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Prom: Whites Only

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10:45 / 02.05.03

A high school in Georgia is planning a whites-only prom.

ALBANY, Ga. (AP) - A year after holding their first integrated prom, some students at Taylor County High School have decided to again hold a separate, private party for whites only.

``I cried,'' said McCrary, who is black. ``The black juniors said, 'Our prom is open to everyone. If you want to come, come.'''
Glenda Latimore said relatives in Philadelphia and New Jersey laugh when they read about Taylor County's prom. She said residents here are ``nice and friendly,'' but they still have a problem with proms.

I found this surprising, coming from young people in 2003. Did you? Does this mean racism in the US is on the rise? Or is this just "people being people"? Thoughts?

11:47 / 02.05.03

The first integrated prom was in *2002*? This is just lame, an echo of the mid-80s, when the Reagan juggernaut made racism hip. Maybe Johnny Rebel will be playing.

Capitalist Piglet

13:07 / 02.05.03

There are some really back-woods hicks in that area of the South. Auburn University (where I went) is not too far from this area in GA. Outside of the University campus, the whole area is nothing but Civil War blue-bloods, white trash, and poor blacks. It's all very sad and the mentality is so backwards.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:15 / 02.05.03

As opposed to the mentality that prompts someone to use the term "white trash".

Tryphena Absent

14:31 / 02.05.03

I hope you're not suggesting that in order to be biased you should be biased about everything Flyboy?

15:41 / 02.05.03

I am gobsmacked by this. I had no idea that kinda thing was legal anywhere in the 'western world'. Far be it from me to suggest that the US is institutionally racist though, because Certain People will flame me for it.

Capitalist Piglet

19:25 / 02.05.03

Flyboy, white trash is what I call the racist rednecks who would pull a stunt like a Whites-only prom.

at the scarwash

21:00 / 02.05.03

I have to say that I find the term white trash to be fairly offensive myself, but this is something that most people I know are really just starting to realize. My white American friends are, for the most part, the heirs of poor sharecropper-type southerners, oilfield roughnecks, or Cajuns. So we are in essence what most people would label "white trash." For crissake I spent a good chunk of my childhood in creepy trailerparks.
But other than that, I think that the Piglet is right. The American South is really scary in its backwardness. I live in Houston now, which is more integrated than other places I've lived. Parts of Mississippi feel like nothing has changed since the 1840s. It's really sad, especially considering that culturally speaking, as far as language, art and food are considered, the South is probably more integrated than anywhere else in the US.
There was a town in Louisiana somewhere, maybe Ville Platte or New Roads, where a study was being done on the racial heritage of the population. Just as whoever was doing the study was about to releasse the information that there was like, not a single "pure" white person in the town, the parish courthouse where the records the study was based on were kept was firebombed.

23:24 / 02.05.03

well you need to get over it because white trash means the following:

you can call someone trash right? well, then if they are white, and they are trashy, then they are white trash. it's all very simple. And it's not racist, it is descriptive.

at the scarwash

00:17 / 03.05.03

I'm sorry, but that's exactly same same logic used by some people when it comes to the word "nigger." "There's black people, and then there's niggers" is an argument that I have heard I don't know how many times. I guess I applaud these people for trying to establish themselves as not being racists, but the word nigger is not an acceptable term for a black person under any circumstances. I think that the term white trash is a descriptor which gets applied indiscriminately to poor uneducated Southern whites and comes with a bundle of associations such as confederate flags, incest, trailer parks, cars on blocks in the front yards, a surfeit of dogs, etc. My Aunt Shelby and Uncle Junior live in a clapboard house in SE Oklahoma. They have countless dogs. The woodstove, which was moved out of the house in the early 70s, rests under a tree in the yard. They would be excellent references for a cartoon depiction of white trash, and I would be personally offended if they were described that way. I will grant that there are plenty of poor uneducated southerners that fit the characteristics ascribed to white trash, but I think that there are plenty more who have started on the difficult path towards a real shift in their understanding of race and culture. To use the term "white trash" is to contribute to the fiction that this caricature is the predominant white inhabitant of the American South. Use the words "stupid fucking southern racist," use the words "sisterfucking redneck" if you must, but i think that the term white trash is just as damaging as any other racial epithet.

at the scarwash

00:20 / 03.05.03

And yes, we really do call him Uncle Junior.

11:27 / 03.05.03

A beautiful de-railment of a topic.

Screw the names and labeling.

What those families/students are holding are notproms. A number of student-families want to host large and private social gatherings which may or may not be open students of certain racial backgrounds and refuse to support the social events funded bu the public and open to the public's students.

They willing drag their entire community back into divisive times filled with violence and political corruption, though not acknowledging it.

I think it's beautiful that that only thing these families families Georgia, will be known for is defiant rascism. It's even better that it's put all over national news. Of course, when the place mostly depopulates and industry relocates far away, it will be because "we were lax on race relations."

VR
The Shark

22:36 / 03.05.03

Isn't this mildly subversive in this day in age?

If there's anything to start controversy it's a whites-only prom. It's a publicity stunt, I bet!

22:13 / 04.05.03

Rolling Stone did an article about this earlier this year (maybe corporate music magazines are trash, but they've got some really good writers) where some southern town had a white prom and a black prom. If a black came to the white prom they were escorted out, but if a white came to the black prom it was ok (besides the fact that the white girl who did go to the black prom was called a nigger-lover the rest of her school year and harassed by her white peers). The really rough part was that there was an Indian kid in the school, and he was pretty much fucked. The reason it seems so weird is because it is. It's one of those really small towns that time just kind of passed by. This is hardly a representation of the current state of the south. These days it's more likely that you'll run into a black sheriff than a truck full of KKK guys.

00:07 / 05.05.03

Houston has at least one gay Hispanic cop, which gives you some idea of how far they've come in a state that's defending its sodomy law (among other things, it outlaws use of a vibrator for its intended purpose) all the way to the Supreme Court.

testpattern's got a really good point about dumping on rednecks or "white trash," which basically describes mulleted wife-beating types running amphetamine labs in their trailer homes (the guys the world sees on "Cops") but not many other poor or working poor whites.

What really needs happening is some state official to stand up and publicly call these kids idiots.

08:47 / 05.05.03

Hey, I'm a northerner, and I certainly have my own share of prejudices about the American south, but I don't think that's a good thing and I think we should be careful not to generalize the American south as just a bunch of redneck confederate flag waving racists. I don't really think Atlanta, New Orleans or Miami are the most backwards places I've ever visited. And let's not forget the north can be just as racist as the south. Southern racism may possibly be more overt, perhaps more dangerous, but come on down to the Chicago subway and you'll know which direction you're headed by the amount of blacks or whites on each train (Blacks go south, whites go north). Rather I found it perhaps a strange and interesting commentary on racism today. And yes, very, very sad.

Bill: do you think no such institutionalized racism exists in the U.K.?

Origin of the term "White trash." IIRC, "white trash" originally was supposed to mean, "No better than a black person;" i.e. you are white but you're just as much trash as as nigger. I will doublecheck to see if I'm correct; however knowing that origin I personally DON'T feel comfortable saying it and "just getting over it."

Rage: Segregation is cool and subversive because...? You can't be serious. On the other hand, there is of course a movement on the side of both whites and blacks that says yes, that's the answer, keep us separate. Do you agree with this?

Tryphena Absent

15:55 / 05.05.03

If this happened in the UK it would have been denounced by a major politician pretty much straight away. The racial situation would have to be extremely unstable in order for the option to be considered in the first place. That doesn't mean there is no institutionalised racism but that there is an attempt to tackle it and that's really all a society can do.

there is of course a movement on the side of both whites and blacks that says yes, that's the answer, keep us separate.

I think this is ridiculous. The United States is a country so young that they've had to enforce traditions by law- school kids pledging nationalistic alleigance to a flag. The prom is an American construction for god's sake and it's totally elitist anyway (Prom Queens, Jesus, forget racial segregation!) and these kids have chosen to make it more so by enforcing colour boundaries. The ethical atmosphere of the US is actually disgusting and this should be condemned by people with power because segregation inevitably breeds racism.

This doesn't make me sad, it makes me angry, insanely angry.
I'll stop stating the obvious now but just needed to rant.

18:17 / 05.05.03

If this happened in the UK it would have been denounced by a major politician pretty much straight away.

Isn't it pretty to think so?

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:21 / 05.05.03

Hmmm...do you have any evidence to support the idea that this would not be the case, Jack? I think race relations in the UK and in the US, although perhaps equally fucked, are fucked in very different ways. One very obvious way is that the UK has no history of mass slave ownerhsip within the country, and no official history of segregation on the British statutes, but instead has a whacking great imperial hangover, which works rather differently.

Certainly, I would be very surprised if, if a school function was discovered to be excluding non-white members of the school, the government did not come down hard. I do not know how the fact of, as seems to be the case in Albany, the all-white prom being a private party rather than a school board/PTA-sanctioned event would affect that. If it was a private party identified specifically as being white- only, I think it would probably be illegal under the Race Relations Act. If it was, on the other hand, a party that reserved the right to refuse admission, the organizers' decision being final, and those accepted all beign white, that woudl probably be OK, albeit dodgy, and if it became clear that the one unifying factor of all the rejected was that there were black and the only unifying factor of all the accepted being that they were white...well, I think the legality of that would again be dubious. I'm not sure....

It's the difference, I suppose, between an all-white prom and a prom the just happens to be all white....

21:48 / 05.05.03

i think by "subversive" rage meant "stupid."

look closely, you'll see this usage again and again.

at the scarwash

21:56 / 05.05.03

The prom is an American construction for god's sake and it's totally elitist anyway
I guess. Mine wasn't, but I didn't go to a normal public high school. I wouldn't have gone to mine if I had stayed in the Louisiana public school system. But for those kids who have accepted the Spectacle as the world they wasnt to live in, let them have their dance. I don't see as how it's any more elitist than any other social function or youth dance anywhere else in the world. And as for the idea of the prom queen, again, if that's the kind of thing these kids care about, let them vote for Prom court. I think that the only people who vote for them are their friends, anyway, at least that's how I've seen it done. And it's not like a bunch of goth chicks are standing around the punch bowl going, "Fucking slut, I bet the election was rigged." They're not. If they go, they're adncing with each other and having a good time. The people for whom being in prom court is important are the ones who try to get elected.
I am a bit surprised that no one seems to be rallying around this event. I haven't seen any coverage in the papers about it. And before anybody says "Well, of course you haven't, you live in *gasp* America --*shudder*," this is exactly the kind of story that American papers love to cover. Human interest and all. And if the NAACP or someone was up in arms down in Georgia, I'm sure I would have heard someone. But then again, I do live my life in a hermetically sealed jar, relying on you people to tell me what's going on in the world.

22:25 / 05.05.03

Hmmm...do you have any evidence to support the idea that this would not be the case, Jack?

No more evidence than Anna had to make her statement with the certainty with which she made it.

Now, I don't know if Anna's actually right or not—but to state unconditionally that such a thing could never happen in this sceptered isle, this throne, this realm, this England, strikes me as a dangerous proposition: one could easily break one's arm whilst patting oneself on the back.

And let us remember that it was your precious stone set in a silver sea, and not ours, that just saw large electoral gains by a party that espouses a racist platform in barely-coded language. I mention this not to imply that caucasian England is either more or less uptight and terrified than caucasian America: the fact is that we're all hateful bastards. You can't trust Whitey, no matter where he lives.

ONLY NICE THINGS

23:04 / 05.05.03

She didn't say that it *could* never happen. She said that it *would* not currently happen unremarked - "if this had happened....it would have been". One is an open-ended future conditional, the other a specific conditional in the past.

Now, do you two have anything better to do than throw uninformed abuse at each other's nations?

If not, then maybe we should organise a pair of separate proms. If so, perhaps it might be profitable to ask why this should be happening, and how attitudes might differ. The news story suggests that the problem is inter-racial couples - presumably meaning that after a few slugs of punch, interracial couples attending the prom might be in danger of harrassment. This suggests in turn some interesting points about how race issues are polarised in the two different countries. Certainly there is a nasty undercurrent of "they want our women" in some of the less media-friendly elements of racist discourse, but the BNP presents *social* arguments - it talks not about the dangers of interrelationships between the current multi-ethnic population of Britain (although you can bet your life they aren't, as individuals, sold on the idea), so much as the social dangers they claim will be posed by new arrivals - specifically, asylum seekers, whose very name sends a shudder running through Kent. The irony being that the gains made by the BNP are in areas where asylum seekers are unlikely to be placed.

To provide a bit of context, although 13 seats represents a large electoral gain in their terms, the Conservatives won 500 seats and the Liberal Democrats 175 - it's a very real problem, it's a very worrying development, but it doesn't necessarily represent a change in the political map in itself. Local elections are a complex beast, and rarely reflect parliamentary voting patterns.

23:36 / 05.05.03

Hey, far be it from me to make sweeping statements about the state of an entire nation's race relations based on an isolated, local phenomenon.

Ahem.

Tryphena Absent

23:50 / 05.05.03

Thanks Haus for defending my point- especially this-
She didn't say that it *could* never happen. She said that it *would* not currently happen unremarked - "if this had happened....it would have been". One is an open-ended future conditional, the other a specific conditional in the past.

I suspect that a large number of outspoken politicians would come out against such an event being clearly defined as racially segregated. At no point did I suggest that the British are not institutionally racist but a whites-only prom would be commented on over here.

As for the second part of my post, well it was a ranting frenzy and pretty much illegitimate personal opinion. I just feel that the whole notion of awarding popularity at events like that is slightly sickening and it is a cultural thing. There are plenty of British traditions that I feel that way about as well, like the Queen for instance (although I am slightly upset that Wimbledon players don't have to bow to the royal representative anymore- shocking stuff).

ONLY NICE THINGS

01:20 / 06.05.03

Oh dear. Were I to learn faster, I would now know better than to correct people's grammatical misunderstandings. It only makes for offtopicry and upsnittery.

So.... I'm interested by the phrase "institutionally racist" here. Can a nation be said to be institutionally racist? The term as I generally encounter it refers fairly specifically to institutions, that is groups of people gathered together under a single name and with a set of defined goals - the police, or a company. can a nation said to be institutionally racist? and if so, does it mean that the nation itself suffers from the sort of behaviours that could be described as "institutionally racist", or that all its institutions could? In either case, how does that feed into the school system?

I remain slightly bewildered by the case we started with. As far as I can tell, the "actual" prom was mixed. The white students (not the school authorities) then decided to throw a private party (not, in fact, a prom), whose only connection to the school was its guest list, to which white members of the student body (or the senior student body) were invited and black members not. How does that relate to the school system? And then it seems that in fact the other prom was also privately planned, or if it was not it was only the second time it had not been, and previously the (segregated) proms were organised independently of the school authorities. Was it the role of the school authorities to intervene in this divisive but apparently independent process?

02:02 / 06.05.03

Wouldn't the South Africa of some years ago have been considered an institutionally racist nation?

ONLY NICE THINGS

02:34 / 06.05.03

Well, by the definition of the MacPherson report, I'm not sure, because that took it to mean, IIRC, "invisible" racism, that is acts and behaviour that were in fact racist but were not thought of as racist by the perpetrators and were not recognised as unacceptable by the institution.

Oh, actually, SA presumably refused to accept that Apartheid was racist (rather than a fair system taking into account race, which is very different, of course...), so perhaps so...

10:14 / 06.05.03

The McPherson definition of institutionalised racism: "The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice ignorance thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people."

I don't think that "invisible" racism is a requirement to fall within the definition, but that McPherson was commenting (in line with case law under the Race Relations Act) that racism can be seen or detected in unwitting behaviour. It can also be seen and detected in overt and deliberate behaviour, but that is just less common. Discrimination within organisations is rarely overt; you have to dig below the surface, often even below people's seemingly primary and expressed motivations.

Can a nation be "institutionally racist"? Well, the McPherson definition was a working definition used by a public inquiry into the actions and inactions of the Met Police. Substitute "nation or state" for "organisation" and see what you come up with. Probably the answer "yes and no" for many nations and states, which hints at its usefulness or otherwise in examining things on a national scale. Or rather examining things and coming up with a clear and useful answer.

The definition formulated by McPherson is probably better applied to looking at smaller scale structures: "does the Met Police provide an appropriate and professional service to minorities?" is a question easier to answer with clarity than "does the UK provide appropriate and professional services to minorities?" That said, an inquiry into, say, other police forces within a nation, welfare agencies, immigration agencies, schools and universities etc etc etc might build up an interesting picture of a nation.

12:25 / 07.05.03

Bill: do you think no such institutionalized racism exists in the U.K.?

Noooooooo, I think many, perhaps all of the UK's 'institutions' (whatever exactly that means) are racist, the Retropolitan Police Force being just one example. I really didn't mean to upset anyone personally when I did not say that America was institutionally racist, nor did I wish to imply that nowhere in the western world except America is institutionally racist. I even spelt America correctly this time. I am trying to help, really I am.

EE

20:43 / 07.05.03

And let's not forget the north can be just as racist as the south. Southern racism may possibly be more overt, perhaps more dangerous, but come on down to the Chicago subway and you'll know which direction you're headed by the amount of blacks or whites on each train (Blacks go south, whites go north).

That's not racism, that's segregation, which happens in most cities in some fashion or other. I live in one of the most segregated areas in the country, and I wouldn't call the white people here "racist" because they were able to get a house in Livonia and a black family couldn't. The kids there grow up sheltered and stupid (with a few exceptions, naturally), but not really racist. I think it's important to clarify this.

21:04 / 07.05.03

(Blacks go south, whites go north).
That's not racism, that's segregation...

Living in different neighbourhoods is not racism or segregation. Being forced to live in different neighbourhoods is both.

How does one move to Livonia? Is it just a matter of having the money? Is it equally possible for anyone to make this money? Would anyone be made to feel at home in Livonia if they did?

21:37 / 07.05.03

Here in Manchester (and I suspect many other cities) in the UK, there are regular "Asian Balls" and a few African nights. I don't think that any of these events actually ban any other races of people, but I am aware of a white friend who was hassled and threatened at an Asian night until he left.

Maybe it's more of a "safe space" thing similar to what was being discussed in the Mudane the freaks thread recently, where casuals had experienced being harrased at goth nights for being different and etc...

The fact that people feel they need a safe space with only people who are "like them" around, is another issue (or two) altogether, and I think is I damn shame.

EE

17:04 / 08.05.03

How does one move to Livonia? Is it just a matter of having the money?

Money is part of it. The real estate agents are another. They just plain will not sell a house to a black family. It was in the top five Best Neighborhoods to Raise a Family In (out of all the neighborhoods in america) a couple years ago, and everyone there wants to keep it that way. It's has the highest percentage (something in the neighborhood of 98%) of white people in any city in america over 100,000. Are black families being forced to live somewhere else? Depends on how you look at it. It's not like there are absolutely no black people in Livonia. It's just that there are no new houses being built in Livonia, so the only way to get a house without going through an agency is to buy from the owner, and you can imagine how that would go.

00:48 / 09.05.03

If freedom to act is being restricted because of race, that is racism, if a group refuses to allow anyone to move into there area, it maybe racist orriented, but they are within their rights, if I tell someone to stay out of my property, nieghbor hood ect., and then bar them by not selling any land, houses that belong to me, it doesn't matter if they are black or not, it's my land, or it's our nieghborhood, and noone has to sell land or houses to be fair. On the other hand, if someone did buy a house and was being harrased after they had moved into the nieghborhood, that would be wrong. There are many closed nieghborhoods in america, and it's all perfectly legal. In some white people get turned down, because they aren't rich enough.

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