What if they come as Riff-Raff or Paul Wall then?
I’m not claiming that the party’s in good taste, doesn’t reinforce stereotypes, or is a smart thing to do. But racist? Not necessarily. It
Even if it’s an overreaction, the party givers HAD to know how the idea would look to a lot of people. So, at best, they were idiots to do it.
I don’t think you meant it as a slur, MrDibble, but “Jew-bro” kind of sounds like one to me. I don’t think the religion of the fraternity members is relevant here.
From wikipedia:
Dallas’ Jewish population of approximately 45,000 is the largest of any city in Texas
It all started with the great cattle drive of 1845 led by Joach Ewingstein. 
I agree. And this is going to be even more of a problem as the races come closer together and are more comfortable with each other’s culture. Which is ironic.
Everyone’s a goddam racist!
Nobody has exclusive rights to “culture”. If a bunch of lily-white Danes or whatever want to stage a goofy, wildly-inaccurate hip-hop party or a bunch of Japanese dress up like retro-future cowboys or a bunch of black people think it’s hilarious to have an “anime” party with symbols that are all wrong… let 'em!
Unless you can present proof of copyright or trademark or something, get lost.
You go with that, I’ll go with calling people out for their shitty racist stereotypes when they engage in them, we’ll see who gets traction :).
Oh wait. I’m already winning! Go me!
You’re winning a pointless game, then. It’s like Candyland for hurt feelings.
“bring your bling and inner thug”? I mean seriously fraternity, WTF? Yes, it’s racist.
I suggest watching the movie ‘Dear White People’, FWIW.
You call those grapes sour all you’d like.
What gets me is how many people here in North Texastan and elsewhere are shocked–shocked, I tell you!–about this.
These are not people who care about people outside of their elite bubble–many of them take pride in shitting all over the “others”. Fraternities and sororities are organizations for, by, and of the spoiled, privileged elite, whose main purpose is perpetuating said privilege behind a façade of “promoting better men/women” and “being pillars of the community”. Show me a fraternity brother or sorority sister that genuinely cares about the less fortunate as more than just photo ops for the twice a year they pretend to be charitable, and I will show you a blizzard in Nairobi.
With such privilege comes what I call “privilege blindness”: being so used to living in privilege that you are ignorant of what is offensive to the non-privileged. What these frat clowns are guilty of is a racist version of this.
Blue Smilies Matter!
To address this less scornfully: when you talk about copyright or trademark, you’re not so subtly shifting the terms of the debate. You may as well say, “Unless you can show they misspelled words in the invite, get lost.” Nobody is suggesting there’s a trademark infringement. Trademark law is completely irrelevant to this debate. Why would you even bring it up?
Bringing up trademark here looks an awful lot like an implicit admission that yeah, their behavior is hella racist, and the best thing that can be said for it is that it does actually violate IP law (or, while we’re at it, laws on labelling broccoli as organic, or whatever other totally irrelevant law you’d like to bring up).
If that’s not what you meant, perhaps you could clarify.
Stay classy, dude.
Regards,
Shodan
That’s a low-key helmet.
How are intentions relevant to the need for sanction in a case like this?
In a perfect world this would be true.
The problem is that regardless of their actual intent, they are the inheritors of hundreds of years of racist tradition. They didn’t ask to inherit it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it falls on them anyway and it colors how people view their actions. The fact of the matter is that, historically, whites have used blackface impersonation as a tool to attack blacks and perpetuate stereotypes (even if they told themselves it is all in good fun, as these college kids no doubt do).
Considering that the party hasn’t even happened, and all that happened was that the flyers were produced, I’m not so sure it really warrants any sort of sanction.
I’m not sure either whether it warrants sanction–that would depend on the exact language of the college’s arrangements with, and rules about, frats.