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From: cja@lzwi.UUCP (C.E.JACKSON)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Discrimination
Message-ID: <136@lzwi.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-May-85 20:46:05 EDT
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Posted: Mon May 13 20:46:05 1985
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>[From	Ed Hall]:
>> And now that we've tied up all our energy in useless discussions on
>> words, there are a couple of people who are making the outrageous and
>> dangerous claims that:
>>   1. White men are being discriminated against, and this deserves at
>>      least as much attention as discrimination against women.
>
>I have seen explicit, blatant, and intentional discrimination against
>people based on their being male.  You may wish to argue that this is
>rare --- I have seen it.  In fact, when I was in high school, attempting
>to find a way to afford to go to college, there were scholarships
>administered by a public high school that explicitly stated that race,
>ethnic origin, and sex were relevant criteria.
>
It is a shame that you did not have more with-it guidance counselors.
There are all-male clubs/organizations which offer scholarships to
boys only. Moreover, the US Armed Services have one of the most comprehensive
college-tuition aid programs around. It is much easier for males to get
accepted into the Armed Services than females.
You might also have found that those scholarships which didn't specify that
the beneficiaries were to be of a certain sex/race/whatever tended to favor
white males. Many scholarship programs (when the scholarships are offered
by private clubs/organizations) require that the applicants be interviewed
to make sure that they fit the club members' ideas of what an ideal scholarship
student should be like. Often the scholarship committee's ideas are
something in white...& male, please.
Moreover, male athletic programs are STILL funded much more than female
programs (at both the high school and college level).  Therefore, your
chances of getting an athletic scholarship are far greater if you're male.
The college admissions process also has a certain white bias. Alumni
children are given preferential treatment at most colleges. People in my
generation (currently in our 20s) have parents who went to college
when Jim Crow laws were still in effect. My parents both went to college 
in Georgia. My black contemporaries' parents were barred from those colleges
& therefore my brothers & I had an advantage in getting in that my black
contemporaries didn't have. You can't just outlaw discrimination & have
every vestige disappear.
When you get out into the "real" world, you will discover that however
much the government requires corporations to hire/promote people other
than white males, incompetence, mediocrity & stupidity are much more
likely to be tolerated or even rewarded in white males.

>If the government is going to prohibit discrimination based on race,
>sex, creed, and half a dozen other bases, it should be consistent and
>prohibit it against white males as well.  If the objection to discrimination
>is that it is unfair to individuals, then the discrimination that is
>inflicted on white males is just as immoral as when it is inflicted on
>anyone else.

White males were & are the richest, most powerful group in this country.
In the past, some number could be said to share their wealth with
women (when they were married to them) even though the men had *control*
over the money. Today, with the rising divorce rate & rising rate
of unwillingness to meet the legal obligation of alimony/child support payments,
the disposable of income of white males is quite large.
If white males are being discriminated against, it doesn't seem to have
affected their well-being as a group. Individual cases of *genuine* discrim-
ination are quite sad & I empathize with those men who now have to know what
it feels like (welcome to the majority), but there are far more individual
cases for women, blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, Native Americans gays
and Jews.

C. E. Jackson
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