Several chapters from "white fraternities" from universities across the nation hold racist-themed parties, The Associated Press reported last week. Many AU students expressed their concerns regarding racial stereotypes on college campuses.
On the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, students from a traditionally white fraternity at Clemson University in South Carolina held a "gangsta"-themed party where white participants wore heavy jewelry or "bling bling" and baggy clothes associated with the rap scene, the AP reported.
Photos from the party posted on CNN.com showed one young man who had painted his entire body black for the occasion. A white woman had padded her butt to parody the stereotypical body shape of the black woman, according to CNN.com.
The Clemson party is not an isolated incident. White students at Texas University and John Hopkins University held similarly themed parties where organizers encouraged participants to drink malt liquor from paper bags and wear shiny caps, or "grills," on their teeth, according to the AP.
Despite the nationwide uproar the parties caused, some white students at Clemson University said the participants meant no harm, the AP reported.
Clemson student Fayssoux Evans White said in an interview on CNN that she knows many people who dress "gangsta" for Halloween and she did not think these acts constituted racial profiling.
However, the organizers of the Clemson party released an unsigned letter apologizing for any harm they caused, CNN reported.
Although some school officials and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People denounced the party as insulting and inexcusable, others said they were the result of misguidance from rappers and hip-hop artists.
Jenn Tyre, a first-year graduate student in the School of Communication, said she was angry because of similar attitudes at AU.
As an undergraduate, Tyre said she saw black students who joined the so-called "white fraternities" wearing T-shirts that bore nicknames such as "Dark Meat" and "Token."
Many white students portray what they see in rap videos in an attempt to find acceptance from black friends, Raven Radley, a senior in SOC and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., said. She said she does not take offense to the imitation as long as it is not derogatory.
James Johnson, a black psychology professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington who teaches a seminar on race and prejudice, told the AP that the white participants are "clueless kids."
Johnson blamed black rappers who perpetrate negative stereotypes of blacks by dressing and acting like criminals, the AP reported.
According to Leslie Picca, a sociologist from the University of Dayton, these "gangsta" partygoers are members of a new generation that is growing unaware of racial tensions.
"They have the belief that racism isn't a problem anymore so the words they use and the jokes they tell aren't racist," Picca told the AP.
Lonnie Randolph, president of the South Carolina chapter of the NAACP, said the parties are not harmless fun.
"We once lynched African-Americans as good fun and humor," Randolph told the AP.
