Racism is still alive

Maybe the National Association of Black Social Workers should adapt the Bush strategy of making anyone who wants to attend their events sign a loyalty pledge and provide all of their identifying information.

Everything is not about Bush.

I'm just saying he found a good way to keep people out of his events and perhaps other groups could co-opt his strategy.

Well, I suppose it may be that us white people were the ones to have slaves for so many years.

What about Polish Clubs; Italian Clubs; Irish Clubs; Indian Clubs; British Clubs; Dutch Clubs; French Clubs; American Clubs et al?

Do they, and can they, exclude people who are not Polish etc.? Just wondering as I am not sure of the answer.

Glad that you think so.

2 wrongs do not make a right.

Again, you take my words out of context. It has nothing to do with wrongs making a right.

You said "I do find the situation typical of how only white people can be racist and everyone else is just trying to be with "their own people".

I gave a possible cause...period. I wasn't making a judgement on what was right and what was wrong. I simply gave a possible reason for it.

Do you think what they did was wrong?

Baldimo,

Just so I can be absolutely clear on what you are asking....

Do I think what WHO did was wrong?

I'll play along. The people who deined access to the other social worker?

Durham police are investigating a series of cross burnings that were reported in several areas of the city late Wednesday.

The first incident was reported at 9:19 p.m. on a hill near St. Luke's Episcopal Church at 1737 Hillandale Road. Half an hour later, officers and firefighters responded to the area of South Roxboro Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway, where they found a cross burning on a hill of dirt near town homes under construction.

A third incident was reported at 10:28 p.m. in a field near Holloway and Dillard streets.

The crosses were approximately seven feet tall and four feet wide. They were wrapped in burlap and doused in a flammable liquid.

Police do not have any description of suspects or a vehicle. No motive is known at this time.

Police Chief Steve Chalmers said today that a flyer was found at one cross-burning scene, claiming the Ku Klux Klan was responsible.

More to come...

Since you have determined that this is some sort of game, I have determined that I do not want to play. I believe that I stated my opinions at the beginning of this thread.

You aksed be who I thought was wrong. I would think from the story that I posted that I thought the people who denied access to the white social worker were in the wrong.

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. ?- Everyone agrees that Ligaya Lagman (search) is a Gold Star mother, part of the long line of mournful women whose sons or daughters gave their lives for their country. Her 27-year-old son, Army Staff Sgt. Anthony Lagman (search), was killed last year in Afghanistan, but American Gold Star Mothers Inc., has rejected Lagman, a Filipino, for membership because ?- though a permanent resident and a taxpayer ?- she is not a U.S. citizen.
"There's nothing we can do because that's what our organization says: You have to be an American citizen," national President Ann Herd said Thursday. "We can't go changing the rules every time the wind blows."
That explanation isn't satisfying the war veterans who sponsored Lagman's application, some other members of the mothers' group or several members of Congress.
"It is disheartening that any mother of a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine who has died in the line of duty would be denied membership in an organization that honors the memory of fallen service men and women," said Rep. Nita Lowey (search), whose district includes Lagman's home in Yonkers.
Rep. Eliot Engel, who represents an adjoining district, said the group should change its rules immediately.
"Whatever the excuse, American Gold Star Mothers' decision smacks of xenophobia and is in stark contrast to what Mrs. Lagman's son fought and died for," Engel said.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (search) said, "We now have many noncitizens serving honorably in our armed services, and I hope that this can be satisfactorily resolved."
A past president of the mothers' group, Dorothy Oxendine, of Farmingdale, said, "There's no discrimination in a national cemetery. There's no discrimination when they get killed side by side. So how can we discriminate against a mother?"
Another past president, Ann Wolcott, of York, Pa., said, "Times have changed since this organization was started, and there are a lot of men and women serving today whose parents are not citizens. I think they deserve every honor and privilege that we have as Gold Star mothers."
Oxendine and Wolcott said they believe that given the increasing diversity of the armed forces there have been noncitizens in the 1,200-member organization who overlooked or ignored the citizenship question on the application.
Lagman has lived in the United States for more than 20 years. She was not at home Thursday, apparently tending to her husband, who is hospitalized. But her other son, Chris Lagman, said in Thursday's The Journal News that all she wants "is recognition as the mother of this fallen soldier."
Lagman's application was initiated by Ben Spadaro (search), a veteran from Yonkers, who said he learned about the citizenship rules of the American Gold Star Mothers (search) while working on a national cemetery committee of the Veterans Administration. When he learned of Anthony Lagman's death and saw Lagman was a citizen but his mother was not, he thought, "He's buried in a military cemetery, with full honors. She should be able to join."
"We decided to tell the absolute truth on the application," he said. "We put down, `I am not an American citizen.' It was a ploy to get them to reject her, and then we said they should change the rules."
But the organization's 12-member executive board voted against any change.
"We can't go changing the rules every time we turn around," said Herd, the national president. "When we have problems within our organization with people not abiding by the rules, we just get it straightened out, we don't change the rules."
Oxendine, the former president, said she is sure the general membership would approve a rules change if the board did.
"I can't believe that 12 intelligent women would ever not have it in their hearts to think about another Gold Star mother," Oxendine said. "You pay a high price to join the American Gold Star Mothers. I figure her dues were paid."
Spadaro isn't giving up. He had his brother, a Florida lawyer, write to the Department of Justice, noting the mothers' organization has received federal assistance and demanding an investigation.
And on Monday, during Memorial Day observances at Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2285 in Eastchester, Lagman will be presented with a gold necklace bearing a simple gold star.

Is this ok?
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So since we should be allowed to keep people apart then you should have problem with this correct?

Good point, Intrepid. They certainly can, do, and should. In North America, clubs and organizations composed of people who wish to express their pride in their heritage have been around a long, long, time. They might have been composed chiefly of recent immigrants at the time, many now have third generation and fourth generation people as their members. And there is nothing wrong with this at all.

Did you know the word "soccer" for what the rest of the world calls "football" comes from these clubs? Back around the turn of the century, when the North American version of football was taking shape, there were these games taking place between German-American Associations and English-american Associations using the old style, round football-not the then-new North American style.

So the old, European style of football came to be known as "association" football, as opposed to the new style, because only the German-American, English-American, Whatever-American Associations were still playing it.

From there, of course, it was but a short step for "association" football to be abbreviated to "assoc" football-as most of the flyers announcing the game abbreviated it-and then, of course, the answer to the question, "What style of football player are you", becomes "I am an assoccer". Besides, the new name has the sound of 'sock' in it, as in giving something a good dick, so it stuck.

All of which is just to illustrate that clubs which celebrate pride in one's immigrant or ancestral past are a rich part of American heritage, one which is worth celebrating, not falling victim to some twisted and inept interpretation of what nondiscrimination is supposed to be about.




You just don't get this, do you? Or should I say, you are bound and determined not to get this, in a desperate attempt to shoehorn reality into your faulty interpretations of nondiscrimination.

It is not wrong to set up clubs or organizations, based on heritage, where the membership and access to meetings, conventions, etc is restricted to people whose heritage is some percentage. In the case of most clubs I am familiar with, that percentage is half. But it can be some other percentage, as the founders and leaders of the club see fit.


To break this down: You can start a club whose membership is restricted to any heritage, gender, etc,and whose meetings are closed to anyone not a member of that group.

However, if you choose to open up a bar or restaurant, unless you restrict customerhood to members only, (in which case you are just making your bar/restaurant an extension of your club), you have to serve anyone of any group who walks throgh the door, assuming they follow dress codes etc and behave normally.

Intrepid wrote


That says it all. What is considered racist is dependent upon the color of those committing the action? There is a pervasive attitude that blacks cannot be racist. Imagine the outcry if an event were billed as a whites only affair and a black person was denied entrance because of the color of their skin. It would probably make the headlines of all the major news sources.

As to the Gold Star mothers, an organization I never heard of until now-the article said the purpose behind the proposal was to get the rules changed.

When the rules clearly bar someone from membership in such an organization, there are two options:
A) Reject them because of the rules
B) Consider the citizenship requirement a technicality and let them in anyway. This second choice is followed in a great deal of clubs on various issues, by the way.

The Gold Star mothers board might have been felt bound by the letter of the rules, and so rejected her application until such time as the rules are changed.

Incidentally, I find the article incomplete.

First, in the history of the organization, have nominations been rejected before because of the citizenship rule? If so, how many?

Second, why was the citizenship rule for the mother set up in the first place? the overwheoming majority of mothers whose children were killed in combat in the US armed forces are certain to be citizens-why the rule in the first place?

Third-do the people on the board who rejected the nomination favor the rules change or not? There is a big difference between a board saying, "Sorry, your nominationn is rejected because of the rules", and telling somebody, "As the rules stand now, the nomination has to be rejected, but we are recommending a rules change and will get back to you as soon as the rules change is effected".

But there would be no outcry at all if the organization was Irish-American social workers, Italian-American social workers, or Uzbek-American social workers.

Since the overwhelming percentage of the country is white, when you have a "whites only" event, it is by nature exclusionary. It is saying, "We are allowing most anyone to this party except you.

However, when you have a Polish-American, Italian-American, African-American organization whose membership is closed except to those groups, you are saying, "Our organization is not open to the general public-the organizatin exists to serve the needs and concerns of the small sliver of the population which we are". In other words, most of the general population is excluded.

If a family up the block has a reunion open only to family members, do you feel exluded because you live on the same block and were not invited? Of course not. You're not part of the family, so you don't expect an invitation.

Same thing here.

You make some intersting points, Keltic, particularly as regards the status of so-called ethnic-Americans who are already third or fourth generation Polish or French or Irish or whatever. I now notice that when the white sw tried to get in, he was asked whether he was black. He said no. Now, what if he had said, yes? What if he had claimed partial African ancestry, now not evident because of a preponderance of Caucasian DNA? I know plenty of people who identify themselves as 'black' even though, by appearance, some have lighter skin than mine. (I take a terrific tan!) That would change the charge from 'racism' to 'ethnic bias', wouldn't it?