When was it ever not OK for “whitey” to have such a club? (Heck, we still occasionally find golf clubs, corporate board rooms, and other organizations that are deliberately, exclusively white.) There has been a National Association for the Advancement of White People for years (not that I could be induced to join them).
While I think the NAACP spokesman that was quoted is a bit needlessly alarmist and I think the white club idea is rather silly, I have not seen any defenses of the club that show it will accomplish for its members anything similar to what other ethnic organizations have attempted to accomplish for their members (with more or less success depending on the times and circumstances).
What do you expect it to accomplish, Tom? Put a man on the Moon before the decade is out?
Any “Yay white folks!” club that manages to survive without turning into a “Nazi clambake” is a roaring success, in my opinion. It’s a step forward. Instead of saying, oh, “We’re white, and therefore we’re better than you!” as so many other White Pride groups have done, it looks like the student hopes to say “We’re white, proud to be white, and proud to not be insecure about our race or skin color.”
I think it is unecessary for such a club to exist, but I sure do believe she has a right to have such a club.
I agree about tireing of talking about it without response on Ramanujan’s part.
I will say that I don’t see evidence in his past that indicates he is a racist, so I would guess that his post was made in ignorance. Or I am reading into it too much.
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I dunno. I have seen a few posts that appeared to be knee-jerk negative reactions (with a few knee-jerk reactions in the opposite direction, as well). I have seen a few posts that expressed a fwar of what it might be or might become. I have seen several posts that thought it was a good idea. I have seen a few posts that thought it was OK. I have seen many posts hammering at tangential issues.
I see no consensus that it is bad and no overwhelming majority that condemned it.
It is not uiversally condemned.
It is not illegal. (Note that the NAAWP has existed for a while.)
I don’t see that it has ever been “not OK,” although it, like many phenomena in the U.S., has both supporters and detractors.
Personally, I don’t see what the flap is about. Since it’s intended to be open to people of all races, I truly don’t see how it’s any more racially divisive than the Black Student Union or any other racially-based organization. Any time you put an exclusionary label on something, it’s gonna cause division to some degree.
And, to be honest, I think there are some few issues that are valid discussion for such a group. Like the assumption that white people automatically have it easier than people of any other race, or that white people who are proud of their racial heritage MUST be NeoNazis. If they get people of multiple races in on discussions like that, it just might lead to some meaningful advances in unity and mutual understanding.
This group could turn into a KKK rally, or it could turn into a springboard for real, important changes. We certainly won’t find out which if we squash the club before it gets started.
THIS is why the Caucasian Club is going to turn into a Neo Nazi clambake. There is an almost universal belief that when there are more of everyone else put together than there are white people, suddely white people are a “minority”. Clearly they are no longer an absolute majority, but anybody who calls them a minority is just plain wrong.
The reason there’s nothing wrong with African American clubs and so on is because if they are sponsored by public schools, they have to admit members regardless of color. None of the minority groups have to prove their value because none of them have a history of violence (with, of course, the notable exception of black panther offshoots in schools), whereas organizations for the “advancement” of whites in the US have almost always been veneers for organizations whose main goal has been the oft-violent disenfranchisement of minorities.
The girl should just have called the damn thing Culture Club… oh, wait, that one’s trademarked…
I am certain this was meant in jest and not at all inflammatory, but how is saying the above any different than:
“Can’t you imagine their mixers? Little fried chicken hors d’oeuvres… Rap and Tupac tunes… Guys concocting “events” where they have an excuse to wear a doo-wrap in public… Queen Latifah and Eddie Murphy lookalike contests… Watermelon cuisine in all its forms… Nigerians and Ethiopians arguing over who’s “really” black… Lobbying to get How Stella Got Her Groove Back on the Ebonic Required Reading list…”
Stereotypes against any color/race/religion are wrong, and having fun at the expense of ‘white folk’ is just as hateful as having fun at the expense of anyone else (except for the Swiss, EVERYBODY hates the Swiss).
The point is when there is a turnover of power from White to minority in America (and it will soon), will the new minorities in power go the way of Mandela, or go the way of Mugabe? How are we preparing the new leaders for that eventual happening?
Not really a good comparison, since the treatment of minorities in the US has been several orders of magnitude better than treatment of minorities in the Third World.
I would feel comfortable with any of the hundreds of minority legislators and governors being our future leaders.
I doubt that we are going to get a “white to minority” turnover of power. Whites may lose their majority status within the next 25 - 50 years, but no current minority will replace whites as the majority. Instead, we will have a country in which ethnic groups jockey for the position of “dominant plurality.” Even there, there is no ethnic group with both population and a coherent political stance that is likely to topple the “white” nature of power in the foreseeable future. The census category that will begin tugging at “white” coattails is Hispanic, but it is unlikely that the very Right Cuban immigrants and the somewhat Leftist Mexican and Central American immigrants (to say nothing of the Puertorriqueños or immigrants from Columbia, Venezuela, and Argentina) are going to create a political force that actually agrees on many subjects (any more than whites agree, as a bloc, on many subjects)–and that is not even considering that, as their immigrant predecessors have done, a great many Hispanics are quite content to be “white” if left to their own devices.
Just to further complicate things, people tend to have very confusing ancestries in the United States already. This is why the self-reporting of race as a significant statistic is soon going to look truly silly, if it doesn’t already. I understand they are finally going to allow write-ins.
Just one of my typical American friends: Native-American, Italian, Puerto Rican, etc…
C’mon, racial distinctions should be consigned to the dustbin of history. If a “Cracker Club” is what it takes to create a metaphorical mirror, so be it.
Yes, because we know that black and white Americans have had the same history and enjoy the same priviledges and culture, and therefore we must treat them both the same way.
A question for those who refuse to understand:
Why don’t you see American clubs in schools? Is it for anti-patriotic reasons that we don’t see any?