By Jared Fields, Editor in Chief

During my freshman year I went to Miami on a Spring Break Campaign. I stayed with a Cuban family, and one late night the middle-aged uncle took me to his favorite Cuban restaurant.

The establishment wasn’t a club or labeled as a “Cuban only” place. It just felt that way because I was the only white boy from the panhandle eating in a heavily concentrated Cuban location.

I couldn’t speak the language and felt out of place through my entire meal.

For the first time I could remember, I felt like I was the minority.

I get few opportunities to feel that way. I want to experience the same feeling here but never can.

I remember this experience because twice this semester I’ve heard a question I could not believe: why would an all-white club be unacceptable on campus?

If you are white, put yourself in the position of a minority on a school campus.

Say you go to Grambling University – a traditionally all-black college. I imagine most things you do would put you outside of your comfort zone. Would you try to start an all-white club there?

Would you feel like you don’t belong because of your perceptions or because of how you would be treated?

If you find yourself in favor of this then just look around.

All the social clubs on campus already look like all-white clubs.

Pledging begins in a week. When it does and all the pledges and members sit together, look around and see how many African-
American people are in each respective club.

Then ask yourself how many minorities you know in social clubs.

If you know more than five and aren’t one or in a social club (I can only name one I personally know) then I’ll be impressed.

You can do the same at Opening Chapel when the entire faculty sits behind the Chapel stage. Abilene and ACU have a white majority, and the numbers cannot escape it.

It merely speaks to the enrollment statistics and the ethnic makeup of the university.

Minorities in America have a reason to feel ostracized from mainstream, white culture.

Historically, whites have been the force behind a metric ton of oppression since the continent’s discovery.

I know some will say the Civil Rights Movement happened generations ago, but the hundreds of years prior still have lingering effects.

Being in the racial minority is like the lone guy infiltrating a friend-group of a dozen girls.

It’s almost impossible. You wouldn’t necessarily be bluntly uninvited; you would just feel you don’t belong.

Minorities at ACU feel that everyday. Ethnic minority clubs like International Students’ Association, Essence of Ebony and Virtuous African Heritage Sisterhood form to preserve and inform the majority of their culture.

Some may argue forming such clubs only segregates the members even more.

I cannot speak for the members; I can only say my hope is they don’t form to segregate themselves.

Creating an all-white club serves no purpose when that culture is already in the majority.

Nothing can be gained out of it. You will not teach any understanding or preservation of your heritage when it has already dominated for so many years