[david-gpu]

> I suspect a "white's only" association wouldn't disgust many people, on the basis that we can have black or girl-only associations and they are fine. It would still be racist, obviously

Well, it would disgust me. I have so-called mixed-heritage children and I dread the day when I have to explain to them that they can't join this or that activity with their friends because they have the wrong skin color or the wrong gender.

I may be in the minority, but I find associations that exclude people based on any of the protected classes (gender, sexual orientation, etc.) very distasteful. By all means, feel free to organize an event centered around X community, but allow everybody to attend.

[roenxi]

As long as you are consistent and are disgusted by all race based organisations equally then cool. But, realistically, there are race based associations. Quite a lot of them. You're going to have to tolerate them - although I agree they are counterproductive.

And I don't see why a white-only association would be unusual in the current climate. In the US in particular, whites are well on the way to being just one more minority in a vibrant society.

[d-z-m]

> And I don't see why a white-only association would be unusual in the current climate.

I think it would be very unusual. I'm curious to know why you think otherwise. I also think it would be career and social suicide to be associated with said organization.

[roenxi]

Picking on Harvard because I know a few people who went there and it is a decent signpost of what direction the US political elite are going in...

If I go look up Black students at Harvard, I can find a Black student association association: https://www.theharvardbsa.com/. The photos might not be completely representative of their membership but they are quite suggestive of a certain racial trend among the associates.

Ditto the Harvard Latino alliance - https://harvardlatino.sigs.harvard.edu/ - just eyeballing the photos but I it looks like this association is race biased too.

I don't see why Whites are supposed to be all that different. I would suggest that in the future there will be a Harvard White Student association. Not immediately, but I'd say in a 30-50 year time horizon it'd be much more likely that not.

[d-z-m]

> I don't see why Whites are supposed to be all that different.

I guess in theory they're not. In practice, pushback would liken a race-based group of white people to the famous negatively valence'd ones from history(KKK, Nazi, etc) and it would never be allowed to form(Especially at a place like Harvard).

[tptacek]

Nobody has any problem with Irish heritage groups, or Polish, or Italian. "White" isn't a coherent thing; it's defined (malleably) mostly in opposition to "Black", which is the ethnicity created by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, which stripped millions of African people of their original cultural identities.

[d-z-m]

> "White" isn't a coherent thing

Agree completely. I think part of the problem is that "White" and "Black" are overloaded terms. If "White" is used to refer to an ethnicity, it carries the incoherence problems you mention(I would argue the term "Black" has these same problems).

I was trying to use the terms "White" and "Black" to refer to skin color only. I believe this is the usage that an organization like the Harvard BSA[0] is invoking on their website.

[0]: https://www.theharvardbsa.com/

[david-gpu]

> Nobody has any problem with Irish heritage groups, or Polish, or Italian

What about German or Austrian heritage groups?

> "White" isn't a coherent thing

But black, Asian or Latino are? They span whole continents, dozens of countries with radically different cultures.

"White" is synonym with "European heritage". It is just as simple and as complex as any of the other broad categories mentioned earlier. But while it is socially acceptable to create associations for the former, the latter are looked at with such suspicion that only the most radicalized are even willing to join. Similar story with heterosexuals and men.

[subjectsigma]

> And I don't see why a white-only association would be unusual in the current climate.

Are you white? I am, and I don’t think any white person would claim this. At least where I live and work, we get reminded weekly how much a small contingent of ultra-progressives hate us.