Your sarcasm is not appreciate, since I’m fairly confident you want not talk in such sharp tones to me, in person. That said, this situation, what you can not fathom or realize, is based on thousands and thousands of slights in the south. When you have an institution that fears its prestige will be diluted by the mere preset of a black person, it speaks volumes about the depth and severity of the racism. To be certain, even after calls of reform by the President’s office, only 1% of sororities are composed of black females. Facts, not platitudes…
No sarcasm here. Zero. My point is Most AA students do not want to join or they could have over the last two years. You said you are not going to sit idly by. Are you going to force AA women to join a group they do not want to join?
Like most things, people are attracted to entities that market specifically to that group. BMW wants an entry level buyer, they introduced a specific product just for them. And herein lies the problem, in the BMW example, the lower end marketing does not dilute the buyers who purschase 5 and 7 series, it just adds to the total branding. However, in the case at hand, there are some, some in leadership, that would be ambivalent of what that would mean to the organization’s reputation…and that is the truth.
Change is going to be very slow unless the two sorority (and fraternity) systems merge, hold a join recruitment, encourage one big Rush group where all 2500+ NPM visit all the houses, black and white, and they choose the house they like best. One of the Nat’l Panhell (traditionally black) sororities at Alabama has about 55 members and has a house on sorority row. It probably takes about 14-20 new members each year, and I think there are 3 other houses in that group. So let’s say there are another 50 black women going through Rush for those 4 houses that can now be added to the big rush. That is still only going to put about 75 black women as PNM, now to be divided over 21 houses, the 4 black houses and the 17 traditional houses.
They need more black women! If they want more black women in the sorority row houses, they need more black women to want to be in sororities in general.
I wish I had read this article before I watched the AO Pi recruitment video.
http://www.marieclaire.com/culture/news/a10379/revolution-on-sorority-row-september-2014/
Watching it after one knows something the history and what has transpired changes your perspective a lot IMO. I wish it had been part of the original post.
Without the facts, you feel a bit like the scene in Forrest Gump, when he was watching Governor Wallace’s stand in the schoolhouse door, not really understanding the significance of what was really going on. “Ma’am, ma’am, you dropped your book.”
Odd is a nice way to say it.
I did chuckle that the girls were called “vapid,” by adults who are so shallow that they do not see that labeling and choosing your friends like crayons is not only more vapid than the video, it is downright repulsively inhumane. I cannot wrap my mind around even thinking of or choosing my friends by their race and thinking that is some virtuous thing to do.
I choose my friends because we have things in common, and we like each other; that is it. Some on here choose friends like they are choosing pets, which they parade and show off - yucky and makes me shudder. I say this because all this talk of how friends look is exactly how my wife and our dog breeders talk about pets, by their outwardly visible traits.
I like getting to where the rubber hits the road, and the name-calling of the girls underlies something more basic, in my view. Reminds me of a development I invested. It was to put in serious upscale housing (3 to 5 car garage-type homes), similar upscale restaurants etc.). No zoning was necessary, as the area was already approved for that. And low and behold, a petition was started to stop the development. And guess who the petition came from? Not the people with already very nice houses in the area, but from the people with not as nice houses. What does that tell you? Ignored them, built it anyway, and place is flourishing.
This video (non)-issue strikes me as the reverse - too many hot women already in one place, so a group of petitioners found a reason to complain, and act like bullies to try and change the criteria of how the girls choose their friends. All because the petitioners decided that it must be wrong to have friends that look like you, even if they are truly your friends, and they were genuinely chosen because you have lots in common, which is something friends try to do - choose people they have lots in common with and can enjoy things together.
A school with approximately 30k undergraduates. A Greek system with over 8k membership. Sixteen sororities. Between 1904 and 2013, only 1 single bid to an African American female student.
Significant under-representation perhaps can be understood, if not universally accepted or viewed as tolerable. We can talk about whether it matters or not, etc.
But only 1 bid in over 100 years? That is quite a drought, don’t you think? It took me a minute to understand and absorb the magnitude of that too.
Again, if you haven’t read I linked at #464, please read it.
Blacks have only been at the U of Alabama for half of those 100 years.
Should they have made more progress by now? Absolutely. The 2013 uprising was overdue, but I don’t think you’ll find the houses suddenly integrated with 11-12% black members.
The military academies started admitting women in 1976, and I think the goal of the first classes was about 10%. It is now 40 years later and the percentage of women is still below 20% Not all that much progress made.
Good for them! Unfortunately, nice job of bullying by the usual liberal Internet harridans who always have to have it their way or destroy. No room for “diversity”" blondes must go!!! (especially if they are having fun without black people around to legitimize it and add pc).
Not sure why this thread was moved to the University of Alabama forum after 30+ pages and 400+ posts in the Parents Forum. Odd timing to say the least!
Yes, that was rather odd…
Here’s a fun video that was shot at an Ole Miss fraternity party last year.
These parties are fairly expensive, by the way. It’s not uncommon for a fraternity to spend $25,000 or so on the weekend. Of course, this has to be paid by the members. On some college campuses there aren’t as many affluent blacks as there are affluent whites. I just don’t see a stampede of black students wanting to pay a couple of thousand dollars each semester to throw several parties like this. Am I wrong?
Liberal bullying?? Most of my closet friends would not call me liberal. It’s curious, as the views many have posted are identical to the leadership of the university, their editorial board and other mainstream media like the NYT…
Attitudes on race and ethnicity in the US have changed over the past half century, although perhaps not as much as some would like to believe. But it is likely that many more people in the US today see race and ethnicity as less important or unimportant in the definition of “others like themselves” whom they would like to hang out with compared to half a century ago. Of course, being able to exclude association with others by race and ethnicity is more of a “luxury” for those who are members of a majority group compared to those who are members of a minority group.
Mmmm…impressive.
I didn’t see any draft cards (or bras) being burned, though.
twoanddone - of course you are right, 50 years rather than 100. But I don’t think it changes the point at all. While the rest of the country has to a large extent moved on over that period, somehow Tuscaloosa hasn’t. I can hardly wrap my mind around it honestly, and I live in the South. I don’t understand how it was perpetuated for so long. I am 42, and I have seen profound changes in how my grandparents to my parents down to my own teenagers view race. I understand there is underrepresentation everywhere, but that kind of drought takes some special “persistence”, don’t you agree?
"You’re forgetting that the girls in this video made an affirmative choice to join an organization which has had a long history of being part of the establishment power structure…especially in the south. "
Oh get a grip. Alpha Phi (and any other sorority) is not part of any “establishment power structure.” It’s a social organization. Nothing more.
“They’ve also have had serious issues with social exclusionary practices on the basis of not only SES and regional/family connections, but also racial issues per the 2013 scandal on that very campus.”
Then tar the Alpha Phis at Alabama with that brush if it’s appropriate. Fascinating, though, how the Alpha Phis at Northwestern have had black, Hispanic, Asian, whatever members and leaders since before I was there. Fascinating how we had both poorer girls and richer girls. I’m sure it’s just a figment of my imagination, though.
Loukydad, I’ve just spent about 4 years living in the south, and it was an education. I have a daughter who is a difference race, and I’d meet people and say “I’m M’s mother” and they’d ask how that could happen. They were genuinely shocked that such a thing as a mixed race family existed. I was really unaware that so much segregation still exists as everywhere I’ve lived, and I’ve lived in 8 different states from coast to coast, it was not such an issue except in perhaps Baltimore (but that was 30 years ago). The south was a shocker to me.
Change has to be wanted on both side. My daughter really wanted a school where race didn’t matter and she found one. She didn’t want to be a trailblazer. I don’t know if she would have joined a sorority if she were the only minority, but probably. She is the only minority on her team and doesn’t care at all.
People are giving these girls more power than they actually have. What do you think they should do? Self-abolish? Wear sackcloth and ashes? Their sorority status does not give them any significant privilege over others in the wider world outside their immediate campus circle. There are plenty of other, vastly more important areas where minorities remain at a significant disadvantage. College sororities? Who cares. Social dynamics are “sticky.” People do prefer to be around their own. For many, this means SES or occupational status or religious affiliation or shared taste in cultural matters or leisure activities, rather than race, but the dynamic remains the same. Why crucify these particular girls for a common human trait/failing? The “mean girl” cohort has no power over you unless you allow it. Or, as Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
How you feel,about yourself can be quite different than systemic discrimination and institutional barrier. Does feeling good oneself assist the woman trying to fracture the male dominated world of Silicon Valley? I think the small group of AA woman that did make application through the previous 50 years to this organization, have a good sense of self-esteem, probably so, but that ultimately did not grant them membership. For me, such pithy admonishments can only go so far in the face of long standing prejudice and historical practice…