Sometimes posters reproduce a misleading headline to draw attention to its deceptiveness. However, when they do, they make clear the misleading nature of the headline in their initial post. That was not the case here.
Knowing the OP’s history, he will be the last person screaming, “Just look at those snobby black students at Harvard!” Rather, the OP shared his disbelief - can this really be true as the paper reported it?
Did you ask your mom yesterday, “Why is there a Mother’s Day and a Father’s Day, but no Kid’s Day?” And if you did, she probably replied: “Because every day is Kid’s Day.”
That’s essentially the answer to your question as well.
Looks like ‘Mother’s Day’ is being challenged as being non-inclusive. https://www.msn.com/en-za/lifestyle/family-and-relationships/a-primary-school-has-banned-mothers-day-craft-and-not-all-parents-are-pleased/ar-BBAS0Ft?li=BBqg1EP
Well, not everyone has a mother so… for a five-year-old or ten-year-old to be making a Happy Mother’s Day card not having one while everyone else does seems a little uncomfortable to say the least. Why not make it something everyone can enjoy, like making crafts for whoever one lives with at home or just for someone special?
Does this really actually bother you?
Thank you Bunsen. You brought clear and critical thinking to the argument, as usual. =D>
Nevertheless, whatever you want to call them, I disagree with the core idea here that the merits of success should be compartmentalized based on ethnic/religious/sexual differences. Commencements, parties, it doesn’t matter IMO… the point is you are going out of your way to celebrate events differently based on ethnic/religious/sexual background. Unless you live in backwards-land, that does not help to unify a society!
I have a child who graduated from a PWI, and my daughter graduated from an HBCU last weekend. It was nice having commencement speakers, talk to us about problems specific to us.
Come on, now. You don’t think Hillel or Campus Crusade should hold an event for graduating students and their families during the days surrounding Commencement? ALL clubs do this, including arts groups and many others.
You know, a couple of the best on-campus parties I went to as an undergrad were thrown by Hillel.
I’m not Jewish, but probably 90% of the people there were.
So are you saying that they shouldn’t have held any parties, since they’re an “ethnic/religious/sexual background”-based organization?
If your answer is yes, then who in the world is supposed to sponsor such things? If your answer is no, then why are you bothered by the party being thrown by the Harvard Black Graduate Student Alliance?
If you disagree with the core idea of “compartmentalization”, then should we have organized religion, churches, synagogues, mosques? AARP? NRA? NOW? Democrats, Republicans? Where would the line be drawn?
If some Black, Jewish, women, LBGTQ groups want to have a party, then let them have a party w/o judgement. These aren’t groups organized around hating others, just parties organized around historical strife and struggle.
@hunt Again, I have yet to hear a convincing argument as to how throwing parties based on ethnic/religious/sexual differences helps to promote less discrimination in society. It just does not make any logical sense to me. I am not extremely opposed to people throwing these parties, I just find them to be unproductive and somewhat hypocritical… it’s more of a casual disagreement I have with them.
Well, it would depend on the purpose of the party. If the purpose of the party was inward-focused – like for example, celebrating a Jewish holiday or a bar mitzvah – then I don’t see any problem at all. Where I see a problem is when the sole purpose of the party is to highlight race/religion/sexual. differences of a larger, inclusive event.
I suppose the gray area here would be if, let’s say, the school’s rock climbing club wanted to have a separate graduation party. Since that is a group that anyone can join, and since rock climbing is not something society has a long history of prejudice against, I don’t see a problem with a separate party.
It seems the group in the OP welcomed all also. So it’s like the rock climbing club in that sense.
Not really. The ceremony in this case is centered around black students – they are the ones being celebrated here, not me, the white guy who decided to join the ceremony. If I wanted to be the one who was being celebrated, I couldn’t do it. Contrast that with the rock climbing club example, where anyone can join the club itself, and anyone can join in on the party.
Do you also hate going to birthday parties?
“how throwing parties based on ethnic/religious/sexual differences helps to promote less discrimination in society”
Why does the point of any celebration have to be helping to end discrimination in society? Is this the metric you use when deciding whether to celebrate Christmas?
Speaking from the point of view of my own group, it’s not Jewish people’s job to end anti-Semitism. We’re allowed to have parties where we take a day off from fixing other people’s prejudices.
Well many people can’t physically rock-climb so I suppose they’re excluded in the same way.
^^ What @Hanna said in #75. It sounds like you, @fractalmstr, have decided to try to define the debate in such a way that celebrations like the one in the original post are definitionally wrong. However, that debate tactic only works if you can demonstrate that your definitions are correct—and you haven’t done so, which kind of makes the whole thing a pointless exercise in attempting proof by repeated assertion.
If you read my post above yours you would know that having a birthday party is not a separate celebration of an inclusive event with the intent of highlighting race/sex/religion/etc. But keep grasping at straws…
What definitions?
How about a Simchat Torah celebration (religious festivities where Jews celebrate receiving Jewish law and becoming the Jewish people)? Does that fight societal bias? If not, should we stop observing this celebration?