#718. Fraternity Halloween Gatherings

College is a four-year experience in the United States that supplies those who make it through with a degree and the keys to success in life. Most interestingly, many times as the person rides the journey of life with the diploma they received from said school, the memories of what they learned and the experiences they had are lost in a haze of booze and wild parties.

These college-educated individuals collectively comprise the best educated workforce on the planet, regardless of their inability to conjure up memories of parties or minute details of a microeconomics lecture on the comparative advantage of trade with Argentina, as an important Business Week article points out:

"Similarly, 28% have a college degree, a fivefold gain over this period. Today's U.S. workforce is the most educated in the world...

But now, for the first time ever, America's educational gains are poised to stall because of growing demographic trends. If these trends continue, the share of the U.S. workforce with high school and college degrees may not only fail to keep rising over the next 15 years but could actually decline slightly, warns a report released on Nov. 9 by the National Center for Public Policy & Higher Education, a nonprofit group based in San Jose, Calif. The key reason: As highly educated baby boomers retire, they'll be replaced by mounting numbers of young Hispanics and African Americans, who are far less likely to earn degrees.

Black people read this article and cringe, for a work force that was once comprised of 82 percent white people - a majority of which spent their college tenure drinking insane amounts of alcohol - was able to build the most dynamic, diverse economy man has ever known. And yet, the more diverse the United States gets, the worse our economic production will be, regardless of how much booze white people drink in college.

As Business Week points out, it is merely our educational gap - greater percentage of young Black people and less white people in the near future - that will endanger our status as a superpower. Bing drinking whites are apparently capable of unimaginable heights when it comes to dreaming of vast contributions to the nation and its economic development, but a influx of diversity merely dilutes those white peoples ability - who binge imbibed in college - to carry the burden alone.

And what is it that these white people are doing in college, whilst binge drinking? Well, many of these binge drinking white people (and future engines of economic growth in America) are members of fraternities and sororities while at college, for these social organizations give them the ability to network with older, binge drinking white people and grant them access to potential careers that will fuel the American economy, until (as Business Week pointed out) the demographic changes disrupt that economic engine completely.

All across the United States, fraternities and sororities help men and women become model citizens, contributors to society and instills a valuable code of conduct and work ethic through character building and lessons in the importance of group bonding.

Greek letters are not an uncommon sight upon the inside shin of a white male, who takes just pride in his fraternity and girls are known to have their letters on all forms of clothing, their cars and more importantly,belonging to said Greek community helps create friendships that will last for life.

Black people tried to emulate fraternities and sororities, to mixed results, with one prominent Black sorority seeing hard earned dollars go towards a $900,000 wax statue:

"Members of the country's oldest black sorority are suing to remove their president, alleging that she spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of the group's money on herself – some of it to pay for a wax statue in her own likeness.

In the suit filed in Washington, D.C., the Alpha Kappa Alpha members also alleged that international President Barbara McKinzie bought designer clothing, jewelry and lingerie with the sorority credit card

The lawsuit says $900,000 was spent on the McKinzie wax statue, but Gray said he has since learned the amount was for the two statues. The statues reportedly are to be displayed in the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore, Md., he said."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/29/barbara-mckinzie-alpha-ka_n_247388.html

You would think that every person who lives in the United States and benefits from these binge drinking white peoples economic prowess would be happy that these benevolent palefaces create economic production that can employ millions. Alas, many of the memories that are forgotten by the binge drinking white people are remembered vividly by these (as Business Week said) soon to be thorns in the side of any economic expansion in the US.

We are discussing Halloween this week at SBPDL, and what better holiday that white people adore to drive home the point of Black people's angst and unflappable disgust at these binge drinking whites actions while they are co-eds, then a Black-themed party?

For Halloween offers white people the opportunity to dress in fantasy, since we all know in an Absolute World, everyone would be Kanye West, and white people all secretly wish to be Black. Thus, the reason for Gangsta-themed parties, Pimp & Ho parties and the ultimate form of impersonation, Black face.

You see, on Halloween, people get to dress up in ways that on any other day would probably sentence that person to the insane asylum, but on this most auspicious of nights, the opportunity to indulge in the most carnal of fantasies is allowed

Binge drinking white college students dress up as Black people on Halloween - not to be racist - but to emulate their favorite people whom they all wish to secretly be, for the pressure of holding up the American economy before (as Business Week stated) the rising tide of color capsizes it soon, is a great pressure indeed.

Impersonation, it has been said, is the most sincere form of flattery. These binge drinking white students dressing up as pimps and hos for a party or as gangstas is but a modest attempt to show solidarity with their Black brethren, who find Halloween insufficiently 365Black.

At schools from Auburn University, John Hopkins University, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Richmond have all seen students partake in emulate Black people out of respect for their cultural practices:

"Although many students’ Halloween costumes elicited laughter this past weekend, one person’s controversial choice ignited outrage and a flurry of discussion among the University of Richmond community.

Around 1 a.m. on Oct. 28, witnesses said a person was seen walking around the 800 block of the University Forest Apartments wearing a painted black face, a dreadlock wig and large, painted pink lips. Those who saw the person said the costume reminded them of blackface, a style of theatrical makeup that was popular in the United States during the 1800s, and one that carries a strong tones of racism in today’s society."

The binge drinking white person who dared dress in Black face, has nothing on the binge drinking white fraternity brothers at these colleges:

"For example, when three white students tried for their own laughs by dressing up as African Americans (one as Uncle Sam in blackface, the other two as tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams) for a fraternity costume party, few administrators at the University of Virginia were amused.

The public reaction has run the gamut from amusement at a sophomoric attempt at humor, to a laissez-faire "boys will be boys" attitude, to mild discomfort at white students having acted in such a politically incorrect fashion, to outrage at what some consider to be blatant racism.

Far from being an isolated incident, the flare-up at UVA over the blackface costumes follows a string of blackface controversies at college fraternities elsewhere in the country. For example, two fraternities at Auburn University were suspended after students attended a Halloween party dressed in blackface, do-rags and Afro wigs; at another party, one fraternity member came dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan and another came as a black man with a noose around his neck. After ruling that the school had violated the students' right to free speech, however, a circuit court judge lifted the suspensions.

In another incident, the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity at the University of Louisville in Kentucky was tried by a school hearing panel and found guilty of conduct that "seriously alarms, intimidates or harasses others and serves no legitimate purpose" after several of its members wore black face paint to dress as characters such as Snoop Dogg and the film character Shaft at an off-campus Halloween party. Another fraternity member, an African American, wore a white sheet and came in a Ku Klux Klan costume, which he later burned at the party.

The University of Tennessee suspended the Kappa Sigma fraternity after complaints arose over several students who wore black paint on their faces, dressing as the Jackson Five for an "air guitar" competition at a campus party; another student attended as Louis Armstrong.

One member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon at Syracuse University faced disciplinary charges of harassment and disorderly conduct after attending graduation costume parties at several local bars dressed as golf celebrity Tiger Woods.

The University of Mississippi suspended the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity after a Halloween party where a student who was dressed in a police uniform pointed a toy gun at another member who had painted his face black and was wearing overalls and a straw hat."

The Auburn University fraternity event of 2001 was so horrific that a book was written, "An Auburn Autumn", to describe the emotional baggage that Black people carry from binge drinking white people (who as Business Week stated, carry the US economy):

"The issue of free speech is at the heart of a lawsuit filed last month by suspended members of the fraternity Beta Theta Pi against Auburn University. The university suspended 10 members of two White fraternities -- Beta Theta Pi and Delta Sigma Phi -- following a Halloween party where members performed mock lynchings, paraded in blackface and donned homemade Ku Klux Klan hoods. Members of Delta Sigma Phi said they are also considering legal action.

"This is the hardest thing for people to understand: The First Amendment protects free speech, regardless of how offensive it is," says Robert Sedler, a constitutional law professor at Wayne State University and an expert on First Amendment law. "And that means tolerating an awful lot of hurtful speech. It's similar to flag burning. No matter how much that turned patriotic people off, it was protected by the Constitution."

So, even though these binge drinking white people engage in the most sincere form of flattery by dressing up as Black people, Fraternity Halloween Gatherings has the makings of Stuff Black People Don't Like.

For, as Business Week stated, the US economy might be running out of steam and nearing the end of its global dominance with the more Black people and less white people in the workforce, yet the benevolent nature of dressing up as Black people for Halloween is one of the most evil things a person can do.

Even though binge drinking white people might be performing these acts of Black face and flattery far removed from said Black people, the hurt feelings caused by these events are the ultimate form of insensitivity.

Worse, though it is flattery, Black people have a hard time taking jokes at their own expense. In the end, as Business Week pointed out, the US economy will be in the hands of precious few former binge drinking whites, who once had the audacity of dressing up in homage to Black people.

And it will be these Black people who decide the fate of America's status as a superpower.