Okay, I"m going to play devil's advoate here. First, I don't care that groups, any kind of groups, want to get together and do their own thing. There are many many many gender and race based groups out there and no one seems to have a problem with it. There are women only fitness clubs, there's a tea house near us that only allows women, there's the Black Caucus in Congress, the Black, Asian, Hispanic, Gay & Lesbian, Female, Democratic and Republican student unions on just about every major University campus. Why is it that if a white person wants their group, their immediately racist?
In my perfect world I think that all these groups are wrong and promote prejudice. That's not reality, however. Everyone wants to be equal and wants a colorblind and gender blind society... but do they really? I don't think so. Because at every opportunity, there's a willingness to use the very thing that everyone rails against to gain some sort of special recognition or benefit.
The first woman this... the first hispanic that.. the first black this...
If we are all equal... and I believe we are... lets really be equal. At my company we have just about 4000 people on our main campus. The finance industry is primarily male dominated industry. Why is that bad? We're all equal right? So why is having male senior management worse or somehow inappropriate and discrimantory than having a woman? I thought we're all the same? We have Women's Leadership groups, Women and minority recruiting campaigns and we spend over a $100k a year doing it. Why?
Every budget period, our area is hammered for not having enough women in management roles. Who are we going to hire? If we interview 20 people, 15 or 16 of them will be white males. Let's just play odds here. The number of women and minorities getting promotions in my company are very skewed in a purely statistical review. Most of those I have seen are very well deserved, but there were others who were summarily passed over.
I understand the premise behind most of these specialized groups... to basically organize to better help themselves and guard against injustice. But there's a flip side and stigmatism that goes along with that.
If I decided to start a White Male Leadership Council at my firm, I'd be fired within 30 seconds of sending the email, yet I could easily argue that I and those like me, white males, have a legimate need to organize support to counter a very real and freely admitted bias.
The guy who wants to start a white's only basketball league. He's an idiot. White's Only. Just reading that makes me ashamed. There's just stigma associated with those words that will never go away and rightfully so. At the same time, I don't have a problem at all that women would want their own fitness club or that gays may want to have their own place. I get it. Hell, I wish I had a male only gym to go to. I don't want to hold a fart in for an hour because there's a hot chick on the treadmill next to me. If we are all guys, I could scratch my nuts when I wanted and not worry about it. People often times like the company of those like them. I don't think that's bad or wrong. It's when you force, harm, diminish, or prevent others from succeeding or take away their liberties that I take serious issue with and draw the line.
I don't care if your black or a women or gay or whatever. Your race, gender, whatever, doesn't impress me. You as a person is what I care about. We're all different, with different strengths, weakness, faults, traits, virtues, tendancies and any other vast number of characteristics. We should be able to celebrate and embrace what makes us different from one another, yet acknowledge that we are all equal as human beings.
