sloppy, but her aim is not one that would be socially unacceptable in general. Most Americans are perfectly comfortable in limiting American benefits to legal residents. You would be hard pressed to find a tabloid that would find this of the remotest interest, or to gather much steam in ostracizing her.
Yes, she used an insulting term for illegal alien: wetback. It’s an insulting term based on immigration status, not on nationality. I was a wetback in Canada in my college days; I worked in a restaurant and got my wages under the table (and I referred to myself as a wetback at the time). You’re not going to generate a lot of excitement there.
As for arbitrarily assuming all Hispanic surnames are illegal aliens, well, it’s a pretty darned common assumption, or at least working hypothesis for many, maybe even most (at the very least, a large minority of) non-Hispanic Americans. We’re not a very pretty society here in the US; there are a boatload of people who use the fact of illegal immigration as a socially acceptable mask for a more general anti-Latino feeling. And there are a whole lot more people who recognize that Latino immigrants, both legal and illegal, are a fact of contemporary life, but would really rather that they weren’t, given their druthers. It’s the ubiquitousness of the Spanish language, you see. For most of the country outside of the southwest, Spanish wasn’t any more common than any other foreign language. But recently, it’s everywhere. That’s disconcerting, even threatening, to a population who spent their entire lives hearing only English. Adjustment to the new reality is going to take time.
So, yeah, you might get a little RO out of this, but it won’t be much and it won’t last long, because a lot of people will find Bernadette understandable, even if they don’t condone her actions or her choice of words.
Thelma, on the other hand, takes an extreme risk in being associated with this, because she is an official representative of the school, and because Bernadette’s actions are de facto anti-Latino regardless of her stated more focused intentions. Thelma may or may not understand how her friend feels, but she can’t afford to be publically linked to it, because that would be a scandal. Individuals have leeway that institutions do not. Bernadette is an individual; Thelma represents an institution.
The OP does not say that Thelma has never heard Bernadette utter a slur.
Really?
I think it would look a little strange even the first year, given that the valedictorian is Hispanic, a good writer, and demonstrably needy. But after a year or two more, people would start to grumble unless the scholarship were explicitly only for black students.
The scholarship’s already set up, and Thelma’s already associated with it. Admittedly I did not specify such in the OP, but I simply can’t believe Thelma didn’t mention that she was friends with Mommy Warbucks to her colleagues when announcing the program.
My evil hat is off today, so I am opposed to object lessons except to persons who have committed unprovoked violence or major financial crimes. I’m not comfortable humiliating people for their beliefs even when they’re odious.
I will take that as a compliment and thank you.
I think it’s the slur that makes people dislike her, and the fact that she dismissed all the Hispanic-sounding students from consideration after letting them go to the effort of writing the essay.
I am snipping the rest of your response, Mika, becuase I completely agree with most of it and thus have nothing to comment.
I don’t know why it would. Can you explain?
Bernadette is a private citizen. She’s basically offering to give six students a year a free ride to whatever college or university will accept them. Some state schools may require proof or citizenship, but not all; and private schools are, I think, under less obligation to check. I could easily be wrong, of course.
And to everyone: I have another question for you. Suppose I, Skald, were a zillionaire and decided to run a scholarship program–say for the high school I attended as a sophomore and from which my little sister graduated. Being lazy I would probably press-gang said sister into doing as much of the actual work as possible but would judge the final essays myself. Suppose further that, upon reading such essays, I dismissed any student who mentioned their membership in the Church of God in Christ (the biggest church in Memphis, which I absolutely cannot stand for several reasons) in the essay, regardless of how well the essays were written.
Would that distress y’all? Why or why not?
No, but it can happen over a couple of years, and unless they see each other on a weekly basis the topic could simply have not come up before.
Then the OP makes even less since. If Thelma knows Bernadette is a raging bigot against “wetbacks” AND the valedictorian is of Hispanic descent, then participating in the process scholarship (and possibly actively championing her own involvement to all who’ll listen) would obviously blow up in her face when Bernadette does her bigot dance.
This entire scenario gets as far as it does ONLY if Thelma has no idea Bernadette is a bigot and everyone involved in the establishment of the scholarship is an idiot.
The OP doesn’t say that Bernadette is a raging bigot against wetbacks, either. Not being willing to pay for illegal aliens to go to college isn’t “raging,” as I’d use the term.
Anyway, people can surprise you. My best friend from high school and I have known each other since about 1986. I was quite surprised to realize – through her posts on my sister’s Facebook page, yet – that she’d become a lot more Christian in the past few years than she was even in 2000. She’d slowly changed, and the issue of her faith had simply never come up because the two of us never talk about religion. Likewise, I can easily imagine that Bernadette has slowly grown prejudiced against Hispanics (or illegals) over the years, and that it hasn’t come up because the two don’t talk about politics.