White only prom

The BBQ Pit
61

All righty, then!
I feel I have to respond to this. I think I may be able to shed a tiny bit of light on the issue.

You see, I grew up in Dooly County, which is two counties away from Taylor Co. We used to play them in football.

So here I am, a genuine white female living breathing person with actual experience in this matter.

Yes, there are some racist mother fuckers in that area of Georgia, but I really wish it was merely a situation of the type of racism you all may think it is.

See, it’s like this.

Most of the counties in South Georgia have Public School systems that are terrible. Like anywhere else in the country, most of the affluent and educated people send their kids to private schools. When you compound this issue with the white/black issue this is what you get.

Public schools in Dooly Co. were not integrated until around 1970. That’s the year all the private schools popped up, and of course, some of them were started so that certain people’s children wouldn’t have to go to school with blacks.
My father thought this was an outrage, so he got himself elected to the School Board and later became the President of said Board.
Needless to say, this man was not going to put his kids anywhere but public school.

I was in high school from 1977-1981, and grew up listening to my father rant about how the private schools were such a problem, and if those parents would only put their kids in public schools
we would have such a better and stronger school system, blah, blah…

Well, that was all fine and good, except that left me and my three siblings to fend for ourselves in an 80-85% black school system that wasn’t particularly thrilled about us being there. They didn’t like the white kids, and they made it known. If I heard this once from a fellow black student, I heard it a thousand times, “This is our school. If you don’t like it, you can go up the road to that white school.”

When I would complain to my father about some treatment I felt was unfair, he would tell me they had a right to feel that way, and that it wouldn’t hurt me to know what it was like to be in the minority once in a while. Ugh! Thanks, Dad! I remember it didn’t make me feel any better at the time.

Another thing that was particularly hard for me as a teenager was that Private school hated us, too! You just couldn’t win.

The reason our school now, to this day, has a white Homecoming Queen and a black one, is because in 1976, a white girl got herself elected Homecoming Queen. She was a major slut and a suck-up, but I digress. Anyway, the black students that did not vote for her became incensed and raised such a ruckus, that the School Board took the crown away from her and gave it to the first runner up, a black girl. The girl wasn’t even allowed to sit on the Homecoming Court because she was white. This all happened, BTW, before my Dad was on the Board. That same year, the same thing happened witht he class president. So, in response to that, they decided to, what do we call it these days? “Level the playing field”? Yep. They instituted a sort of affirmative action for the white kids.

Before that, there was never a white cheerleader, student council president, majorette, anything. A white kid didn’t stand a chance.

Now, if there are eight cheerleaders, two of 'em gotta be white.

I don’t think anyone would be complaining if it were being done in the reverse for the benefit of the black kids.

The black kids simply didn’t want us around. They didn’t want us to participate in anything, they didn’t want to have deal with us. They didn’t want us sitting with them, so we sat on one row in the classroom together. We stayed away from them. We just reminded them of alot of shit that made them angry, I guess.

No, they didn’t want us at the Prom either. I remember being told they weren’t going to play any of that “honky cracker white-ass music”, so we didn’t need to come. Yes, we all went to the school Prom, but we left after getting our pictures taken and attended a private party that was way more fun. Who wants to spend their prom night being treated like something off the bottom of somebody’s shoe and listenignt to music you don’t like, and had no vote on, anyway? Our parents knew we were having our own party, and they knew it wasn’t because we thought we were “better” than anybody. We just wanted something of our own. Sound familair? Black kids do it all the time when the shoe is on the other foot.

My graduating class had 111 people in it. 22 of them were white, so I know what it is like to be in the invisible minority.

I guess the main social lesson I learned from all that is that whoever is in the majority is generally going to act like an ass.

Oh, ans AL-binny is the bunghole of Georgia.
Horrible place, really.

Just one woman’s oddysey. I understand those kids who are still stuck in South Georgia and what they are dealing with.
Racism is a two-way street, buddy.

62

I’ve been thinking, and I shouldn’t have told Blackeyes to fuck off. That was uncalled for, and I apologize.

pizzabrat: Yeah, but is it still all black or all women? Because if it is, then I don’t think that’s right. Annoying as this prom thing is, access to a dance is pretty trivial. Access to education is not trivial. Hell, it was the matter at the heart of desegregation in the first place. I’d like to see a cite on the matter, if anyone has one.

63

My mistake. Spelman is the very model of diverisity. While 100% of the students are female, only 95% are black, according to this.

64

First off, it’s a women’s college. There are many women’s colleges. Spelman ain’t the only one. Since when are women’s colleges wrong?

Second off, it’s not 100% black. 2% of its student body is non-black, many of them international. Though small, this doesn’t mean the school is discriminatory. Unfortunately, most white students do not consider predominately black schools when they are considering college. AFAIK, there aren’t any cases of white students being discriminated when they apply to schools like Spelman. In fact, predominately black schools have AA-like programs set up to encourage the enrollment of white students.

65

I imagine you must hear this a lot, but you are an idiot. Spelman does not exclude people of any race from its courses or school functions. Spelman was founded with the intent of providing a college for African-American women, not for mysterious reasons but because at that time African-American women were barred from the vast majority of other American colleges. To this day the student body at Spelman is primarily African-American, but the school is racially integrated and does have a significant number of white students and students of other races.

66

If more white people equated Spelman with Swarthmore, maybe you would see different numbers.

And maybe if being a minority in college wasn’t so damned awkward sometimes, black kids wouldn’t flock to predominately black colleges and university.

I bet you’re really pissed that Yeshiva University is all male, all white, and all Jew. I mean, where do they get off?

67

sulasmith: happens up here in Jersey too, when there’s a substantial black population in town. There’s a town a few miles south of me that’s split about 60 black & Hispanic, and 40 white. Very few whites in the high school, though; they’re all off in some private school or other.
And yeah, from my experience blacks are as racist as whites en masse. Individually, people seem to be OK (with occasional exceptions like Brutus). Start putting 'em together, and this weird dynamic takes over, the mildest form of which is feeling superior to those that don’t belong to your group. A little further up the line you get violence, a little further up you get lynch mobs, more organized and you get the Inquisition, and the final form is of course the Nazis.
The older I get, the less I like people, and the more I like dogs. Can’t imagine why.

68

Thanks, pantom. I had a feeling that Georgia isn’t the only place this is happening.

Also, just to further make my point that I somehow emerged unscathed by that treatment, I now teach in a Technical College, and most of my students are black.

They think I’m a pretty cool teacher.

I guess I can somehow relate.

Dear old Dad was right after all!

69

Good luck teaching!

70

Maybe it’s their curly hair. How about those chink slant-eyes and strange accents?

Get a fucking life. I suppose tolerance is a foreign concept to you? Children raised without a sense of tolerance are dogmeat waiting to get eaten in an increasingly global world.
TO CONTINUE:

Whites Only?!?

THREE WORDS

Jim Fucking Crow

These Wonder bread pig-fucking throwback morons are fully entitled to invite (or not invite) whomever they please to participate in their exclusive, bigoted little soiree.

Yeah, these kids are all grown up and ready to face the real world with this set of morals and ethics.

I hope each and every one of these fuckwads who don’t know better than to boycott racist events gets eaten for lunch the first time their car breaks down on the wrong side of the tracks.

That the newspaper would provide space to cover such a reprehensible arrangement speaks volumes for how morally vacuous their own editors are. You couldn’t get me to put an announcement for a “whites only” party along side the fucking obituaries!

Unless someone else has already done so, allow me to be the first to congratulate the black students for having their party open to all students. These are the true future leaders of this country. I relish the thought of those intelligent young black people getting a leg up on these backward cretins someday in the future. I can think of nothing more lovely than one of these young white crackers having to report to one of the excluded black students at a future job.

The “whites only” students aren’t preparing for the future.

They’re preparing for the fucking STONE AGE!!!

71

To somewhat defend Rand McNally, music has certainly been used as a reason - or excuse - for holding a separate prom. It happened at Brother Rice high school in Chicago, which I attended at the time. See reference here.

That said, I would have a hard time not finding racist motives for the article linked in the OP.

72

And your father was dead nuts wrong for saying such a thing. He is merely justifying reverse racism and that reeks just as badly.

73

I won’t contest the right of these…people to invite whoever they wish to a private party.

However, it begs the question: What type of education are these children getting if they even want a party that’s segregated? I can’t seem to wrap my mind around the words “education” and “segregation” going in the same sentence.

I’m also Southern born. I was raised in Virginia, and had the pleasure of living in a very poor inner-city while attending school in a very wealthy county. It made for interesting racial relations, to say the least.

74

No, dipshit, you are missing the point completely.

If Spelman only wants to admit certain people (on criteria other then grades and finances), thats fine. It is a private school, let them do what they want.

If some kids only want to admit certain people to their prom, that is also fine.
But if you are going to complain about racial exclusion in one, you damn well better complain about racial exclusion in them all, or you are a fucking hypocrite. Which you are. And blow your sad little ‘they feel awkward’ story out your ass.

75

But as stated, Spelman DOESN’T have racial exclusion policies, white people just aren’t applying.

76

Zenster and QueerGeekGirl, I was trying to make the point that we didn’t have a separate party because we just “wanted” to, we were more or less forced into it because we weren’t welcome at the “open” school Prom. Which, BTW, was only “open” to us because legally, it had to be.

Let me repeat, they did not want us there, and we were told not to come. To say there was a slight undercurrent of tension would be an understatement.

Look, we were 17 and 18 year olds. We wanted to have fun, and they way we looked at it, why go where you’re not wanted? I admit it’s not a particularly mature view, but again, it’s teenagers, folks.

Oh, and Zenster, about your comment on my Dad, that was his early view on the situation, and the argument I got from him being the oldest child. He thought he was trying to make us understand their side of it. The situation continued to deteriorate as resentments grew in Dooly Co. over what the Black Community viewed as “too much white involvement” in “their” school system through the 80’s and into the 90’s. My Dad fought a losing battle for equality and tolerance on both sides but arguments fell on deaf ears. Him being the only white member of the Board made him a target by the black members. They wanted him off the board, so of course they accused him of racism. Priceless! One of the few members of the white community who is actually trying to work to make things better for everyone is a racist in their eyes.

Finally, my broher, the baby of the family, hits high school and wants to play football.
Well guess what?
Only black boys can play football.
Because all the coaches are black.
And they don’t like white boys.
White boys can’t play ball anyway, right? (sarcasm)
Also, by this time, things had gotten so bad that black teachers were ignoring white kids in the classroom, saying they were there “for their own kind”. When I was in school there, the teachers were very good, but alot of the good ones left over the years, leaving the most-core separatists. Um, that would be, black teachers, not wanting to teach white students.

So, my father pulled my brother out of public school and sent him to private school, where sadly, he had to admit he would probably get a better education and he would get to play football.
There comes a time when you have to what is best for your child and their future. He knew he was fighting a losing battle.

And my Dad? Within months of that, he dropped dead of a heart attack, to which the new head of the school board said he was glad, because now, “We finally got control of the school system”!
I think he would have come to the funeral and danced on the grave if he thought he could get away with it.

When my Dad died, what white involvement there was in the Dooly Co. school system dipped sharply.

They are now more segregated than ever. It’s caused by the rensentment the blacks feel over the whole Private school issue, but now no white people want to get involved. It’s easier just to let them have what they want, which is control of the school system, to the exclusion of anybody white.

I don’t care what you say.
That is racism.

But I guess I am a backward moron fuckwad.

Shit man, you live through that and see how you feel.

77

Hey asshole: find a nice shiny quarter and buy yourself a fucking clue. All the “black” colleges that I know of (it’s possible there are exceptions) have black students because that’s who applies. It isn’t racism if the white (or black) kids just don’t show up. In fact, the local newspaper once in a while would run stories about the few whites to did apply and attend to the (excellent) “black” colleges in the area, because it was unusual.

Or are you just to dumb to tell the difference between ‘you people can’t come here’ and “sure, c’mon in” but nobody shows up’?

78

Um…I’m confused. Who is calling you a fuckwad?

The case in the OP is different than your experience. White students aren’t in a minority. There is no evidence of the black kids hoarding all of the control over the prom or anything else. There is no evidence of the black kids bullying the white kids away. Maybe if they were, we would all understand why the white kids want to segregate. But with what we know about the situation, we (or at least I) don’t understand.

Like I said before, if kids want to have private parties, they should be able to have them. But make them private. Don’t advertise them as proms when you actually mean “private party”. And at least have the decency to hold the private “prom” on a different night than the regular prom, so that people don’t have to choose which side of righteousness to stand.

Spelman doesn’t exclude people just because you say they do, fucknugget. Either put up evidence that demonstrates racial discrimination or SHUT UP for the fifty-millionth time.

79

So I assume you wouldn’t feel awkward at Morehouse? Tuskeegee? Howard? How about Spelman? I’m sure all those girls would love you there, Brutus.

Why is it alright for black people to always be the frickin minority, but the one moment they decide to insulate themselves from that feeling by sticking together, it’s somehow “racial segregation”?

80

Monstro, I made the fuckwad comment because that seems to be what the general consensus is so far about those white students in Taylor Co.

Taylor Co. is very similar to Dooly Co. The same private school issues, the same black majority. Taylor Co schools are predominantly black, and I bet you ninety to nothing that the reason those students are doing that is because of the same reasons me and my friends did. They are probably in the minority and are feeling a bit like they don’t belong.

I do agree though, they shouldn’t call their party a Prom. Go to the regular Prom, have your picture taken, then leave if you want.

Like I said, we used to play Taylor Co. in football, and I doubt any more has changed there over the years than has in Dooly Co.

And while reading all the commets by everyone about what neanderthals and crackers the white kids are, I know from personal experience that’s not always the case.

It’s always the white kids who get accused of being the racists, and yes, sometimes it’s true, but sometimes not. If you’re not from there, you don’t know, so don’t be so judgemental.

Remember how I said the white students all sat togehter because we told to “carry our white asses away from here”? Well, one time a new black teacher, not from the area, came in, saw all of us on the same row, and said, “Look at this! Well if you white kids think you are too good to sit with the black kids, then I’ll just teach the black children!”

And that’s exactly what she proceeded to do.

But it was our fault. Because white people are always the racists, you know?
But to an outsider, I guess we are.