“White, proud of it,” was the headline that ran across the top of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin last Sunday. What followed was an in-depth story about a white student at Etiwanda High School, 14-year-old Naomi Pennington, who wants to start a club on her campus to promote European culture.
According to her, the club would help foster a better understanding of the European culture and heritage that is not taught in the classroom.
Pennington also calls herself a racist. Still, she insists that race has nothing at all to do with the club.
“I’m a white supremacist,” she said. “But I do not want to make this a racist thing at all. I would like to help the community also and teach people about our culture.”
But how can a club, formed by a white supremacist, that celebrates European culture, not be racist? It just does not seem possible.
Barbara Bergen, associate western states counsel for the Anti-Defamation League in Los Angeles and racism expert, believes that racism will exist.
“If she [Pennington] calls herself a white supremacist, then what she’s saying is one race is superior to others,” she said. “I would be very skeptical of any group that would be founded with those kinds of underpinnings.”
Still, some African-American students on the Etiwanda campus support Pennington’s right to form the club, but for the original motive behind the club, not what it may turn out to be.
Yet others are against it, for various reasons.
“Personally, I think they are just trying to copy us,” said one student who is actively involved in the Black Student Union. “I feel it’s degrading us and putting back negative vibes onto the campus.”
The surprising fact is that along with the article, the Daily Bulletin ran a reader’s poll, asking whether high schools should support white student unions. Usually, such polls garner less than 500 calls in response, but the response for this particular question was astounding. Over 1,300 people responded, 77 percent saying that they believed these clubs should be supported.
Obviously, these people do not think that white student unions will promote racism on a high school campus, either.
Pennington’s effort to start a European culture club on her campus is not unique. Students have also tried to start such clubs on campuses throughout the nation, including Ventura High School and Valley View High School in Moreno Valley. So far, none of these groups have been successful.
If things continue as they have for Pennington, her club will not be formed either. One of the requirements she has yet to meet is finding a faculty adviser for the club, and so far, no teacher wants anything to do with it.
Pennington said that if her efforts fail, she will vow to force other ethnic clubs off campus because it is discriminatory to allow some ethnically-based organizations while banning others.
While this may be true, it is also true that such a club will just enforce more discrimination. The sad fact is that while ethnic clubs are a positive concept, they sometimes have negative results on high school campuses, where racial tensions run high.
At the high school I attended, for example, there was a club for every ethnic heritage, except European. While members of these clubs celebrated their common ancestry, they also pitted racial groups against one another.
In theory, memberships to these clubs were supposed to be open to all students, but that was not necessarily the case for students from other racial groups. One of my friends, who is half-Korean and half-Caucasian, was ridiculed so much she left a Korean club meeting after club members jeered at her because she was not a “real Korean.”
In a perfect world, a white student union and other ethnic clubs could peacefully co-exist without furthering racism, but unfortunately, this is far from being such a perfect world.
