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YouTube Video of Racist Chant Results In Fraternity Closure

HughPickens.com writes The NYT reports that after a video was posted on YouTube that appeared to show members of the members Sigma Alpha Epsilon at University of Oklahoma singing a racist chant, the organization's board decided "with no mental reservation whatsoever that this chapter needed to be closed immediately." The video shows a group of young white people in formal wear riding a bus and singing a chant laden with antiblack slurs and at least one reference to lynching. A grinning young man wearing a tuxedo and standing in the aisle of the bus pumps his fist in the air as he chants, while a young woman seated nearby claps. The chant vows that African-Americans will "never" be allowed to join the campus chapter.

The nine-second video was uploaded to YouTube on Sunday by a student group, the Unheard Movement, that first identified the people in it as members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, although the group did not indicate how it obtained the video or when it was filmed. University president, David Boren, said in an emailed statement that the administration was also investigating the video. "I have just been informed of the video, which purports to show students to show students engaging in a racist chant. We are investigating to determine if the video involved OU students. If O.U. students are involved, this behavior will not be tolerated and will be addressed very quickly," said Boren. "This behavior is reprehensible and contrary to all of our values." Students marched on the campus of the University of Oklahoma on Monday to protest the video.

17 of 606 comments (clear)

  1. You don't say... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    SigEps are racists. Wait, frats in general are racists. No shit, Sherlock. PKA on my campus was 100% Jewish. If you weren't Jewish, you weren't getting in. Some were all white. Some all black. The entirety of the greek system is racism and sexism in action. Give me a break with your feigned outrage.

    1. Re:You don't say... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm not a "Greek", and I never have been or wanted to be, but your characterization of them is not consistent with what I have known. Even if they were exclusionary, as you suggest, actively seeking the company of those with similar background and actively mocking/hating/disrespecting others others is different.

    2. Re:You don't say... by Penguinisto · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm not a "Greek", and I never have been or wanted to be, but your characterization of them is not consistent with what I have known.

      Neither was I, and I agree to a *small* extent. Mind you, I'm from Arkansas and it was a long time ago, but there were still frats (and sororities) that were, shall we say, a wee bit on the exclusionary side of things, and the exclusions were occasionally based on religion, skin color, ethnic origin...

      As for TFA? As much as I myself detest racism and bigotry based on someone's religion/ethnicity/etc... Personally, I think they *should* be allowed to be total asshats about it. Seriously - as long as there's no assualt or other crimes against others, let them chant whatever the hell they want.

      I say this for two reasons:

      1) College is supposed to be a place where all viewpoints and ideas are explored - even the ugly and stupid ones. Freedom of speech should hold highest priority in such a place.

      2) The video (and anything like it) can serve as an example to point at and instruct against; a competent prof can debate the racist activity into the dirt, in a setting that educates everyone else, and (hopefully) teaches the racists in question along the way.

      By kicking out the frat charter, you only drive the problem deeper underground... and where is the frickin' benefit in doing that among a body of kids that are going to be naturally rebellious in the first place? You only make it more attractive to such a mindset.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    3. Re:You don't say... by CaptainDork · · Score: 5, Insightful

      These people's "free speech" is still intact.

      No warrants have been issued, no one has been arrested, and no one is in jail.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    4. Re:You don't say... by sexconker · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Free speech does not extend to hate speech.

      Yes it does.

    5. Re:You don't say... by grcumb · · Score: 5, Insightful

      On the other hand, EVERY area on earth with a predominately black population is a poor violent ghetto.

      In the Jamaican neighbourhoods in Toronto to Haitian enclaves in Montreal, the greatest danger you face is burning your tongue on some jerk chicken. In the Muslim banlieues in Paris, you're no more likely to face violence than anywhere else. In most of Africa—the vast majority of the 'black' world—you're safer than in any American city.

      I live in a town that's 95% black. I don't even close the windows or lock the doors on my car at night. I can walk away from my bag containing $10K in photographic gear, and not even turn my head. The only thing I get tired of is people's friendliness and desire to chat all the time. True story: A young man stole a tourist's hand bag a while ago. The story made the front page of the newspaper. That's how rare crime is here.

      In fact, you can pretty much trace violence in black American (North, Central and South) communities to the legacy of the slave trade, to racial inequality that has led to economic inequality and chronic injustice. There's a strong correlation there. In countries such as Brasil, where the economic inequality was not necessarily race-based, you find more equal-opportunity crime and predation. In Mexico and elsewhere, you find the problems exist primarily where indigenous people are clustered.

      TL;DR: You don't have a clue what you're talking about, you ignorant fuckwit. Wilful ignorance such as yours only perpetuates the problem.

      --
      Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
  2. What else will Cameraphones ruin? by jandrese · · Score: 5, Funny

    Seems like you can't be a racist bigot anymore without someone taping what you say and posting it online. How are good old boys clubs supposed to survive in the new millennium? Are we going to have more places demanding people surrender their cellphones before entering? Between this and dashcams and cop cameras it's getting really hard to get away with being a total shithead anymore. We're going to have to see some senators step up and propose legislation to protect the children and good old fashion values soon or it will be too late.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
    1. Re:What else will Cameraphones ruin? by PeeAitchPee · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm waiting for the gangsta rappers and make believe, wanna be thugs to be ruined for their racist, anti-gay, misogynistic, anti-social, violent cliched rants. You'd think with all of the cameras out there it would have happened already. Ahhh, right. When they say it, it's art. When anyone else says the exact same thing, it's a hate crime. Got it.

  3. My two cents... by ckatko · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The guys were racist, they got the hammer of justice thrown at them. They suffered consequences and will have to deal with and learn from them. Case closed.

    Not all men are now magically racist, nor college students, nor frats. The system doesn't need to change. Everything worked as intended.
    Personally, I don't think we need to make every event that happens into some huge debate over whether our culture is circling the drain and chanting, "There needs to be a law!".

    That's just my opinion. Feel free to disagree, and I hope you have a good day.

    1. Re:My two cents... by pla · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The guys were racist, they got the hammer of justice thrown at them.

      One problem there - In the US, you have every right to hold racist views. You can't act on them in certain protected contexts, but you can rant day in and day out about hating blacks or Jews or Asians or, yes, even Whites.

      Now, I have no problem with the university choosing not to support a racist organization - If I attended OSU, I'd much rather the university disband the entire "Greek" system (see? I have a right to that particular prejudice, except I won't find myself homeless a week from now as a result). But talking about expulsion and searching frantically for actual crimes to charge them with, for singing a stupid racist song?

      No. We need to collectively get a fucking grip, and move on. Stupid kids doing stupid things.

    2. Re:My two cents... by bws111 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You do realize that the 'hammer of justice' came from their own organization, right? You also realize that they used the name of the organization in their stupid little chant, which reflects very poorly on the organization, right?

      What is 'disproportionate' about the organization not wanting to be associated with these morons?

    3. Re:My two cents... by NoKaOi · · Score: 5, Informative

      But talking about expulsion and searching frantically for actual crimes to charge them with, for singing a stupid racist song?

      So, where does it say anything about criminal charges, or even expulsion? The are closing down the frat chapter. Beyond just being racist, this is probably what did them in the most, FTA:

      The chant vows that African-Americans will “never” be allowed to join the campus chapter.

      First off, it is illegal (though not criminally) to deny somebody admission to anything based on race. Secondly, they don't have to commit a crime to be banned, in general universities have policies and codes of conduct, and if you violate those you can be expelled. In this case it appears the frat is being closed down because they violated university policies, not because they committed crimes.

    4. Re:My two cents... by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why do folks keep on bringing up the First Amendment when people act like clowns?

      1) the first amendment only prevents the government from slapping you down. This was a slapdown by a private entity.

      2) Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequences. Act like a clown, expect them to slap a clown suit on you.

  4. Re: Wow... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Fact: The Republican Party was founded primarily to oppose slavery, and Republicans eventually abolished slavery. The Democratic Party fought them and tried to maintain and expand slavery. The 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, passed in 1865 with 100% Republican support but only 23% Democrat support in congress.

    Why is this indisputable fact so rarely mentioned? PBS documentaries about slavery and the Civil War barely mention it, for example. One can certainly argue that the parties have changed in 150 years (more about that below), but that does not change the historical fact that it was the Democrats who supported slavery and the Republicans who opposed it. And that indisputable fact should not be airbrushed out for fear that it will tarnish the modern Democratic Party.

    Had the positions of the parties been the opposite, and the Democrats had fought the Republicans to end slavery, the historical party roles would no doubt be repeated incessantly in these documentaries. Funny how that works.

    Fact: During the Civil War era, the "Radical Republicans" were given that name because they wanted to not only end slavery but also to endow the freed slaves with full citizenship, equality, and rights.

    Yes, that was indeed a radical idea at the time!

    Fact: Lincoln's Vice President, Andrew Johnson, was a strongly pro-Union (but also pro-slavery) Democrat who had been chosen by Lincoln as a compromise running mate to attract Democrats. After Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson thwarted Republican efforts in Congress to recognize the civil rights of the freed slaves, and Southern Democrats continued to thwart any such efforts for close to a century.

    Fact: The 14th Amendment, giving full citizenship to freed slaves, passed in 1868 with 94% Republican support and 0% Democrat support in congress. The 15th Amendment, giving freed slaves the right to vote, passed in 1870 with 100% Republican support and 0% Democrat support in congress.

    Regardless of what has happened since then, shouldn't we be grateful to the Republicans for these Amendments to the Constitution? And shouldn't we remember which party stood for freedom and which party fiercely opposed it?

    Fact: The Ku Klux Klan was originally and primarily an arm of the Southern Democratic Party. Its mission was to terrorize freed slaves and "ni**er-loving" (their words) Republicans who sympathized with them.

    Why is this fact conveniently omitted in so many popular histories and depictions of the KKK, including PBS documentaries? Had the KKK been founded by Republicans, that fact would no doubt be repeated constantly on those shows.

    Fact: In the 1950s, President Eisenhower, a Republican, integrated the US military and promoted civil rights for minorities. Eisenhower pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1957. One of Eisenhower's primary political opponents on civil rights prior to 1957 was none other than Lyndon Johnson, then the Democratic Senate Majority Leader. LBJ had voted the straight segregationist line until he changed his position and supported the 1957 Act.

    Fact: The historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 was supported by a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats in both houses of Congress. In the House, 80 percent of the Republicans and 63 percent of the Democrats voted in favor. In the Senate, 82 percent of the Republicans and 69 percent of the Democrats voted for it.

    Fact: Contrary to popular misconception, the parties never "switched" on racism. The Democrats just switched from overt racism to a subversive strategy of getting blacks as dependent as possible on government to secure their votes. At the same time, they began a cynical smear campaign to label anyone who opposes their devious strategy as greedy racists.

    Following the epic civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the South began a major demographic shift from Democratic to Republican dominance. Many believe that this shift was motivated by racism. While it is certainly true that many Southern racists abandoned the Democratic Party over

  5. Re:My two cents... Black Racism is out of Control by Jon_S · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Right. Because chanting "you can hang them from a tree" is more or less equivalent to calling a white person a cracker.

    Note, the above is sarcasm, which usually doesn't come through on the internet.

  6. Actually, they were right.... by mark-t · · Score: 5, Funny

    They vowed that African-Americans will "never" be allowed to join the campus chapter, and they stayed true to that vow by getting the chapter closed down.

    Not that for a second I condone such attittudes, just saying that from a purely literalist standpoint, they certainly weren't lying.

  7. Re:My two cents... Black Racism is out of Control by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Black racism is "socially accepted." Some drunk white dude says the N word under his breath, and the AG, President, race-baiting Sharpton and Jackson shows up, and the entire white population is put in the same bucket as a drunk frat boy.

    Blacks calling whites crackers, making fun of them in rap music, ostracizing and subjecting whites to crime in "their" neighborhoods and constantly falsely accusing whites as being racists and "the man" and keeping them down,etc.

    Dude, black fatigue. Im sick of it. And I'm sick of the horrible near totality of racism blacks have for whites and nobody calls them on it. Black racism and black racketeering to milk the system AND keep the majority of blacks on the modern welfare plantation is more of a policy of those the blacks vote for and their own broken fatherless homes and broken crime-ridden graffiti-ridden communities than anything whites do.

    Blacks kill more blacks by far than whites.

    You're a fool.

    When any black person can make a phone call to the Police, give them a _description_ of a generic white person, and put innocent white lives at risk, talk me to death about the social acceptance of black racism. When enough blacks are in positions of management to deny white people opportunities because they feel that for arbitrary reasons, they just don't fit in, talk me to death about the social acceptance of black racism. When white people feel compelled to alter their natural appearance chemically or otherwise to "appear acceptable" or otherwise "make it in a corporate America", talk me to death about the acceptance of black racism.

    The bottom line is despite supposedly being "equal" and ENTITLED TO "equal treatment under the law" SO SAYETH the CONSTITUTION OF THESE UNITED STATES, black survival in America is STILL largely dependent upon the comfort level whites have with them. While many whites today may not be the racists that their ancestors living A MERE GENERATION AGO were (and make no mistake there remain plenty of whites who ARE EVERY BIT the racists their ancestors were), THIS ESSENTIAL FACT is as true today as it was during SLAVERY.

    >>>>Blacks kill more blacks by far than whites.

    To assert that blacks kill more blacks by far than whites is meaningless and stupid due to the fact that people commit crimes where they LIVE. White people kill more of each other by far than blacks kill whites... and in China, Chinese people kill more of each other by far than whites OR blacks kill Chinese. That's the easy observation made by people who ride the short bus and watch Faux News. They're also typically the same people who claim to want a small government with a BIG MILITARY empowered to make laws governing the _social_ behavior of everyone else.

    I'll say this, and say it daring anyone to challenge it:

    Black people in America are amongst THE MOST PEACEFUL PEOPLE within its borders.

    How can I say that? Because if white people were subjected to a TINY FRACTION of the bullsh*t they've subjected black people to OVER HUNDREDS OF YEARS AND CONTINUING TO THIS VERY DAY, they'd have burned this country to the ground a long time ago. America itself was essentially founded over a TAX DISPUTE, just imagine if the English had been forcing the colonists to work from sun-up to sun-down for free while denying them their BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS?

    YET AND STILL, despite the slight, the wrong, or the indignity, BLACK PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT PEACEFUL PROTEST. Al Sharpton comes to your town to _DISCUSS_ HIS GRIEVANCES. Black people are ALWAYS talking about DEMONSTRATING PEACEFULLY... and WHY NOT? IN AMERICA, BLACK PEOPLE IMPORTED THE CONCEPT OF PEACEFUL PROTEST. They looked to Ghandi and thought: GREAT IDEA! In contrast, what happens when white people feel slighted? THEY ARE USUALLY THE FIRST TO REACH FOR THEIR GUNS, to SING THE PRAISES OF THE 2ND AMENDMENT, and to threaten violence against this government for supposedly infringing upon their freedom (mainly to be assh*les to everyon