TA - Race(ist) Organizations

One of my favorite classes in my entire BYU career is American Heritage. I was one of those lucky students that had the serendipitous opportunity to take that class twice, and therefore I was able to participate in twice the amount of lab discussions. One of these was on the subject of Race Relations, and the question was posed:

"Are race organizations, such as the NAACP, inherently racist?"

Another tender mercy in this class was the presence of one of the few African American students enrolled at BYU, a lovely girl that we'll call Jane. Jane was very vocal in her stance that the NAACP is NOT racist; it's just an organization that promotes the association of people of color.

She was the only one that felt that way in our class.

The opinion of everyone else in the class (the white people) was that YES, indeed, the NAACP and other such organizations are racist by definition, since they are only concerned with (and usually only admit) people of a certain race or ethnicity, and work towards their advancement beyond that of other races/ethnicities. When created by and for minorities, these organizations are not viewed as anything more than what Jane had mentioned - but if these organizations were created by and promoted white welfare, then they would immediately be decried as most obviously racist. The opinions of the students began to fly, and the discussion became gloriously heated.

Being the only other non-white student in the class, I felt that my opinion on the matter was somewhat weightier than everyone else's.

I agreed with the whites.