I’m sure you saw the news a few weeks ago of a bus full of University of Oklahoma fraternity students who were caught on video chanting the following about their fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon:
There will never be a n*** SAE!
You can hang ‘em from a tree, but they’ll never sign with me!
There will never be a n*** SAE!
The uproar was swift and the consequences thorough: the fraternity shut down, all members required to move out within 24 hours, and the two young men shown leading the chant promptly expelled from the university. One thing was clear from this episode: we no longer tolerate blatantly racist words in our country. Much has changed since the 1960s and the preceding decades (centuries).
What is less clear to me is whether we, white Americans in particular, really understand all that racism actually is. Continue reading “Being racist in America”