There Will Never Be A N****r At SAE!

Post Reply New Topic

Not white-privilege; it is non-black privilege

Asians, Hispanics (who are generally white people with a different name) can walk around without the same level of distrust from others that a black person may receive.

Well, it doesn't make it right. Blacks are still the odd man out, and only because people associate criminality with their skin color.

Right on. Thanks for saying it.

However, what happens is that people who try to think of solutions are called racist, because it is not politically correct to suggest there is anything wrong with the "black culture".

And since nothing is done, then racism spreads. Because sterotypes form, and people will not want to live in high crime, ghetto cities.

We seem unable as a culture to deal with this.

Actually, white culture, as expressed by the members of SAE, causes oppression, poverty, and lack of economic opportunities for many blacks.

Why can't we do something about that?

Education is the problem.

Black schools are failing in nearly every state in the United States. Do a google search, "STATE NAME failing black schools". I saw a school administrator on a national tv channel a month ago warning "you know these black kids are going to grow up, and then what" as he conveyed the fact that most were failing in school in his state.

Blaming SAE because black kids are not learning isn't solving the problem. Naturally, as the educational statistics show us, we should expect black people to be in poverty, and have lack of opportunity.

Right on. Thanks for saying it.

However, what happens is that people who try to think of solutions are called racist, because it is not politically correct to suggest there is anything wrong with the "black culture".

And since nothing is done, then racism spreads. Because sterotypes form, and people will not want to live in high crime, ghetto cities.

We seem unable as a culture to deal with this.

And to make matters worse, not only are they hiding, letting the kids take the blame and, in some cases, are too afraid to even attend class, which I hold the alumni completely responsible for creating, this culture that has led up all the trouble, it's who they are hiding behind that's the ultimate punch. Stephen Jones is the face they have put on their faceless, nameless entities. That's just the icing on the cake, really. These are some truly bitter, twisted misguided people. Regardless of your opinion on the government and Waco, you can not justify it by bombing a building and that's what Stephen Jones defended.

What a sick, sad example it is. These people do not even have the authority to lead pet rocks in my opinion. Every one of them should go slither underneath whatever it was they crawled out from if this is the best they can do. How can they call themselves educated?

I had thought from the very first that the fraternity had been rather disingenuous by expressing such shock at the video of this one house' members, as that bigotry - as well as that ugly song - were obviously things preexisting in the whole organization. SAE, for all the years of it's existence, has had only two African American members - with a record like that, it's hard to believe that racism hadn't been fostered in their numbers long before this incident. Plus, from what I've heard on the news, the SAE website displays a Confederate flag, and boasts about a history dating back to the antebellum south - maybe not the best message to convey if they had actually wanted to open their doors to blacks.

I thought the same thing, then I read this really insightful NY Times blog article. I was just now trying to find the link with no luck. It was about fraternities in general, and the experience of minorities who have gone Greek and it has been a bleak history full of isolation and humiliation even after they are accepted as pledges. Not a good environment since these places started pretty much as white men's clubs and in 1955, one went on record saying they wouldn't accept minorities and foreigners because if they did, rich whites wouldn't sign with them and this wasn't SAE, it was another one.
The article pretty much said the answer is not in forcing the fraternities to sign minorities but to allow fraternities and sororities that cater specifically to minorities. Such organizations exist. The article also noted such places exist without putting out a hateful vibe, even though they are all black or hispanic. I thought it was a realistic article about Greek life and it's complexities. It opened up my eyes. It's like, if you really want to make a difference, you pretty much have to do away with them altogether. Telling them they have to accept minorities seems to be a set up for whomever happens to be one and is accepted to have a negative experience because the other members will not be inclusive or they will be passive aggressive toward any minorities. I don't understand it. People are too stubborn about certain things, in my experience, and college is tough enough anyway. Just take a look at the opinions you see here...most expressing them seem to be set in their opinions. It's no different for college students.

They do have their pluses, charity work is off the charts, for instance, and the minority ones are very supportive of freshmen who might be but a handful of blacks or Hispanics in the school. They help and support one another. To do away with the white fraternities and sororities would also mean doing away with the others.

If it were up to me, I would do away with them and I would say, if you want support, find people in your dorm or start a support group on campus. Universities do not seem ready and willing to give them up though so they need to work it out.

The most productive answer could be let them exist without the expressions of malicious hatred but let them cater to their demographic, whatever that might be, black, white, Hispanic. They are pretty much entrenched in this system of exclusivity.

EDIT: I found the NYT article link so if you want to read it, here it is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/opini ... .html?_r=0

As a state-run institution of higher education, the University of Oklahoma must also respect First Amendment principles that are central to the mission of every university. Any sanction imposed on students for their speech must therefore be consistent with the First Amendment and not merely a punishment for vile and reprehensible speech; courts have consistently and rightly ruled as such. Absent information that is not at our disposal, it is difficult to imagine a situation in which a court would side with the university on this matter. We are closely monitoring the situation and will appropriately respond to new details as they emerge. In the meantime, we stand in solid support of the brave and thoughtful students whose public dialogue on race and the rights of all minority students in response to the incident have embodied the spirit of the First Amendment.

University of Oklahoma president David Boren said, “If I’m allowed to, these students will face suspension or expulsion.” [UPDATE: The president has indeed expelled two of the students.] But he is not, I think, allowed to do that.

1. First, racist speech is constitutionally protected, just as is expression of other contemptible ideas; and universities may not discipline students based on their speech. That has been the unanimous view of courts that have considered campus speech codes and other campus speech restrictions — see here for some citations. The same, of course, is true for fraternity speech, racist or otherwise; see Iota Xi Chapter of Sigma Chi Fraternity v. George Mason University (4th Cir. 1993). (I set aside the separate question of student speech that is evaluated as part of coursework or class participation, which necessarily must be evaluated based on its content; this speech clearly doesn’t qualify.)

UPDATE: The university president wrote that the students are being expelled for “your leadership role in leading a racist and exclusionary chant which has created a hostile educational environment for others.” But there is no First Amendment exception for racist speech, or exclusionary speech, or — as the cases I mentioned above — for speech by university students that “has created a hostile educational environment for others.”

2. Likewise, speech doesn’t lose its constitutional protection just because it refers to violence — “You can hang him from a tree,” “the capitalists will be the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes,” “by any means necessary” with pictures of guns, “apostates from Islam should be killed.”

3. To be sure, in specific situations, such speech might fall within a First Amendment exception. One example is if it is likely to be perceived as a “true threat” of violence (e.g., saying “apostates from Islam will be killed” or “we’ll hang you from a tree” to a particular person who will likely perceive it as expressing the speaker’s intention to kill him); but that’s not the situation here, where the speech wouldn’t have been taken by any listener as a threat against him or her. Another is if it intended to solicit a criminal act, or to create a conspiracy to commit a criminal act, but, vile as the “hang him from a tree” is, neither of these exceptions are applicable here, either.

4. [UPDATE: Given the president's letter, it's clear that the students are being expelled solely for their speech, and not for the reason discussed in the following paragraphs.] Some people have suggested that the speech may be evidence of discriminatory decisionmaking by the fraternity in admitting members. A university may demand that groups to which it provides various benefits not discriminate in admissions. See Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (2010). Indeed, nondiscrimination rules are applicable to groups generally, even apart from any benefits they get; much depends on whether the groups are seen as small and selective enough to be covered by a right to “intimate association,” and on whether apply antidiscrimination law to the groups would interfere with the groups’ expression of their ideas, and thus burden their right to “expressive associations.” See Roberts v. U.S. Jaycees (1983); Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000). The university might thus be able to discipline students who (a) are involved in a fraternity’s admissions decisions, and (b) can be shown to have denied membership to people based on race, or intentionally tried to communicate to potential members that they would deny them membership that way. I don’t think that a discussion saying that discrimination ought to take place, or even that at some unspecified time it will take place, would suffice to constitute a violation of the antidiscrimination rules, though it might be used as evidence in a future case where discrimination against a particular applicant might be alleged.

But even if the group is found to have discriminated against black applicants, and some particular members were found to have participated in that decision, the penalty for that has to be based on the penalties that are actually meted out to people who violate this rule. If discrimination by a group generally leads to a fine against the group, or a reprimand of the participants, or even derecognition of the group, the university can’t then expel students who engage in the same action but who also engage in constitutionally protected speech — that sort of disparate treatment shows that the school is really punishing people for their speech, not for their conduct.

This is a familiar principle from antidiscrimination law: if a black student is expelled based on conduct for which white students are generally just mildly reprimanded, the law recognizes that the expulsion was based on the student’s race, not just the student’s punishable conduct. The conduct in that situation is being used in large part as a pretext for race discrimination. Likewise, if SAE members are expelled based on conduct for which people who didn’t engage in SAE’s speech would generally just be mildly reprimanded, the expulsion would be based on the speech, not the members’ punishable conduct, which would just be pretext for punishing students for the ideas they were expressing to each other.

5. Of course, this just applies to the university. It certainly makes sense that the national fraternity may suspend the student chapter, and that other fraternity or sorority organizations refuse to deal with the chapter (or even its students). Fraternities, at least in principle, aim to promote certain principles of morality and behavior, such as the national SAE’s True Gentleman creed:

The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.

SAE may quite rightly insist that people who so sharply depart from such principles no longer use SAE’s name. (I don’t think a university may suspend a fraternity just based on its speech, but that question is likely rendered moot by national SAE’s actions here.) Likewise, I imagine that the fraternity members’ speech will more generally affect their social lives and their professional lives, as some people choose not to do business with them in the future. (In some states, even private employers are limited in their ability to discriminate against employees or job applicants based on their speech, but that’s true only in some states and generally only as to employment; and, rightly or wrongly, such discrimination often happens without the applicant’s even knowing that it’s happening.) How long this sort of misbehavior should dog a person is an interesting ethical question, but in any event it’s pretty clear that the offending students are going to pay a substantial social and likely economic price for their actions.

Under the First Amendment, though, the government — including the University of Oklahoma — generally cannot add to this price, whether the offensive speech is racist, religiously bigoted, pro-revolutionary, or expressive of any other viewpoint, however repugnant it might be.

I never had any inclination to join a frat back in my college days - they probably would have tossed me out into the back alley with the garbage.
I did have a friend who had gotten into a frat in Idaho University, and during the times he came home and got together with us (that is, his Spokane friends), put a few drinks in him and every thing spewed out of his mouth was the N word. Well, he certainly hadn't been a racist like that prior to joining his frat.
And thanks for the link to the New York Times article.

There you have it, from a leading civil rights organization and one of the most respected 1st Amendment scholars and law professors in the country, the speech was protected, the expulsions were illegal, end of story.