I dropped out of the house my senior year, but was there long enough to know what the culture was. The bottom line is I have I never heard that racist chant before. Period. In fact the pledge chairman in my class (and ultimately president of the chapter), was friends with Spencer Tillman while both were at Tulsa Edison and talked of trying to get Spencer to pledge (and I doubt he'd have anything nice to say about SAE at this point, save his old friend). No one had a problem with offering Spencer (not that he would have had any interest; today he is of course a CBS analyst); quite the contrary - that was "cool." The house was hardly a model of diversity - about a fourth of us were Lebanese or Jewish - but otherwise just white suburban or small town kids from OK and TX (about half and half), mainly middle class, although a few were obviously from rich oil families. To point out just one Texan, because it was in the press, you might recall the Cedric Benson stolen flat screen arrest - his local Midland, TX attorney was an OU SAE from the class below me. Of course we were not models of anything - enough drugs were consumed on the premises to kill an extended family of bigfoots. Ultimately the fraternity chapter was killed in 1988 for hazing, and then brought back a few years later. Unfortunately.
I will readily admit nothing speaks more to a culture than its songs - so what happened to this chapter to the point that today's members would think it "cool" to sing that vileness in front of dates or even just to themselves? It's convenient to compartmentalize this ugliness to "d-bag frats" and lump them collectively as racist pigs .but these kids were not from some special Nazi enclaves in Nichols Hills or Highland Park, but rather are very representative white families throughout TX and OK. So how does the essence of this problem not bear on their familial and hometown cultures? They suddenly became "Nazis" when they joined a fraternity? Please. Not going to deny there hasn't always been less than savory characters in the Greek system, but I do not remember any overt acts of racism in school or in the house (such as this chant).
To me then, the unavoidable question is: what happened to OK/TX white suburban and small town culture to allow the sons of what are undoubtedly "normal" enough families to engage in this ugliness with impunity? The rest of the country is going PC-crazy, which makes this turn of events all the more unfathomable.
Granted I've been in Chicago since '91 and somewhat out of touch with the local culture, but my folks are still in OKC and I visit a couple of times a years to get some inkling of what is going on, but obviously I'm the wrong person to weigh in here with any definitive theory. I do have a guess of course and that guess involves the regional sea-change of attitudes, across all conservative media, towards the bi-racial man sitting in the Oval Office. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that this chant of ugliness raised its head after seven years of unmitigated alarmism in regard to the president's "socialist" policies but it does seem that those bitter opinions have acculturated children to the point that they now think it is cute to be bigots.
Perhaps I'm wrong. Just some bad eggs isolated to the Greek system. But I doubt it.
I would honestly like to know your opinions.
In parting - thank you President Boren for giving me the only action to be proud of yesterday.
I will readily admit nothing speaks more to a culture than its songs - so what happened to this chapter to the point that today's members would think it "cool" to sing that vileness in front of dates or even just to themselves? It's convenient to compartmentalize this ugliness to "d-bag frats" and lump them collectively as racist pigs .but these kids were not from some special Nazi enclaves in Nichols Hills or Highland Park, but rather are very representative white families throughout TX and OK. So how does the essence of this problem not bear on their familial and hometown cultures? They suddenly became "Nazis" when they joined a fraternity? Please. Not going to deny there hasn't always been less than savory characters in the Greek system, but I do not remember any overt acts of racism in school or in the house (such as this chant).
To me then, the unavoidable question is: what happened to OK/TX white suburban and small town culture to allow the sons of what are undoubtedly "normal" enough families to engage in this ugliness with impunity? The rest of the country is going PC-crazy, which makes this turn of events all the more unfathomable.
Granted I've been in Chicago since '91 and somewhat out of touch with the local culture, but my folks are still in OKC and I visit a couple of times a years to get some inkling of what is going on, but obviously I'm the wrong person to weigh in here with any definitive theory. I do have a guess of course and that guess involves the regional sea-change of attitudes, across all conservative media, towards the bi-racial man sitting in the Oval Office. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that this chant of ugliness raised its head after seven years of unmitigated alarmism in regard to the president's "socialist" policies but it does seem that those bitter opinions have acculturated children to the point that they now think it is cute to be bigots.
Perhaps I'm wrong. Just some bad eggs isolated to the Greek system. But I doubt it.
I would honestly like to know your opinions.
In parting - thank you President Boren for giving me the only action to be proud of yesterday.
