Segregation now, segregation forever, declare Red Pill Redditors

@ Jo

I used to do legal work for the Sun and NOTW; even the sub editors there looked down on the DM. They used to have competitions up with the best DM headline.

“Bible Code proves asylum seeker link to breast cancer” was one of my favourites.

But then the DM did such sterling, albeit out of character, work with the Stephen Lawrence case. Weird.

@Alan

Yeah, the whole Stephen Lawrence thing was a great bit of activism and they’ve done the occasional piece of very solid investigative journalism down the years. Their journalists have won a few Paul Foot awards.

But that’s life, isn’t it? Heroes aren’t perfect and villains don’t twiddle their moustaches. Maybe Paul Elam is kind to animals or something. I still have no hesitation in saying the Mail is, on balance, an awful newspaper that no one who cares about social justice should link to if there’s any alternative.

@WWTH

Yeah I agree with everything you said, the more I think about it. My initial reaction was just well that’s pathetic, but if that’s what they wanna do, I guess. . .
However, I think they do need some pushback on this, I didn’t realize they had received criticism in the past and clearly didn’t do any self-reflecting on the issue and decided yeah this video looks totally fine. So yeah, it does seem they intentional chose to white-wash their sorority.

I think the video highlighted and just overemphasized the IMPORTANCE of looking that way and only this specific way, which to me is an issue because it is basically saying a) looks are extremely important for a woman and b) if you don’t fit this narrow definition then you aren’t as valuable. Especially since this is a promotional video too it was just pathetic that the only thing you can take away from the video is we like to look good and prance around looking good, what else is there even worth doing? I have no problem with criticising the people in this sorority for that.

@Alan

The demographics most likely do reflect the video, I think that video would drive away anyone other than the exact narrow type of person they want in their sorority anyway. I dunno, maybe if they at least showed a more diverse group it might encourage other people to want to participate and lead to more diversity. At the very least people wouldn’t watch the video and have the message forced on them that “looks are super important if you’re a woman, and this is the only way a woman should look”. Although I think sororities and fraternities are more of a problem than anything, I’d rather they didn’t exist. I highly doubt any claims of giving back to the community are anything more than pandering and a poor justification for their existence and value. I’m glad in Canada they aren’t as popular or have seemingly the same kind of connections (from what I hear being part of these groups can give you greater access to people with connections, and obviously if you are only letting white people in . . . ).

There is a fraternity where I live whose sign reads “No Secrets, No Hazing” under their name (can’t remember who they are off the top of my head). But just the fact you feel you need to make that a permenant part of your advertising indicates a problem with that whole system. Not to mention the systemic rape culture/ sexism, racism, classism it perpetuates.

Fraternities and Sororities just another form of systemic oppression brought to you by… Patriarchy! (Now with extra peroxide!)

As a non-American, well, can someone explain what the hell all this is about? I’ve heard of “sorority” and “fraternity” before but have no idea what they do or what they are. They just seem to be groups of college students where incredibly shitty things are said and occasionally encouraged to happen. Their only purpose seems to be absolutely horrible collections of horrible people.

Opium4themasses: I never heard of this Law. I’m going to use that word now. I’ve been championing this idea all over the Internet, and didn’t know it. This idea that racists, whenever they find out black people are uncomfortable with something, start doing it more often and more obnoxiously than they did before.

The example I use is the Jenna Six Incident in the mid-aughts. Thereafter, whenever some a**hole got upset with any black person in their orbit,they hung a noose. People were hanging nooses everywhere, during the span of about three or four months, and then just as suddenly, it stopped. The same thing has happened with the confederate flags and people putting them at black churches. A year from now it will have blown over in favor of some other way to humiliate and hurt black people.

There are some people whose hatred for black people (and only black people, although other groups will do in a pinch) see every event in the world as an opportunity to hurt us. For example, they will harm themselves and vote against their own best interests, as long they think they’re hurting us worse.

The entire ship could be sinking and everybody is going to drown, but that’s okay, as long as a Black person drowns first.

As a Black woman, I find this level of hatred and sheer stupidity to be utterly and completely baffling.

@SSOU this might help:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/sorority-girls

I actually watched this entire show, I just couldn’t stop.

When frat boys sing racist or pro-rape songs they are rightly criticised and the fact they learned their attitudes from a patriarchal society is (while important to remember) no excuse. The same applies here – these are grown women who are responsible for their actions and associations. The social pressure that led them to appear in this video is worth discussing, but they should be allowed to hide behind it.

This reminds me of reading about Shirley Polykoff, who made Clairol shampoo an industry leader by inventing the “Does She … or Doesn;t She? Only her hairdresser knows for sure” slogan. According to the story, her future husband’s mother took him aside and asked if he knew whether she was a “real” blonde. (She wasn’t.) But that inspired one of the most brilliant slogans in advertising history. In effect it said, I’ll color my hair if I want to and it’s none of your damn business.” Nevertheless, as Wikipedia repeats the story, “Even though her Clairol advertising campaign encouraged women to take charge of their own lives, she did not want to be seen earning more than her lawyer husband and insisted that her advertising agency cap her salary at $25,000 a year. Upon the death of her husband, her company immediately doubled her salary twice and promoted her.”

That also makes me think of my wife’s mother who was raised in much the same manner as those sorority girls. She was a woman of considerable ability who could have been a successful businesswoman — she worked for many years as office manager of a small business — but she had been raised to be a charming wife and gracious hostess, and (probably due to this conflict) she was never able to make a real commitment to a career. As she aged, she became more and more disgruntled. She died fairly young from smoking cigarettes, which she loved as much as anything in life. The fact that my wife’s father raised my wife as the son he didn’t have, and that she chose him as her role model, added to her mother’s disgruntlement. You might say, well, probably her father held her mother back … but … after she died he married a woman who is an architect and contractor, building homes that she custom-designs, and as far as I can see he’s been totally supportive of her career and very proud of her success.

Regarding the amount of blame that should attach to the young women in the video, I think you have to feel that they’ve been pretty much totally brain-washed. Their beautiful-white-girl-who-knows-how-to-be-nice-to men privilege is so easy and so pleasant that it’s really very difficult for them to realize that what looks like an elegant tasty sandwich may turn out to be an ordinary shit sandwich in the long run. When everyone is treating you like a princess, it’s difficult to say, “No, this is really not the way things should be.” I think that often women who aren’t conventionally attractive have a better deal in the long run because they get their lessons in reality at a fairly early age. It’s sort of like the guy who is a star athlete in high school and college — everybody adores him, but then he has to go out in the real world where nobody gives a shit about all that, and it’s hard to get used to being Mr. or Ms. Average when you’ve been a star.

Regarding the amount of blame that should attach to the young women in the video, I think you have to feel that they’ve been pretty much totally brain-washed.

If they have been brainwashed, so have the college men who sing those misogynist and racist chants.

Why are people comparing these women and girls to frat boys singing songs about rape and lynching?

The group is very homogeneous but they have not explicitly said “no diversity allowed”. If questioned a lot of the women/girls would probably say something that is pro diversity. I know that in reality there is both structural and actual racism that prevents racial diversity in fraternities and sororities. However, unless the sorority in question has prevented non white/thin etc members from participating in the video, I don’t think the comparison with the fraternities is quite fair. After all the fraternties did something beyond not being diverse to be judged (and for the most part they also lack diversity). There are structural problems in many sororities/fraternities and this should be addressed but I’m not sure this group deserves particular criticism.

I’m also not sure brain washing is a fair comment. There are real social, financial and political advantages from being in the right sorority/fraternity. People also have a lot of parental and societal pressure to join. Conforming to this pressure isn’t brain washing but giving yourself all the advantages you can. This is also why it is serious that fraternities and sororities become more diverse. It is unfair that advantages with respect to future careers goes only to limited people based on race and appearance.

@Pear_Tree

I was pretty explicit about why I brought up the comparison with fraternities and it wasn’t to say that one act was as bad as another. It was to say that if growing up in a particular culture isn’t an excuse for the behaviour of fraternity members, then it shouldn’t be an excuse for the behaviour of sorority members.

In one of the earlier comments the video is put in context – this isn’t the first time they’ve been criticised for lack of diversity, so for me this is no longer about being clueless, it’s a group of people who are very comfortable broadcasting that they are a whites-only club.