Nah, it’s more like they were expelled for having a terminal case of the dumb. Hiding under a hood is mandatory if you want to be blatantly racist with impunity. That was true 50 years ago and it’s especially true in the era of youtube and camera phones. I guess these idiots don’t know their history.
I think you might be surprised. I have lived in Oklahoma most of my life (I’m 52). I have many friends that you would probably assume were among the mutterers. I have yet to hear one person defend the actions of the knuckleheads.
These guys are 4chan’s primary demographic. Or at least /pol/'s.
Any one else curious as to who leaked the tape and why? I mean, they were probably be a SAE member, right? Was this the work of someone so idiotic they didn’t think twice about releasing this?
Or did they just say “fuck it, these scum need to be outed”? I’m intrigued.
But there can be all sorts of reasons you’ll never hear someone in your circle mutter a thing; heck, folks might even claim to find X appalling when they don’t in fact. Plenty of stuff folks think or believe something they’d deny or never admit to another living soul … and sometimes not even to themselves.
I’m sure most people with even a limited circle of friends are associated with more than one person who believes in or does objectively awful things, including but not limited to racism; that such info isn’t disclosed doesn’t mean much. I shudder to think what would happen if people were assured expressing a given view/preferences wouldn’t subject them to any negative impact or ridicule.
Good point, well made. I agree with you.
The video was originally submitted anonymously to the campus newspaper The Oklahoma Daily, so it seems, at least, one person on that bus had a conscience. The girls on the bus were supposedly Tri-Delts, and it’s speculated that it was one of the girls who submitted the video, but I’m not sure now where I read that…may be just chatter I picked up on my Facebook feed.
“Delta Delta Delta, can we help ya help ya help ya…get expelled for being a racist piece of shit?”
.
You may not be a bigot, just an idiot.
Then you are certainly an idiot, because the chant is covered by “Freedom of Speech”: no government entity has invoked a law to punish the twits for their behavior. (Suffering other consequences for one’s stupid behavior is just part of life.)
Noting that blacks are capable of racism is not a problem; it is a true statement.
If you “like” to make the observation, then you are an idiot, (and, for this, you may be a bigot).
Absolutely true.
I had dinner with a couple, a few weeks ago, who were utterly horrified to have been accused of racism. In the context of the specific event, they were probably right to be indignant. They had behaved in a consistent manner in a specific situation treating everyone involved exactly the same, handing out rewards and consequences based solely on behavior regardless of ethnicity. (One person who was simply told, for the umpteenth time, to stop doing a specific thing that no one else was doing, with no actual sanctions leveled, made the accusation.)
On the other hand, the couple then went on a lengthy diatribe decrying the behavior of “those people” and citing all sorts of stupid examples for each of which I could provide numerous counters of whites behaving the same way, each of which they shrugged off as “different.” It just never dawned on them that their attitudes were racist.
Actually, it may well be a First Amendment violation for a public university to expel students for hate speech. Why wouldn’t it be?
1960’s racism in the South? I attended school duing the 60’s in a liberalish medium-sized town in Northern California and AFAICR there was never a single black student enrolled in any of the schools I attended. Not one … though there were blacks living just a few miles away. When blacks were home-hunting, real estate agents told them ‘Nothing for sale in that town, let me show you some neighborhoods where you’ll be more confortable.’
That the deputy was racist had probably been well known to the Sheriff’s office for a long time. He was fired not for being racist, but for the publicity of a racist video.
If we assume that Clothahump is sentient and his ideation meaningful, America isn’t racist unless “our entire society” is racist. :eek:
I wonder if those reporting blacks as less intelligent than whites have found a way to skew the stats by deleting sub-human whites like Clothahump from their averages.
“Creating a hostile environment”
You can’t freely make rude sexual references in any work environment, University or not.
The same issue apples her.
How is employment law relevant here? This was on a privately chartered bus headed to a party. People are not guaranteed freedom from hostility wherever they are.
In the United States, unlike much of the world, our free speech rights generally trump our rights to freedom from hate speech. While the issue is not entirely settled at the Supreme Court level, the overwhelming weight of authority is that there is no First Amendment exception for “hostile learning environment.” Papish v. Board of Curators, 410 U.S. 667 (1973); Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169 (1972); Dambrot v. Central Michigan Univ., 55 F.3d 1177 (6th Cir. 1995); Iota Xi v. George Mason Univ., 993 F.2d 386 (4th Cir. 1993); UWM Post v. Univ. of Wisc., 74 F. Supp. 1163 (E.D. Wis. 1991); Doe v. Univ. of Mich., 721 F. Supp. 852 (E.D. Mich. 1989).
Title VII may well be the University’s legal theory, but it’s a weak one. If these kids sue, they are likely to win. I imagine their lawyers will advise them that the negative publicity of suing outweighs any potential gain.
(None of which has any bearing on the OP, I don’t think. But I thought it important to correct this common misunderstanding about how hate speech works in the US.)
This can’t be the first time an issue like this has been explored legalistically… has any other public university ever expelled a student for racist speech in public (or recorded)? Did any of the students ever sue?
Yes and yes. AFAIK, the university has lost every case eventually.
Not to defend your parents (not that you asked anyone to), but the attitude that blacks (both African blacks and American blacks) are on a lower strata than Indians is somewhat pervasive among the parents of Indians I know, and is held by some in my generation as well.
Heck, I used to date an Indian girl who was actually taught to believe that blacks were a different species. Yes, really. She didn’t hold this belief herself when we were dating, at least she said she didn’t, but she was a little too willing to excuse those who did for my tastes.
This attitude about blacks also had (or has) little to do with skin color as although my former girlfriend and her family are a few shades darker-complexioned than what is commonly termed ‘wheatish’ in India’s very skin-color conscious culture, blacks of African ancestry, regardless of skin color are considered inferior, even by those who have never met a non-Indian black person in their lives.
My understanding is that they weren’t expelled for hate speech, exactly, but because they violated the University’s code of conduct.
Right, but the code of conduct is unconstitutional if it allows a state actor to discipline citizens for their exercise of protected speech. That’s the holding of several of the cases I listed above.
True (unfortunately), and the expelled brats with standing may undertake the years’-long effort to address. Meanwhile the university may be compelled to reexamine how it should address this problem and others. Here, through its ability to discipline a fraternity that engages in discriminatory practices (after all, they and other frats declare in this and similar songs that they’ll never allow a “nigger” to be a member).
As has been pointed out elsewhere, if the punishment for discriminatory conduct of a frat is to ban that frat from operating at the university, the university might want to examine other types of punishment that might inspire the kids to leave. I don’t know enough about the university to know whether the punishments for such conduct include expulsion.