The identity thing

Trish Wilson has written a post on white privilege in connection with the now-waning Identity Blogging discussion. Seems she was inspired to do so by the discussion of a couple of real-world actions she finds problematic:

Two articles about white people who feel threatened by affirmative action and diversity caught my attention today, but what I found especially troubling were the comments sections following both articles. The first, about a "girl who wants to start a caucasion club at her school," devolved into some heated personal attacks on the Agonist message boards. The second was an unbelievably offensive action taken by the Young Conservatives of Texas at Southern Methodist University in an attempt to protest the use of race and gender as a factor in college admissions. The organization held a bake sale in which "white males had to pay $1 for a cookie. The price was 75 cents for white women, 50 cents for Hispanics and 25 cents for blacks." College Republican chapters have held similar bake sales at universities since February. Not surprisingly, the YCT are white and mainly male. I wondered how the white women members of YCT felt about being told that they were worth only three-quarters of what the white male member of YCT declared themselves to be worth? They accepted the designation rather than try to understand what affirmative action is really about?

Apparently the discussions on The Agonist and Fark got really ugly. I'm not sure I need to read alla that.

I'm not bringing over the links Trish provided, but I underlined the words that should have linked to pictures of this good ol' boys club. The links are broken, and since Trish obviously knows how to make a hyperlink correctly this means they pulled the pictures down. Embarrassment? Humility? You decide. For my part, I think it should be embarrassment. I mean, look at their categorization: white men, white women, hispanics and blacks. They see no difference between hispanic men and hispanic women, Black men and Black women…"they all look alike to me."

sigh

I'll also say though I goofed on Atrios for not reading my blog, not only am I not really sure that's the case but if he does read it and simply doesn't mention it I'd have to understand. If things blew up like that on The Agonist, imagine what would happen on Eschaton.

Posted by Prometheus 6 on September 27, 2003 - 9:01am :: Race and Identity
 
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