[Ron in Acreage]

Apparently, just being white is not acceptable or it is actually offensive. White kids have to "act black, asian or hispanic" just to fit in. Apparently racism is alive and well towards white kids. This is what "multiculturalism" is. Make whites feel guilty for just being white.

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

There are some African American students at Skyline High School who call Jeffrey Powell an "uh-oh Oreo" -- he's white on the outside, but black on the inside.

Jeffrey, 19, doesn't care. He was raised with black people in East Oakland, has gone to school with them all his life. Skyline, with 2,092 students, is 43.7 percent black, 22.7 Asian, 16.4 Hispanic, and 9.9 percent white. It's lunch time at Skyline, up in the Oakland hills, where Tom Hanks graduated, where the Titans football team is known as "the most dangerous team in Oakland," where race is, as in most high schools, an unspoken yet visible fact of life.

Most of the other white students, Jeff says, hang out in the middle of the school, in "the senior quad." He tries to explain this but can't.

Erica Pinter, a sophomore, stands among her four friends in the quad. All are white, some of Irish, Scottish and Italian ancestries. Erica says most of her friends go to private schools. "They say this school is really ghetto," said the 15-year-old. "They ask, 'Have you been shot? Have you seen people carry guns?' That's just so stupid. It's racist. I think it's good to go to a school where there are a lot of different types of people from different types of backgrounds. That's the real world."

But the quad, Jeff says, is not "the real world."

"It's weird, huh, how they're all standing and sitting around in one area? They're just there," says Jeff, dripping more sweet-and-sour sauce onto his bean burrito, careful not to spill some on his oversize black coat. "Me, I try to fit in everywhere. I don't just hang out with white people," he said. "I try to fit in with all kinds of people."

He listens to rap and hip hop. He watches BET, Black Entertainment Television. He dresses, he says, "black." Ten more minutes and lunch is over.

"What is white? I mean I don't know what kind of white I am," Jeff says. "I don't bother to know what kind. Just white."

"I was born a poor black child..."

[Amerigomag]

How tortured our attempt to politically Bulkanize our culture.

When it suits the political need Latinos are no longer white. They're classified by their cultural heritage because to be classified racially wouldn't seperate them from their Europen brethren.

Asians are no longer classified racially but rather based on their geographic ancestory. To classify them racially would be offensive because medicine hijacked the term.

And of course Negro is personna non gratis in our society. We rely instead on an inaccurate skin color descriptor, black or the equally inaccurate geographic hypenation, Africa American.

At least we have unimaginable flexibility when we choose to drive a personal wedge between people. We have unlimited choices when we choose to brand someone a racist.

Here's a simple solution that can't go wrong. If you're a US citizen then you're called a citizen. You're not called an American because that describes anyone who residese from Barrow, Alaska down through Canada, the US, Central America and on to Tierra del Fuego on the southern tip of South America.

[ChicagoHebrew]

I'm sorry, but if you start a club to hang out with "white" people, you are either a racist or a segregationalist or both. "White" people aren't one identifiable common culture/history group -- all they share is a skin color. I can't fathom why people would want to establish friends based on skin color.

Yes, some of you will say- it's bad when black, latinos etc. do it to. True, but to a much lesser extent. Almost all black Americans share a common culture and history as the decendents of slaves who were segregated for generations-- creating distinctively american black cultural motifs in art, fashion, literature and music. Latinos generally share a common language and religion (99% Catholic) and are mostly first or second generation immigrants. Whites don't.

I'm a Sephardic Jew born in Mexico with most of my genetic ancestors originating in the Middle East (albeit with a smittering of Gentile British/French/German blood). Skin wise, I'm white with a mildly olive complexion. I have zero desire to hang out with other "white" people simply because we share a genetic skin allelle. I will however self-select based on real culture-- hanging out more frequently in groups of Jews, with whom I share a common faith and culture. That's based on faith and culture- not skin tone.

[dougherty]

If blacks can call themselves African American, they should name the club for white students The European American Club. I graduated back in the eighties and we never had any clubs based upon race in our school.

[Kay Soze]

White:

[nutmeg]

read later bump