Been under that rock for about fifty years, eh?

[Greenday]

Anyway, what always got me, is that most white people always treated her with respect. Yet many of her own race did not. What's up with that shit?

There's this sense of "Oh, you're too good to have a job/no job like us and live in crappy conditions." It's like, wait, one second you are supposed to be doing whatever you can to get out of there and succeed, but once you do, you're a traitor? How does that make sense?

[pile of monkeys]

The entire cheerleading class is, not suprisingly, all black. This is important. Most (but not all ) of the kids in the other classes are white or asian. Given the racial and economic demographics of this particular city, this is pretty much normal.

I think I missed something- why was it not surprising that the entire cheerleading class was black? I'm confused because, in my area, the stereotype of cheerleaders is blonde white girls.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Because in this particular city, blacks are a 35 percent minority. Whites are only a 62 percent majority. And in some high schools, blacks are the majority due to where they live and where their school is. So an entire squad of black teenagers from a single high school is a common thing, even without conscious segregation.

The stereotype of blonde white girls is an American stereotype. It's not a Southern Lowcountry stereotype. Down in the Lowcountry, there are a lot of black folks, and some of them are so rural they don't even speak English so you can understand it. We're talking about spanish moss and gullah down here. No lie, there is an African village down here somewhere.

[Flyndaran]

That still sounds like willful discrimination.
If we saw an all white squad, don't you think someone would call foul?... Not a single whitey on the squad sounds like someone is pushing them not to even try out.

[Boozy]

It smacks of discrimination to me, too. But I don't live there so I'm not savvy about the culture. I'm open to being educated about it...

But in an area that is 62% white, it would seem to me that a few white kids would want to be on the cheerleading squad, and of those, a few would be good enough to make the cut. The fact that the squad consists only of black kids leads me to believe that there is deliberate exclusion based on race.

[jackfaire]

That would have probably been my first thought as well, that the groups were segregated. That's a proper term. If you see a group of a certain race all together with few in the other groups, wouldn't that be your first thought?

Not really no. My first thought would be oh that is the cheer leading class. It wouldn't occur to me that they were of a different skin color anymore than if I noticed a class of nothing but blonds.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

That still sounds like willful discrimination.
If we saw an all white squad, don't you think someone would call foul?... Not a single whitey on the squad sounds like someone is pushing them not to even try out.

True, but for that to be the case, there would have to white girls showing up for audition.

I mean, I worked for two different film labs in the district where I grew up. Everyone both labs was white. There were about a dozen folks on the staff each time.

They were not discriminating. I worked there for years and not a single black person applied. There are not a ton of black folks in my hometown chomping to hire on in a film lab. They just aren't. But if you didn't know that, you'd think the bosses practiced discrimination. Believe me, if a black person had showed up to apply, he would have been hired immediatly, simply because my bosses knew how bad that looked.

Here's the thing: My nephew's gym class was all white. This is because there is, let's face it, an economic divide between the races. It's not racism in and of itself, it's economics. It's that poor people down here tend to be black. More whites than black can afford to send their kid to a gym class. A school paying for their squad to attend a cheerleading school might be almost entirely black. Same goes for my daughter's ballet class. She's been through two classes. She had one black classmate, and this is even in an area that is predominantly black. It's economics. Now, you could argue that the economic division is based on racism, and that is another conversation. But I know for a fact that there is so segregation or discrimination going on at my daughter's dance school. I also know for a fact how much it and the gym class costs. Show up with $$$ and you are in, they don't care who you are.

[Boozy]

True, but for that to be the case, there would have to white girls showing up for audition.

Not quite -- read Flyndaran's post again.

He knows there are no white girls showing up for auditions. He's saying that there is intense social pressure not to try out for the squad at all if you're white.

Frankly, that's a no-brainer in my opinion. If the squad is all-black and has always been all-black, it would take one very brave white girl to buck all social expectations and go for the squad. The opposite would also be true if the races were reversed.

This would be called "institutional racism"... except I was loathe to bring that up, since the last time it was discussed here everyone swore up and down that such a thing could never exist.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Well, you're right, and nobody can really know what exactly is going on. If there are white girls who want to try out, but don't for the reasons you state, then yeah. I agree.

But if it's the case that none of the half a dozen white girls in the school are even interested in trying out, there is nothing nefarious going on.