A few years ago, I attended a Scandinavian Christmas celebration held at a local university. It was a public event open to anyone who wanted to attend. It was so much fun. Since moving out of my parents home nearly forty years ago, I had almost forgotten a lot about my family cultural upbringing and heritage. At this event, there were ethnic foods and traditions that I hadn't taken part in since I was a child. Everything including people I had never met before seemed so familiar and I seemed to have so much in common with so many people there.

It was at this event that someone approached me with an invitation to join the Swedish Chamber of commerce. On one hand, I would fit in well there. With blonde hair, blue eyes, and a Swedish surname, I fit the model of what they were looking for. The guy who invited me seemed nice enough. He even reminded me of one of my uncles. And I am sure I would associate well there. Despite all of these good signs, I didn't join. To decide who I wanted to do business with based on race seemed racist. The whole concept made me feel uncomfortable, even if I was of the race that they were looking for, and might benefit in some way from favorable race-based associations.

Yesterday I was in a restaurant and overheard a conversation that sounded very much like the one I had been given several years ago at the Scandinavian event. This time, it was someone pitching the Hispanic Chamber of commerce to the people at table next to me, and the benefits of joining. It made me just as uncomfortable as the pitch given to me about the Swedish chamber of commerce just a few years ago.

So the question to this group is this. Are these ethnic-based chambers of commerce racist? There is a black chamber of commerce. What would happen if someone started a caucasian chamber of commerce? I think that chambers of commerce should stick to being geography-based (cities, counties, etc..). Any comments?

Ironically, it was a thorough involvement in Mormonism (and its racist undertones) that caused me to forget about my family's cultural heritage to begin with. No one on the Scandinavian side of my family is mormon. As a TBM I might have joined that chamber of commerce without a second thought.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2019 05:53AM by azsteve.

They are definitely discriminating based on race or at least origin, which, strangely, seems to be ok for certain groups and not others.

If you started a caucasion one, you'd quickly be labelled as a white supremist.

I think all things that discriminate by race or origin should be avoided: no black-only awards, no white-only groups, no Sandinavian chambers....

GC Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> They are definitely discriminating based on race
> or at least origin, which, strangely, seems to be
> ok for certain groups and not others.
>
> If you started a caucasion one, you'd quickly be
> labelled as a white supremist.
>
> I think all things that discriminate by race or
> origin should be avoided: no black-only awards, no
> white-only groups, no Sandinavian chambers....

Agreed. It does get absurd to a point, then it’s just called a family reunion. :)

I think it depends on the purpose of the group. It might be fun to form new associations with people who share your cultural identity, traditions, and interests. Generally speaking, the function of any Chamber of Commerce is to promote businesses within the community. If the focus is solely on promoting businesses as opposed to insisting that members only do business with each other, I think it might be okay. Such groups often also sponsor cultural festivals, such as the one that you attended.

As exmos on the board have long stated through their experience, just because someone is a member of your community (i.e. Mormon,) it does not necessarily follow that the person is honest or reliable. So let the buyer beware.

"Scandinavian" isn't a "race." Further, a Scandinavian CoC would effectively be 100% "Caucasian" anyway.

Your standard vanilla CoCs are mostly "Caucasian" anyway, or historically have been, as are the private business clubs in most metropolitan cities. So no need for "Caucasian"-only organizations in the first place; the good-old-boy networks are predominantly white.

Are St. Patrick's Day parades racist? How about Cinco de Mayo or Oktoberfest?

I have been on both sides of this (both regionally, and in different countries).

Worldwide (more or less), it depends on who the [relatively] "power"/controlling/resource-rich/"connected" group is.

If you (presumably: a white American male) move to Hong Kong or Congo or Mongolia to start a new business and a new life, you're likely to not only be personally lonely, but immensely cut off from important practical knowledge of "the way things are done [here]," and how to work through things you don't understand, or perhaps don't even know exist (even though, if you don't do it "as it is done," the results can be draconian both financially as well as legally).

Having a local or a regional "Friends of America" group of some kind available is IMMENSELY helpful: people who literally "speak YOUR language," laugh at the same things YOU laugh at, understand the same things you do, and aren't going to faint with disbelieving disgust if you point at them with your left hand or show the sole of your foot as you sit.

Groups like these aren't just social groups, they are instructional groups. (I am thinking of the unknown-to-me American woman in the hotel elevator when I was in Bogota who pointed to my ears (I had small, cheap, K-Mart hoops in my pierced ears) and literally ORDERED me: "Get those out of your ears right now!!!!" [She was right. She saved me from very possibly getting torn ears as a thief, running in the opposite direction, grabbed for my earrings on the possibility that they MIGHT be worth "something."]

When in a culture which is foreign to you, being able to "ask an American" is invaluable.

The same is true in reverse. There is a reason why there are groups for different kinds of Asians, or Slavs, or Europeans, or Pacific Islanders in the United States.

In this country, there used to be similar groups for white people (probably our literal blood ancestors), depending on whether they were Irish, or Scots-Irish, or Scots or Welsh, or other kinds of Europeans (Catholics OR Protestants, Italians or Germans or Poles or Ukranians). There are only remnants of these left now, because there is no longer any real need for them.

The power balance from the original WASPs shifted long ago. JFK *was* elected President of the United States of America, and there is no more "in" position to be attained in the USA than the US presidency, and no one cares anymore if you are Irish by blood, or if your ancestors came from "this" or "that" area of the British Isles--though once upon a time in our post-1492 history, this was an identity which either enabled, or limited, everyone's individual potentials in major, and lifetime, ways.

The answer to your question is more encompassing than racism, though racism can play a major part in it.

It is also not a specifically American problem. I am thinking about Israel here, and how Jews worldwide (of all races, including extremely black Africans, Indians from the subcontinent, and Chinese from China, Sephardim and Mizrachim and Ashkenazim) are in the process of creating a fully-integrated nation--and how GREAT it is to be able to find a born/raised American who you can ask, in colloquial American English, how to pay your utilities bill--and you can actually fully understand their answer!

The reason why it would not be acceptable to have a "white American" Chamber of Commerce, as you describe it, is that there is no reason: white Americans ARE, in the most important ways, the power structure of this country, and a specifically "white" group like this would be highlighting race in a society where our national goal is to highlight our shared American (multi-racial and multi-ethnic) identity.

But there are still plenty of reasons for Jamaican-Americans, or Nepalese-Americans, or Philippine-Americans, or Iranian-Americans to have their own organizations, and this will last until (exactly as happened with our Irish ancestors) they are fully "melted" into the American melting pot and become, simply, generic "Americans" like everyone else.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2019 08:07PM by Tevai.

As usual, there is a lot of wisdom in this post. I will, though, add a couple of points.

First, WASP exceptionalism is alive and well. At the best east coast universities there are dining clubs or social groups whose members are almost exclusively WASPs; and in such circles there are ways that people communicate their insider status, including clothing choices, etc. Most of the time those networks are unobtrusive, but sometimes they become overt.

Imagine if you will a student at a school who engages in horrific conduct and later faces public scrutiny under consideration for high office. Such a person may find that old friends and influential personages offer unquestioning, and often uninformed, support for him/her and accordingly ease the way into office. Those who are outsiders by dint of ethnicity, culture, or gender are out of luck. That does not happen often, but sometimes it can occur in spectacular fashion.

I, for one, don't mind social groups organized around personal similarities. More often than not ethnicity doesn't need to be, and isn't, advertised as the precondition for membership--do organizers of Oktoberfest need to say anything more than Octoberfest?--but I also have a friend who sometimes mentions going to his Italian Club, which I find highly amusing but not offensive. People should take pride in their backgrounds.

Where things become problematic are when the group coincides with power and the discriminatory exercise thereof. Such things happen all over the world, but the United States and a few other countries have deemed such things unfair and illegal. It still happens in those progressive countries, but it shouldn't. From time to time we see instances in which the results of such illegitimate fusions of ethnicity or gender and power are appallingly unfair to others.

Such instances are an embarrassment to society. But they are different from Mormon creche exhibits or Lutheran Christmas celebrations or the LGTBQ students association or the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong.

I would encourage OP to look at some of the recent writings of Thomas Sowell on the subject. Also Malcome X, and Booker T Washington, and Dubois all spent a great deal of time thinking about Black Business.

When Malcome X went to live with his Aunt in Harlem when he was 16, she was a middle class black women who always patronized the black business establishment and tried to help other blacks. There was a thriving black society in the 40's Harlem and the Bronx. Lots of teachers and professionals, it was a safe place, less crime than today. They stayed away from the whites. And the only time whites came down to integrate was at the nightclubs for dancing. The world was segregated by law and by desire. And later during the civil rights movement, Malcome x went on to encourage distinction from white America. But with the changes in society, and how the government treats poor people the Bronx hasn't improved. It's more dangerous than it was.

Dubois spent a great deal of time working on educating the "talented 10%"-- The future politicians and professionals, and leaders of the black community. The idea being that if they were credentialed they could bring up the rest of the under privileged. And slowly over time civilize the rest of the children of the slaves. And that education at that time was wasted on those that were below average.

Thomas Sowell writes that well meaning white charity and business desegregation has undermined black progress. And that 1940's Harlem was a more advanced black community and more industrious, with more intact family structures (before the Great Society Reforms of LBJ and forced integration).

Most of the black power leaders of yesteryear and today are in favor of ethnic establishments and patronage by race.