College Scholarships Available. Only White Men Need Apply.
February 26, 2011 12:22 PM   Subscribe

Colby Bohannan and a group of student friends at Texas State University in San Marcos, TX have formed the non-profit organization Former Majority Association for Equality which intends to offer college scholarships solely to white men." "'I felt excluded,' he said. 'If everyone else can find scholarships, why are we left out?'" "'To qualify for the group's scholarship, applicants have to be able to prove that they are at least 25 percent Caucasian ... We're not looking for blond-haired, blue-eyed, stereotypical white males,' he said. 'My feeling is that if you can say you're 25 percent Caucasian, you're Caucasian enough for us.'" "Bohannan, the group's president, said the name comes from the idea that 'if you're not a male, and if you're not white, you're called a minority.' However, he said, 'I'm not sure white males are the majority anymore.'"*

"Joanne Smith, Texas State's vice president for student affairs, said the scholarship is no different from ones offered to other ethnic groups. 'From the university's standpoint, we can't take issue with a scholarship offered to a certain group,' Smith said."
posted by ericb (84 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh, for fuck's sake, just fund a math scholarship for good students.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:23 PM on February 26, 2011 [15 favorites]


"Bohannan's group isn't the first to offer scholarships only for white students. In 2006, Boston University's College Republicans created a program with similar requirements. A Republican group at a university in Rhode Island offered a similar award in 2004.

Those groups claimed the scholarships made a statement against affirmative action. Bohannan said his group is not taking any stance for or against affirmative action.

'It's time in our society to look at the way our culture views race,' he said. 'It's time to give everyone an equal shot.'" *
posted by ericb at 12:24 PM on February 26, 2011


"Caucasian" is such a weird term.
posted by mr_roboto at 12:25 PM on February 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


'My feeling is that if you can say you're 25 percent Caucasian, you're Caucasian enough for us.'

I think he'd be surprised to find out that a whole lot of people who the police, or the news, would not identify as Caucasian, still would qualify.

Oh blood quantums. It's like the Pandora's Box of racism.
posted by yeloson at 12:28 PM on February 26, 2011 [6 favorites]


From the Texas State University's campus paper, The University Star:
" ... It’s hard to commend the association for risking their reputation by offering a scholarship to a group that has historically been on the favored side of favoritism, so to speak. Colby Bohannan, Texas State student and FMAFE president, said in The Star last week, 'The board members of FMAFE are not trying to put anyone down or make any race or cultures seem inferior.' The irony of the association’s objective is clearly lost on Bohannan.

Discrimination, regardless of whom it benefits, is still discrimination.

... I recognize the right of FMAFE as a privately funded organization to offer aid based on its own set of criteria, but advancing equality, as indicated in its title, should not include further prejudice and bias. In the interest of equal rights, scholarships (even those privately funded) should be given based on merit and necessity alone.
posted by ericb at 12:31 PM on February 26, 2011


'My feeling is that if you can say you're 25 percent Caucasian, you're Caucasian enough for us.'

But not so Caucasian that you get hassled by the Militia for extra bribes, eh? Maybe tell them that your grandfather was from Crimea, so put that night-stick away.
posted by atrazine at 12:32 PM on February 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


"Caucasian" is such a weird term.

"I'd like a pair of Caucasians in a 9D." Old George Carlin bit.
posted by fixedgear at 12:35 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


"Caucasian" is such a weird term.

What do N.W.A. and Lithuanians have in common?

They don't care for Caucasians with handlebar moustaches.
posted by atrazine at 12:38 PM on February 26, 2011 [13 favorites]


25% eh?So Obama would have qualified?

Otherwise.... eh, come back and bitch to me when Congress is anywhere close to not being a old white boy club, with a few tokens... or how about CEOs of the F500, or US Governor, or...


It's their money, they can spend it however they want. I bet you dollars to donuts recipients of the scholarship don't widely advertise receiving/defining it.

-Job Interview-

"So, Mr. Johnson I see you received a Bohannan scholarship, I'm not familiar with that program, could you elaborate?"

"Ahhhhh.... well, er, because I am a honky with a dick"
posted by edgeways at 12:42 PM on February 26, 2011 [12 favorites]


marginally less offensive than other manifestations of victim-culture non-self-aware racism, i'll give it a 4
posted by facetious at 12:47 PM on February 26, 2011 [6 favorites]


To play devil's advocate, I'd point out that men are in fact a minority in most colleges: there are about 33% more women currently attending college than there are men. So why not help men who might not otherwise be able to attend college to do so?

This argument falls apart when you consider the "white" part, though.
posted by Johnny Assay at 12:47 PM on February 26, 2011 [6 favorites]


Just because white males are no longer the majority doesn't mean they're any less privileged. That's the idea behind these "minority" scholarships: to give assistance to those who weren't afforded the same privileges as the "majority". I'm not saying there aren't any underprivileged white males who do need the money while well-off minority students who are awarded scholarships, but it's a bit unfair to make a sly jab at minority scholarships by starting your own just to make a point.
posted by Rickalicioso at 12:48 PM on February 26, 2011 [3 favorites]


Could somebody please create some sort of form or template that I could fill out whenever one of the groups pops up? I just can't seem to muster the same intensity of emotion as I could the first twenty times it happened.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 12:49 PM on February 26, 2011 [3 favorites]


It's too bad they aren't requiring the applicants to be 100% Caucasian, because if they were some black guy could pose as white to qualify, sell the story rights and get Soul Man remade!
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:50 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


Racists gonna race. No, wait, that's NASCAR.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 12:50 PM on February 26, 2011 [95 favorites]


As a black dude I don't have a problem with this (that much) and see it as the natural outgrowth the changing racial and ethnic balance in the United States.

However, do they have to be such whiny brats about it? Former Majority Association for Equality, really, that's the name you came up with? Christ, I want to cart their asses off to Africa in the middle of the night, thrown them and their children into slavery for 400 years, fight a brutal war over it, still keep them as 2nd or 3rd class citizens, then begrudgingly recognized their humanity after years of protest just give them a legitimate reason to have an attitude.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:50 PM on February 26, 2011 [99 favorites]


aren't are

ARR!!
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:51 PM on February 26, 2011


In recovery from a tough year in my personal life I have been re-evaluating my role, my decisions and my responsibility for my own actions and reactions to events and people in my life. As part of that work is has been critical that I never make anybody else "wrong" and me "right" - to lose the idea of blame on the way to a place where I own up to my own thoughts and actions.

Having said that...

Mr. Colby Bohannan, I'm make you so fucking wrong
posted by victors at 12:51 PM on February 26, 2011 [4 favorites]


Oh, wait...I was right the first time. I guess I've had too much Metafilter today. Carry on!
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:52 PM on February 26, 2011




To play devil's advocate, I'd point out that men are in fact a minority in most colleges: there are about 33% more women currently attending college than there are men. So why not help men who might not otherwise be able to attend college to do so?

This argument falls apart when you consider the "white" part, though.


Does it fall apart for white women too?
posted by furiousxgeorge at 12:53 PM on February 26, 2011


"The 501(c)3 nonprofit was formally incorporated with the state in March. The group hasn't received any applications, Bohannan said. ... [The group] is offering five $500 scholarships exclusively to white male students. ... Bohannan said the group is raising money — as of Monday , the group had raised $485, according to its website — and that he hopes to award scholarships by July 4. The money can be used to go to any college, not just Texas State, Bohannan said."*
Also, the fund is being managed by some who have had difficulty handling money in the past.
"A search of public records indicates Bohannan pleaded no contest to charges of theft of property of less than $500 in 2001 and of issuance of a bad check in 2003. William Lake , the group's treasurer, pleaded no contest to issuance of a bad check in 2008."
posted by ericb at 12:54 PM on February 26, 2011 [3 favorites]


They had a real missed opportunity there to make their awkward name shorten to "FAME".
posted by bradbane at 12:56 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


I wonder if they are aware that Caucasian includes Arabs, Persians, and Indians, and that 25% Caucasian includes most of Latin America.
posted by 0xdeadc0de at 1:00 PM on February 26, 2011 [7 favorites]


They had a real missed opportunity there to make their awkward name shorten to "FAME".

After they disband they'll be a Former Association of Majorities for Equality. So I guess that's another good reason for them to throw in the towel.
posted by nebulawindphone at 1:02 PM on February 26, 2011


> They had a real missed opportunity there to make their awkward name shorten to "FAME".

They also could have gone with Majority Association for Legal Equality (MALE). Or, if they wanted to make sure "Former" was in there, Formerly Eminent Majority Association for Legal Equality (FEMALE).
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:04 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


WTF does "25% Caucasian" even mean? How do I measure that? Does it require a DNA test or do I have to submit a complete family tree?

Beyond that, I can't muster the level of outrage they seem to expect. I'm a white lady who qualified for a lot of scholarships that had nothing to do with my gender or my race - mostly just the fact that my parents were poor. Someday they'll probably get pissed off about that.
posted by muddgirl at 1:09 PM on February 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


As a Persian I'd love to apply. Gimme dat majoritarian $$$.
posted by stratastar at 1:09 PM on February 26, 2011 [5 favorites]


Really?

....REALLY?

........REALLY?!
posted by HostBryan at 1:10 PM on February 26, 2011


People Associated for Legislating Entitlement (PALE).

It's terrible how underrepresented the white man is in Congress and in the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies, isn't it? Also in the media--when was the last time you saw a white man getting millions of dollars annually to blather on about whatever bullshit comes into his head? CAN'T EXPLAIN THAT.
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:12 PM on February 26, 2011 [16 favorites]


There is already affirmative action for men in undergraduate admissions; not sure about scholarships that aren't athletics-related.
posted by Ralston McTodd at 1:15 PM on February 26, 2011


Well, I think these guys are right in a twisted way. Currently all the top spots are pretty locked up by old white men. But I see the archetypes breaking down pretty rapidly, and my optimistic side expects that if things keep moving the right direction, within another 20 years or so those in the top spots will look a whole lot more like America than anything else. By that I mean at least half women, 15 % black and equal numbers of hispanics, etc. So these guys are fighting something that's really happening and it scares them. The problem is that what they are fighting is the correcting of our society. It is this feeling that the relative slippage they see around them for white males is what social correction looks like. They better get used to it.
posted by Mental Wimp at 1:16 PM on February 26, 2011 [4 favorites]


I've always wondered, in this and in history, how would one prove that they're 25% anything without having to recursively prove the race of each of their entire family tree?

"This is my Grandma Ethel. See, she looks pretty light-skinned in this old photograph. OK by you?"
posted by FreelanceBureaucrat at 1:21 PM on February 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


(in other words, that comment mudgirl made that I missed on preview)
posted by FreelanceBureaucrat at 1:23 PM on February 26, 2011


Oh lord. SWT seemed like a pretty cool place back when I went to math camp there. Max and Terry and the rest are still good people, at least.
posted by kmz at 1:24 PM on February 26, 2011


Someone asked me where Caucasia was located, because he couldn't find it on a map.

I giggled. Then we had a really good discussion of how people define race differently, and when you ask people to self identify their race, you get lots of different answers. One person may be of mixed heritage but identifies as white based on appearance while another bases their race on the part of the world they are from. What if I apply and say I'm white, not Caucasian?

Where is Caucasia, anyway?
posted by MultiFaceted at 1:35 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


A thing that I might not have a problem with in theory, but when put in practice is 99 percent likely to be jaw droppingly dumb. This is not that 1% case.
posted by QuarterlyProphet at 1:36 PM on February 26, 2011


I wonder if they are aware that Caucasian includes Arabs, Persians, and Indians, and that 25% Caucasian includes most of Latin America.
posted by 0xdeadc0de at 4:00 PM on February 26 [+] [!]


Oddly enough, this came up in 1923: The United States vs Bhagat Singh Thind, in which the United States Supreme Court basically ruled: "Yes, you're technically Aryan, but ... uh ... YOU KNOW WHAT WE MEAN. Citizenship denied!"
posted by Comrade_robot at 1:39 PM on February 26, 2011 [19 favorites]


As a non-caucasian, I don't see a problem with this.
posted by gyc at 1:43 PM on February 26, 2011


In 1970, when I was in high school (Get off my lawn, you punk kids!) we took the SATs, and achievement tests, and there was another whose name I don't remember which was for purposes of determining if you qualified for one of a number of scholarships of various kinds.

A guy I knew who was a senior that year took that test, and marked the "black" box in the race section, though he was not. (And yes, in those unlightened years, it did say "black".)

He received a letter informing him that he'd gotten a scholarship. Then they found out he wasn't black, and rescinded the offer.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:04 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


Oddly enough, this came up in 1923: The United States vs Bhagat Singh Thind, in which the United States Supreme Court basically ruled: "Yes, you're technically Aryan, but ... uh ... YOU KNOW WHAT WE MEAN. Citizenship denied!"

That is fascinating; I had never heard that.
posted by Amanojaku at 2:08 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


You know, when I watch Friends, there were barely any non-white extras or characters on the show. When I watched Seinfeld, that wasn't as true as it was for Friends. And they were both supposed to be set in NYC. So I don't get it.
posted by anniecat at 2:14 PM on February 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


So I don't get it.

Meaning I don't get their anxiety over being ignored or feeling ignored.
posted by anniecat at 2:14 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


It fucking annoys me that some boring dildo is getting press in 2011 by playing the OH TEH REVERSE RACISM card. Seriously these people have raised like 600 dollars. Their opinions do not require further discussion.

Also, I am a white male and I got like 4 scholarships to go to college. Try being smarter and working harder in school maybe.

You know, when I watch Friends, there were barely any non-white extras or characters on the show.

ORLY?
posted by nanojath at 2:18 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


He received a letter informing him that he'd gotten a scholarship. Then they found out he wasn't black, and rescinded the offer.

Lying on a scholarship application or admissions test is sufficient grounds to rescind all manner of things, including acceptance to the institution.

Where is Caucasia, anyway?

Caucasus.
posted by Errant at 2:29 PM on February 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


A $500 scholarship will buy you 2 pairs of Sebagos and a tailgate party's worth of beer. If it keeps them out of trouble, I'm all for it.

Seriously, this is fine, as long as you call it what it is: affirmative action. Glad to know my white male brothers support the concept.
posted by fourcheesemac at 2:30 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


"...he said, 'I'm not sure white males are the majority anymore.'"

Assuming he's talking about the US, white males never were the majority. Never ever were. They just thought they were, and acted like they were, and still do, cause they have always had, and still have, the majority of the power. They never had the need or the inclination to look around and notice that there are lots of other people out there inhabiting their world, people with browner skin and different genitalia. White males have always been a minority; they've only just noticed it and they're getting a little nervous. High time. This is a good sign.
posted by Corvid at 2:33 PM on February 26, 2011 [12 favorites]



ORLY?


Oh gee, I forgot about the Asian girlfriend Ross had and the black paleontologist that dated Joey.
posted by anniecat at 2:34 PM on February 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


I got yer Caucasian right here, man.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 2:48 PM on February 26, 2011


According to reports (above), the group was incorporated last March. It has only raised $485 and will give five $500 scholarships by the 4th. of July.

Obviously, it's all a publicity stunt.
posted by ericb at 2:48 PM on February 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


Well, I think these guys are right in a twisted way. Currently all the top spots are pretty locked up by old white men. But I see the archetypes breaking down pretty rapidly, and my optimistic side expects that if things keep moving the right direction, within another 20 years or so those in the top spots will look a whole lot more like America than anything else. By that I mean at least half women, 15 % black and equal numbers of hispanics, etc. So these guys are fighting something that's really happening and it scares them. The problem is that what they are fighting is the correcting of our society. It is this feeling that the relative slippage they see around them for white males is what social correction looks like. They better get used to it.

Or to say it succinctly - "WE'RE LOSIN THE COUNTRY, MAN!" a la Chris Rock's standup.

On Monday I should call these knuckleheads up and just toy with their brains. I'm trying to think of which rich white person I can successfully impersonate.
posted by cashman at 2:49 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


Do I have to be a man-born man? HOW much of a man do I have to be?
posted by jfwlucy at 2:50 PM on February 26, 2011 [6 favorites]


Assuming he's talking about the US, white males never were the majority. Never ever were. They just thought they were, and acted like they were, and still do, cause they have always had, and still have, the majority of the power. They never had the need or the inclination to look around and notice that there are lots of other people out there inhabiting their world, people with browner skin and different genitalia. White males have always been a minority; they've only just noticed it and they're getting a little nervous. High time. This is a good sign.

Actually, for a very long time, white males were the majority of people in the Americas and in the US. It's just that over the years we've broadened what counts as "people" to include such disparate species as women and blacks and catholics.
posted by kafziel at 2:50 PM on February 26, 2011 [8 favorites]


You know I was kinda cruising through this thread waiting to see if anything other than "ha, ha dumb white guys" was going to be said and then I read Corvid's comment and I've got to admit that does give me pause.

See, I'm sitting here with my white maleness (not in my hand, that's just dirty) and I don't particularly feel nervous, but truthfully, I don't have much at stake. I've probably gotten less hassle because I'm white and male, and maybe a job or two, maybe, but I can't see having reaped more benefit than that.

On the other white hand, there are a a lot of other, wealthier white guys out there that have probably reaped considerably more benefit. That being the case, it only seems logical that those fellows may be considerably more nervous, perhaps even nervous enough to do something about it.

So, the question is, what might they do to keep that majority feeling?

If they just form stupid clubs and keep others out, I guess that's not a big deal, but if they get more serious, maybe start swinging some of that money around... I don't know, that could get nasty.
posted by BeReasonable at 2:51 PM on February 26, 2011


Oh,, wait, I forgot my line!

"I'm more man than you'll ever be. And I'm more woman than you'll ever GET!"

Sorry, sorry.
posted by jfwlucy at 2:52 PM on February 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


I like trolling better when it sticks to internet forums.
posted by Decani at 2:52 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


On Monday I should call these knuckleheads up and just toy with their brains. I'm trying to think of which rich white person I can successfully impersonate.

I say, impersonate David Koch.
posted by ericb at 2:55 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


"To qualify for the group's scholarship, applicants have to be able to prove that they are at least 25 percent Caucasian ... "

My skin's practically translucent, and I don't think I could even prove that conclusively...
posted by schmod at 3:19 PM on February 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


"Caucasian, please..."
posted by Mental Wimp at 3:21 PM on February 26, 2011


Bohannan? Nah. Bohannon? Yeah!
posted by octobersurprise at 3:22 PM on February 26, 2011


Translated as: People benefiting from white privilege wish something like white privilege existed, plan to fix that.
posted by y6y6y6 at 3:28 PM on February 26, 2011 [3 favorites]


You mix a hell of a Caucasian, Jackie.
posted by Scoo at 3:50 PM on February 26, 2011 [3 favorites]


Brandon Blatcher: "As a black dude I don't have a problem with this (that much) and see it as the natural outgrowth the changing racial and ethnic balance in the United States.

However, do they have to be such whiny brats about it? Former Majority Association for Equality, really, that's the name you came up with? Christ, I want to cart their asses off to Africa in the middle of the night, thrown them and their children into slavery for 400 years, fight a brutal war over it, still keep them as 2nd or 3rd class citizens, then begrudgingly recognized their humanity after years of protest just give them a legitimate reason to have an attitude
"

You don't understand how hard it is for us. At times this invisible backpack feels really heavy!
posted by graventy at 3:51 PM on February 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


Michael Kinsley, The New Republic, January 7, 1991:
The Reuben BakerScholarship at Harvard College is for "a resident of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, or, there being no such resident, a resident of the western part of Pennsylvania." The Borden Scholarship is for people "bearing the surname of Borden or Anderson." The Arthur Anderson Brooks Scholarship is for "deserving Protestant Christian young men . . . preferably of New England stock." The Helen E. Millington Memorial Scholarship is for "students whose fathers are deceased and whose mothers have not remarried." The Henry Harrison Sprague Scholarship is for those "in whole or in large part of New England Colonial descent." The Augustus Woodbury Scholarship is for those who "prepared for college at Phillips Exeter Academy." The list goes on for 250 pages.

The point is not that it still sometimes helps to be white. (Harvard, in practice, guarantees financial aid to all comers.) The point is that fate spews out all sorts of arbitrary advantages and disadvantages. Yet some people in government seem obsessed with one tiny category: the occasional advantage that comes from being black.
20 years and people are still banging this particular gong.
posted by UrineSoakedRube at 3:54 PM on February 26, 2011 [10 favorites]


"As a black dude I don't have a problem with this (that much) and see it as the natural outgrowth the changing racial and ethnic balance in the United States.

However, do they have to be such whiny brats about it? Former Majority Association for Equality, really, that's the name you came up with? Christ, I want to cart their asses off to Africa in the middle of the night, thrown them and their children into slavery for 400 years, fight a brutal war over it, still keep them as 2nd or 3rd class citizens, then begrudgingly recognized their humanity after years of protest just give them a legitimate reason to have an attitude"


So you're willing to meet the Irish halfway on this?
posted by Scoo at 3:57 PM on February 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


As a white male, I had no problems getting partial scholarships to go to college and a full ride for graduate school.

So yeah, fuck these racist assclowns.
posted by bardic at 4:03 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


The awesomest thing about some of those Harvard scholarships "for young men of Protestant descent" or for "the sons of Protestant clergymen" was that, although they were designed to discriminate against Catholics and Jews, the reality today is that almost all of the recipients of those are African American or African, because they are the majority of students with high grades and financial need in those two categories.

BOO-YAH! I hope the bigoted assholes who endowed said scholarships are rolling in their graves. You were all concerned about Harvard being overtaken by Messrs. Murphy and Goldstein, but look who's Protestant now, baby!

(Disclosure: I got a scholarship at Harvard for being a Mayflower descendant. It was a couple of hundred dollars, IIRC, but still I was able to translate my WASP privilege directly into cash just by filling out a form, instead of having to do it the long way via networking and ass-kissing.)
posted by Sidhedevil at 4:03 PM on February 26, 2011 [12 favorites]


If they're putting more money into the system so that more kids who might struggle to afford college can do so, then good on them. I don't really care to whom the money goes, so long as it goes to students who need it. Good on them for helping those in need out.

If they're doing it to prove some jerkass point, though, well, fuck'em.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:08 PM on February 26, 2011


Oh, for fuck's sake, just fund a math scholarship for good students.

White kids won't win it because a good number of my Indian peeps in TX have mad math skills! And a spelling bee would be a bad idea too.
posted by anniecat at 4:48 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


I got a scholarship at Harvard for being a Mayflower descendant.

I thought you were Indian. I think it was the Sidthe part, which I read as Sidthi (Siddhi).
posted by anniecat at 4:51 PM on February 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


25% Caucasian. Ha!

REVERSE RACISM FAIL.
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:43 PM on February 26, 2011


These guys are college students?

God damn, Sociology should be a required course for them.

Here is what minority means in the academic sense:

"Minority, a culturally, ethnically, or racially distinct group that coexists with but is subordinate to a more dominant group. As the term is used in the social sciences, this subordinancy is the chief defining characteristic of a minority group. As such, minority status does not necessarily correlate to population. In some cases one or more so-called minority groups may have a population many times the size of the dominating group, as was the case in South Africa under apartheid (c. 1950–91)."

So, You might be a minority if you belong to the group that has the greatest proportion of it's members incarcerated . You might be a minority if you belong to the group that has the highest rate of unemployment. You might be a minority if you belong to the group with the worst access to health care.

However, if you complain that white people "are no longer a majority" and so ought to be granted the "extra" rights of minorities? You are an asshole.
posted by bilabial at 6:06 PM on February 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


"The term Caucasian race ... has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia."

This word, it does not mean what they think it means.
posted by kyrademon at 6:37 PM on February 26, 2011


Here is what I don't understand about this white minority thing...forget the power dynamics.

Ok, white people are now 49% of the population. There are more non-white people. Isn't there a bit of an issue here with lumping ALL THE NON WHITES IN ONE GROUP to call the whites a minority?

There are still more whites than any other individual group.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 6:42 PM on February 26, 2011




@annicat: sidh in Irish means the fairies, but not like Tinkerbell. It's a really clever pun because it's pronounced 'she'

@ the guy who mentioned the Singh case, I read about this case in a very long book by a blind Indian guy. He was in some way close to the case. One aspect of the case was that Mrs. Singh was an American of Northwest European ancestry. She actually LOST her American citzenship because of the marriage. As far as I know, she never even went to India.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 8:19 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


This is simply the ultimate white whine.
posted by ob at 10:50 PM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


I think he'd be surprised to find out that a whole lot of people who the police, or the news, would not identify as Caucasian, still would qualify.

For instance President Obama...
posted by Cranberry at 12:06 AM on February 27, 2011


Well, there is at least one place where the "former minority" is still strongly in the majority.

But, to be fair, this illustrates all that's wrong with the concept of "affirmative action" (which probably is, of course, the whole point of the exercise). To me, race-based "reverse" discrimination is still discrimination, and allowing it:
a) Perpetuates a rather silly race labelling.
b) Will favour advantaged kids of the "right" race over disadvantaged kids of the "wrong" one, even if there are more advantaged people in the latter than in the former.
c) Can all too easily be turned on its head by the same old racists to justify discrimination of the more traditional type.

If you want to fight inequality and the legacy of racist discrimination, you'd be better advised to set up programs in favour of the poor and undereducated, regardless of race, than to mirror the same old sins.
posted by Skeptic at 3:34 AM on February 27, 2011


. 'My feeling is that if you can say you're 25 percent Caucasian, you're Caucasian enough for us.

He has unwittingly included the vast majority of American Blacks.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:58 AM on February 27, 2011


As a person of color, this makes me laugh my ass off, and then I remember that people are actually arguing about this, which means that some people actually agree with this, then I start to cry.
posted by DJ Broken Record at 12:25 PM on February 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


Oddly enough, this came up in 1923: The United States vs Bhagat Singh Thind, in which the United States Supreme Court basically ruled: "Yes, you're technically Aryan, but ... uh ... YOU KNOW WHAT WE MEAN. Citizenship denied!"

This is where these guys' argument basically falls into the dust. In recent history people of one group were specifically prohibited from having the rights and privileges afforded another, solely due to the color of their skin. Similarly, women had to work their butts off just to be treated equally to men. People in their 40s probably remember a time when it was considered remarkable that a woman might have any career that a man did.

With that in mind, it seems utterly preposterous to get worked up about the fact that white men are no longer the dominant demographic force in the US (in the minds of some white men, that is).

Seriously, just create a scholarship for students from poor rural backgrounds, perhaps targeting specific subjects like argriculture or engineering. That will be less controversial while still being highly likely to target white males.
posted by Deathalicious at 8:17 PM on February 27, 2011


From my position of Asian-American entitlement I can't say I feel too strongly either way. We're probably the only group that gets to whine about both racism and 'reverse racism'!

Speaking of the definition of 'Caucasian', in college a good buddy of mine who grew up in Iraq got turned down from an organization for minorities in engineering because he wasn't an 'underrepresented minority.'
posted by pravit at 8:30 PM on February 27, 2011


"February 27 - We have reached our goal for the Fall 2011 semester, and have raised $2500... most of it coming in just a couple days time."
posted by ericb at 2:29 PM on February 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


Publicity accomplished.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 2:34 PM on February 28, 2011


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