Monday, March 09, 2015

Everybody hates somebody sometimes

http://www.oudaily.com/

There will never be a n***** in SAE
There will never be a n***** in SAE
You can hang 'em from a tree
But they'll never sign with me
There will never be a n***** in SAE

This apparently is what it means to be a Sigma Alpha Epsilon brother at the University of Oklahoma.

So much for "tolerance" in an era when everything is permitted except loving your neighbor as yourself.

The latest black eye for the Greek system in the United States -- a vile and racist little ditty by the SAE brothers of OU captured on a cell phone camera -- exploded into the national consciousness during a weekend when the nation's first black president went to Selma, Ala., to commemorate the 50th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," when Alabama state troopers brutally dispersed a march of peaceful civil-rights protesters asking for something as unthinkable at the time as an integrated Greek system. In 1965, that would be granting blacks the unfettered right to vote.

The right to be fully American.


MANY LOOK at the first African-American president speaking in the former heart of states' rights, "separate but equal" and violent repression of minorities and think of how far we've come in a half century. But you only need to look as far as Ferguson, Mo., and the partisan, race-laden rhetoric aimed at that first black chief executive to make you think twice about how far we've come in overcoming America's original sin.

You only need to look as far as a bunch of hateful, overprivileged white boys in Norman, Okla., to think that, after all this time, all this strife and all this shed blood, it's still 1959 somewhere. Many somewheres, actually.

OU President David Boren, to his credit, wasted no time in kicking the frat off campus, a move which followed the SAE national office, to its credit, disbanding the school's chapter.

But that's just playing "whack a mole." There'll be something else somewhere . . . soon.

Fallen humanity always has had a problem with The Other -- those who for whatever reason are unlike ourselves and whom we see as some sort of threat because of their otherness. That's not going to change. In fact, it's probably going to get worse as we untether ourselves from every philosophical or religious tradition that seeks to restrain our worst selves and remind us that we're not omniscient, omnipotent and righteous in every way.

We seek to be as gods, only to behave as devils.

SCRIPTURE tells us that "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." It doesn't get more prideful or haughty in spirit than Oklahoma's brothers of SAE . . . who now are disgraced former brothers of SAE.

But that's just them. What about us? If anything characterizes America today, it is our misplaced pride over just about everything and our overreaching haughtiness in spirit.


Our faith in American exceptionalism is as fervent as it is misplaced, from the misplaced superiority complex of those frat boys in Oklahoma to the crusading self-righteousness of too much of our domestic and foreign policy. But there is no exception to some eternal truths, and the fall resulting from our misplaced pride -- pride writ small on our hearts and writ large in our society -- will be epic.

The truth is we're all SAE wannabes, and we're always looking for the next n*****. This will not end well.

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