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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 9 years ago
    This is an old idea, and a stupid one. Every now and then, some rightwing student group does it for publicity. It might be good for that, but usually fails to demonstrate the deeper truth that all racism is wrong. A Green or Purple Student Union might do that better, but again, only as a publicity stunt.

    Openly and explicitly promoting rational individualism is the best strategy.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 9 years ago
    In a comment here, Lucky21 pointed to community groups for Irish, Germans, etc. That underscored the difference between ethnicity (which exists) and race (which does not). As I recall Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle ends with a group of East Africans speaking German making off with Germany's WW2 atomic bomb. East Africa had been a German colony. Still today, African bishops attend Lutheran synods. On another Objectivist board one of the writers is an African-American with a German name: US military family. So, you can be African (American) and sing Prozits with the local German club (in theory). Similarly, if you are "Black Irish" you get to claim being Hispanic -- descended from a survivor of a wreck from the Armada.

    The greatest poet in Hungarian - Sandor Petro"fi - in fact magyarized his Slavic family name, Petrovich. So, anyone descended from central Europeans can pretty much choose which bunch of bohunks they want to hang out with.

    But... if you form a White Student Union, then, as they are also White by descent, you have to allow African-Americans into it. Race is a social construct, and only a social construct. It has no objective reality.

    In a guest sociology lecture I attended in 2010 , the visiting professor put up a picture of President Obama. "What is his race?" Several students said Black and African-American. The professor then clicked and showed the President's mother. "He does not get to pick his race. It is ascribed to him by others." Race is a social construct only.

    Ethnicity is determined by culture, largely by language, also by geography.
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    • Posted by Lucky 9 years ago
      Mike, you are correct, as usual, but the point is not the meaning and differences of the words 'race' and 'ethnicity'.
      The point is that it seems individuals do not start up and join such a group to show how silly they are because of the perceived threat from other individuals and groups who claim to represent the disadvantaged, or more likely are just bullies, and have the power of the state behind them.
      Yes, to start a white student union is a political act, and probably racist, but the power of the state should be used against violence, not against opinion, association or speech.
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  • Posted by Lucky 9 years ago
    In my town there is a Celtic club, German club, Greek and Jewish clubs, a Chinese Association, football teams claiming specific origins such as Macedonian, Italian, and so on. No one has yet dared to start a White Club.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years ago
    I can't stand group identity politics like this.

    At first I thought it was going to be a group doing something intentionally foolish to show how foolish group identity politics is. But they did it anonymously and posted names of people they said are anti-white. It seems like they really mean it and they're every bit as bad as any group that wants to wallow in racial identity.

    I think they could do this well, but they have to be clear that it's tongue-in-cheek, that it's a way to say, "You want a group for people with dark skin who are accused of a crimes and denied Constitutional rights? Let's expand it to include all people in that situation, regardless of their appearance."
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