Would You Let Your Son Join a Club That Prohibits African-Americans If the Club Was Really Fun?

:sarcasm:

A club can for all intents exclude without having a policy that excludes or a history of exclusion. By the same token, a club could no longer exclude but be exclusive because of its history of exclusion causing the excluded group to self-exclude.

My sailing club doesn't exclude black members, but it doesn't have any either.

as my garbage scow is complete,I'll apply for membership.

I'm not sure what you're shopping for in a discriminatory club, but that's what this hypothetical one would be.

.

Thanks for adding that one, too.

Why, of all the scouting organizations in the many countries of our wide planet, does the US boy scouts stand alone in banning gays.

I used to donate time, equipment and free PR to the scouts, but I stopped the moment they made that decision to be exclusionary assholes. When asked why I wouldn't be donating I told them and they told me that if I felt that way then they were glad I was no longer sponsering them. Fuck the US boy scouts.

On the other hand my niece in Canada asked me to donate to her girl scout troup and I did so gladly. But they aren't 2 faced asshats.

are becoming something of wholly owned subsidiaries of the LDS church. The girl scouts don't practice any such discrimination, to my knowledge.

Fortunately, he decided on his own that it would not be right to join, though he really wanted to. We would have had to play the parental authority card and forbid it had he decided otherwise, but we wanted to first let him think about whether he really wanted to join an organization that discriminates against gay men and atheists.

It's essentially a religious organization now.

That's exactly what I thought. And why I kept my son out of Boy Scouts. Put him on the local Boys and Girls Club swim team instead, and he grew up to be a professional swim coach. AND his mind and body were both improved by his alternative experience.

Why?

reasonable ones, no less.

Thanks

A swiss citizen club who miss their homeland's cooking.

Is one who is not Native American incapable of appreciating Native American culture? Is someone who's not from Switzerland not able to enjoy cheese?

to provide for themselves, based on a common trait or history?

As I pointed out elsewhere, what about the Japanese survivors of US detention camps? What of Auschwitz survivors gathering to simply share the latest in their lives? Why should they open their doors to others, simply because the others are curious?

I don't see that you necessarily need to exclude others, but hey; you're not hurting anybody. However, if you have an organization that is, by its very nature, open to all, and you specifically prohibit a certain class of people from joining? That's what we call a hate group.

What about a child that's black and half Cherokee?

Should those examples be excluded?

I'm extremely curious to know...

so please, do go ahead and give a few of those examples.

I am challenging this as well.

I didn't follow the row from left to right very well, My apologies, and thank goodness I was'nt in the mood to be too snarky, or I would really look like an ass.

Please forgive me :)

Because only a fucKKKing KKKlansman would have voted "yes" on this.

now I wonder how many have kids in the BSA?

:sarcasm:

And I find your analogy a sound one.


I cannot believe that anyone could (1) be progressive, and (2) find Boy Scouts acceptable in any fashion. They're theists with no room for atheism and homophobic bigots by design and enforcement.

with complete disregard for the national-level rules that I object to, then I might. Depends on what "really fun" is.

Why don't all you killjoys let your kids have some fun and embrace some racism.













:sarcasm:

and I happen to like the skills kids can pick up

but when those skill include... shall we say dislike for the gay, and the atheist...

Well then... no.

gay bashing. Nor was there one for atheist hating.

Tbe BSA eliminates the need to destroy them by pretending they don't exist. Very practical.

You got me there.

would imply... but nice try...

I can't believe we have 6 people who would actually join a racist club.

The question is not whether YOU would join a racist club, the question is whether one would permit one's SON to join a racist club.

My son is 18. I'd tell him he's an asshole, but I'm stumped on how it is my prerogative to permit him to join, or not join, anything.

I'd imagine you overlooked them in your mad rush to consult the Semantics Nazi Encyclopedia.

OOohhh... I'm now a Nazi Captain! Cool.

While I certainly have my opinions and would discourage participation in a discriminatory group, my teenage children are free to join or not join any lawful organization they choose.

IMHO, this business of treating them like chattel is, in the long run, counterproductive parenting - particularly when they are teenagers.

But I gather you are of the opinion that if parents DON'T want their children participating in an inclusive activity at school, then they should have the absolute right to forbid it, yes?

I'm just not the type that goes around telling my kids, "You will join this. You will not join that, etc."

I think its important for kids to be able to make their own choices and have the space in which they can grow and develop into the person they will be.

I like Nazi semantics. You like Nazi parenting. Whatever.

Well done, sir. Well done. You're a true champion of freedom, letting your child join that group that discriminates against black people.

If an ignorant jackass parent wanted to enable their child to become just as much of an ignorant jackass, than they absolutely SHOULD prevent their child from joining an LGBT group at school. A parent is responsible for raising their child. For better or worse, that entails instilling their values into him/her. When a child is grown, she/he is free to decide for him/herself which values to embrace and which to reject. That's what growing up is all about.

Parenting consists of more than just handing your son a pocketknife and a book of matches and shoving him out the door.

Somehow, my daughter and her same sex partner believe I didn't do such a shabby job.

It's all about context.

Did I say give him matches and a knife and shove him out the door?

No, I didn't. I said he would certainly know my opinions, and if he made poor choices he would understand why I believe them to be poor choices.

But you have some need to argue with someone who is not in the room here.

Enjoy. Be careful with those matches around your strawman, though.

Oddly, I know too many LGBT individuals who were damaged by parents who thought they had the sort of control over their children which you believe should be exercised. My own cousin was kicked out of my unlce's house for "being a fairy".

Don't lecture me about controlling parents. I've seen the damage they do.

It's stunning how you can equate throwing out your child because you don't like the way he was born with refusing to allow your child to support racism. You don't see any difference there?

I didn't say that parents who enforce ignorant values on their children are GOOD parents. I just said it was a parent's job to instill values.

You can raise your child to think for himself without endorsing racism, you know.

Really?

Thank you for informing me of that remarkable fact, previously unknown to me.

I'll take a note of that.

He specifically said he would let the child know how wrong they were and what their values were. Why do you ignore that? Do you have some obsessive need to argue in the face of someone that agrees with you?

In the words of Napoleon Dynamite: Idiot!

is endorsing racism. And having a heart to heart with your son about how terrible racism is while you allow him to participate in a racist organization doesn't make you not a bigot. It makes you a hypocrite.

Idiot, indeed.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

and fall back on insults.

And calling you willfully ignorant in not an insult, just a statement of fact.

I think the point was well made: That he personally would not join a club like that, but would be powerless to "forbid" his spn from doing do.

If you don't like the answers, perhaps you should cease asking the questions.

If you don't like reality, perhaps you should try Imaginationland.

I think the poster stated he was referring to his 18 year old son, yet you disregarded that. You refuse to acknowledge these facts and are disingenuous. I guess you knew that when you posted this flamebait poll to begin with.
Im done with you, good day.

If you consider an 18 year old a child, both you and the poster you admire have some issues that can't be helped by DU.

He tried to derail the discussion, as did you, because you both know that the Boy Scouts position is indefensible, and you have no rational argument to support it. However, you felt compelled to defend it anyway, because for whatever reason, the BSA is more important to you than gay equality. Sad.

Even when given a reasonable, logical explanation for a different view, YOU ignore it and call people bigots and accuse them of "nazi parenting." Whats your point here, anyway?

I like the fact there are many DU'ers that walk the walk.

This is a discussion forum so there's no evidence of anything but talk here. People can say whatever they want and there is no way to tell if that is how they really would act in any given situation.

Gee, thanks Mr. Obvious! :)

Cheers!

so of course I wouldn't allow them to join a racist group.

- because the club would be no more discriminatory to African Americans than it would be to blonds, brunettes, Germans or Swedes. However, NO to any club that prohibits based on race alone.

would that include African Americans with Scottish heritage and/or red hair?

- if African American's have Scottish heritage or are genuine red heads, there's no problem.

:hug:

Names

He had enjoyed the camping and it would be hard to fault the parents for signing him up earlier. The son managed to learn more about the restrictive policies than the parents had. He basically got the benefits and rejected the principles.

Guess my point is that, like most things, there are good points and bad points and thankfully, some kids figure that out.

Children must be told at all times what to do.

The best way to have them adopt your view of the world is to force them to.

It works real well. Especially when parents do not "permit" their kids to be gay.

And the offspring are confused, angry, lonely young adults.

Your point is very well taken, popular or not.

What a nonsensical argument.

And voted no. What's the deal?

That poster sees no difference between keeping a child out of a racist group and trying to "convert" a gay child. Be careful what you agree to.

:thumbsdown:

Make your own decision but don't expect me to respect you if you make the wrong one type situations.

If he's a teenager, depending on his maturity, I would use this as one of many chances to get him to think through his decision (assuming we're not talking about the KKK and its ilk), since he'll be faced with decisions like this throughout his life. If he decided to join, I would regularly talk with him about whether he could affect a change in the policy an whether the fun (or benefit) was worth the cost to his character.

While I wouldn't join such an organization, my role as a parent (depending on my son's maturity level) is to train him to think for himself, not just to do what I want him to do.

Really?

I mean we know what the issue being referred to is, and this is a rather simplistic way of presenting it. In my opinion.

Bryant

Hopefully people can use this question as a teaching moment to examine some assumptions. It's not simplistic at all.

was talking about.

I'm scratching my head here figuring out how I would "permit" or "not permit" my 18 year old son from joining the US Army, if that's what he wanted to do.

Explain this power to me, because I'm obviously not picking up on that.

I'm 46. If my mother told me what to join or not, I'd tell her to get bent.

And that goes for any sort, type of kind of discrimination based on age, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, gender, etc.

... it was about gender discrimination, rather than race discrimination.

That would be an interesting debate to have. I have no problem with the Girl Scouts for girls and the Boy Scouts for boys, because, as I said below, I don't believe those policies are rooted in ignorance and hate. Boys and girls ARE different, and are generally interested in different things as children. How much of that has to do with gender stereotyping and how much is "natural" would be a matter of contention. But I'll admit that, while I wouldn't be entirely comfortable having my hypothetical daughter excluded from the Boy Scouts, it wouldn't bother me to the same degree as having my hypothetical gay son excluded.

I believe there was at least one case, several years ago, where a girl tried to join either the Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts. Not sure what happened there.

SIngle Horny Blonde Swedish Hotties,

heck, I'd join it myself. Having dated a Swedish girl, many Swedes have a slightly different culture, compared to the far more victorian USA.

My point is this, clearly some organizations, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, which intend to be national organizations, by their size, topics, and organization, should not discriminate. But, is there room for NAACP, an organization for and of black folks? You betcha. Is there room for japanese survivors of US Detention camps? Of course. Is there room for Transvestites working in the DOD? I hope so. Many clubs appear to discriminate, if only because the issues that bring the members together limit membership to a select few.

Of course, it can also go absolutely bad, like the KKK, today's regional GOP, and some southern baptist organizations that use hatred of others as the organizing force.

On the scale of southern California amusement parks, how much fun is he going to have?

Bryant

not even if it was really, really fun.

Sid

How can it be fun if African-Americans CAN'T be in it?

:evilgrin:
rocktivity

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6546011&mesg_id=6547546

Or at least, I answered an analogous question.

:hi:

no way in hell would I permit my children!

Lamely justifying your support for a bigoted organization by claiming that they keep their bigotry from children is one thing, but we've got 14 DUers (so far) who are totally fine with an anti-black mission statement.

I notice they haven't offered up THEIR reasoning for public discussion.

happy now?

Your bigotry makes me sad, not angry.

Do you see anything wrong with this mission statement?

http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Media/mission.aspx

Of course you reference an anti-black mission statement, but I didn't see it linked anywhere. I guess more of your imagination.

:eyes:

But I do question if they are following it. I don't think that they are.

Check out the Boy Scouts Laws and decide for yourself.

Thanks!

:dem:

-Laelth

:shrug:

Which, while exclusionary, is not, I believe, rooted in ignorance and hate like the BSA.

i don't have any boys, but BSA carries a foul odor, i agree.

as long as you have decided it is not rooted in ignorance and hate?

Done with absolutely no malice whatsoever.

Anyone who can't tell the difference between girls not being allowed to join the Boy Scouts and gay boys not being allowed to join the Boy Scouts is not someone you can have a rational discussion with.

Welcome to my ignore button, asshat.

Man, this place is FULL of ignorami.

Boy Scouts, not so much.

And no, I wouldn't.

Because you should be aware that they have a black member..although they did fight like hell to keep him out..

does the child have other groups he's involved with that would help keep him from becoming this group's groupie, how much time would he be spending with the group (for example one afternoon a month, I could probably make sure the remaining 29 days of the month would be peppered with non-racist talking points and such), is the activity(ies) something the child is REALLY involved/interested in or just something currently in style.
The question is left with too many unanswered variables.

My initial response is the same as most here, "of course not", but then I get to thinking about how negative models are sometimes more effective. For example, my son came back for a visit after I had sent him to live with his dad because the crowd with which he was hanging had progressed from pot and some drinking to cocaine and pills, on their way to meth no doubt. Anyway, when he came back, he wanted to go see his friends. Turned out to be the best thing I could do, he spent a brief time with them and he came back home just disgusted at who they had become and actually thanked me for sending him away when I did.

So it's a really tough to answer given the limited information.

but if my son were old enough, it would be his choice.

then I would have to consider that. Having been a leader in such with such strict interpretation of Belief (Such as, I believe I will have another beer).

Just homophobic. I'd guess there are a fair amount of the "yes" votes that are okay with their sons joining the BSA no matter who they don't let in, so they're voting "yes" because they're either pissed at me for drawing the comparison or they're trying to pretend that it's okay to discriminate if everybody does it, or some other similar half-assed logic.

When i clicked on your thread I wondered what the story was. There was no story, just the poll. I was gonna vote yes because i felt like i was ripped off by not having a story, no OP (original post).

Fascinating.

I am certain that I am not a racist. Perhaps the 22 people that voted yes (or no - whatever) didn't care enough about the poll to vote the "right" way.

I'm not racist, I just voted carelessly in a DU poll. I don't have kids, I wouldn't allow any kid I was guardian of to join a 'closed to some' group, and I am not racist, sexist, or homophobic.

I just voted the wrong way in a DU poll. Cause I can.

So is there a story behind your poll? Is there a group that your kids wants to join, but you won't allow him/her to do so? Is there a story behind the poll or was the poll trying to make a point?

My family supports the girl scouts, but not the boy scouts.
I have a niece and a nephew. My nephew would not be allowed to be in the boy scouts. My niece will be allowed to be a girl scout.

cause i can

I don't have a son.

bring out the racists

But at that age I would hope I have taught him sufficiently well not to.

As for the implicit question you're asking, it's a tough call. I've known both gay and atheist Eagle Scouts whose scoutmasters knew about it and they told them just keep it on the down low if any higher ups ever ask. The Boy Scouts is undoubtedly a discriminatory organization. But it doesn't mean that it is necessarily an organization where boys go and learn to hate gays and atheists. Any "white's only" organization would almost undoubtedly be such a hate group.

What if your white's only group sat around all day and whittled or fished? What if no one every talked about killing black people? Would that make it okay for your son to join a group that considers black people inferior and/or immoral?

Nice standards.

All white country clubs are the closest thing I can think of but that's not something that kids join.

A more analogous question would be "Lets pretend it's 1950 for a moment, would you let your kid join a white's only organization?". And since the schools are segregated, would you be okay sending your kids to an all white school or would you home school them?

You can pretty up that piece of shit all you want, but no matter how many ribbons and bows you put on it, it's still a piece of shit.

I notice you didn't answer my question.

To answer yours, I honestly haven't made up my mind yet. I plan to do so if and when I actually have kids because I think that any conclusions I come to about this now would almost certainly be revisited when I have kids. There is, in my view a degree of conflict between acting on my own beliefs, instilling the values I want in my children, and letting them have the experiences that they want to have.

As I said earlier, the Boy Scouts are not comparable to a "white's only" group in this day and age because there are no longer "white's only" groups that just go fishing and whittle. The only white's only groups that are still around are hate groups and no my kid can't join a hate group. The Boy Scouts, while discriminatory, is not a hate group.

Maybe a good example for the racial analogy in this day and age is the segregated proms that apparently they have in some parts of Alabama and other places. I would have the same conflict about letting my kid attend one of those as I would about the Boy Scouts.

Perhaps this is not the place for you.

If you can't see the difference then there's really no point in having this conversation.

I would not want to hang out with anyone that prohibited African Americans from their club (or gays, or women, or any other exclusion).

I was shocked at how many DUers had no problem with the BSA. Hopefully this analogy can open some eyes.

I'm black so I would have to reverse the question and ask would I let my son join some organization that excluded other races.

I think that coming from the perspective of a person of color, one who lived through the civil rights era (though young) and then lived in South Africa for a while and followed South Africa's tortured march to majority rule for a much longer while, I have to look at it differently.

A group can be defined as who in excludes, but it can also be defined as who it includes, or who it's "for."

Everyone has a right to non-discrimination. Everyone also has a right to free association -- getting together with like minded people who agree on the basics or have some ethnic or cultural characteristic in common.

Non-discrimination is a fundamental value of our society. But so is pluralism, ie allowing people to get together on the basis of race, culture, language, and so on -- and the importance of pluralism may be more obvious if you are a member of a minority group.

I remember being in college and participating in the Black Students' Association. One day a white student came to a meeting and asked to join.

We had debates about it for days, it seems. We obviously embraced non-discrimination. But why shouldn't we be able to freely associate as a minority group to discuss issues of special concern to us -- to air the family laundry so to speak, without having to worry about what outsiders would think. What made it more difficult was that we worried that the white student was a conservative provocateur anyway.

I think (this was decades ago) our solution was to say we had no rule against him joining, but that we would ask him not to do so.

Should a Zionist Youth organization be required to admit a Palestinian who is opposed to the existence of Israel?

Can a Christian prayer circle be required to admit an atheist and debate the existence of God at the beginning of every meeting?

Does a Native American pow wow have to admit outsiders to gawk at their dances and ancient rituals?

Must an Armenian association for the descendants of genocide admit Turkish "observers"?

In general, in a free society, the answer to these questions is No.

And does it benefit children who are members of minority groups or even majority groups of a particular culture to have a place where they can understand what their group is and explore its values? Probably.

In a society that prohibits discrimination, we agree that there are some organizations that are so large and influential, or so entwined in government and public policy and public action, that they must be strictly inclusive and non-discriminatory.

But we African Americans know that the Civil Rights Movement also acknowledged that white Americans would want to -- and have the right to -- determine in most spheres of their lives who, racially, they would or would not associate with. (No, in fact we did not want to marry your white women.) The Civil Rights Movement carefully limited its demands for desegregation to public facilities, employment and housing markets, corporations and businesses, restaurants, and those few truly private institutions so intertwined with government that they became quasi public (like the golf course/country club where all the local decisions are actually made).

The rest of white folks' racial associations were up to them, just as our racial associations were up to us.

In fact, that's what the transition from the Civil Rights Movement to Black Power Movement was about -- not, as was often falsely reported, that Blacks wanted to re-segregate -- but only that there were certain times when we had to come together before re-engaging in the outside world. Those were also the teachings of Steve Biko of South Africa, in his Black Consciousness Movement.

So, if this is about the Boy Scouts, it depends on what role the Boy Scouts play in society. Is it too big and ubiquitous to engage in free association of like minded, generally religious, participants? Or is it something like a public school?

... I can't see how anything but "no" fits.

I could see a club that happened not to have any minorities... but not one that prohibited their membership.