SAE Has A History Of Racism And Anti-Semantic Acts

American conservatism is also imbued in some of our young and manifest as racism.  Now, guess how it got there!

Unless you are visually impaired, you need no introduction to the following one minute video. 

The video was apparently taken by a young woman bus rider who did not take part-in, nor sympathize with, the racist chanters and members of the SAE Fraternity.

Watch for the over-the-top exposition of “white privilege” that manifest as raw racism with no real purpose beyond personal satisfaction of the psyches of a few. A few who were obviously raised in racist household and who without question was raised by racist parents. 

As we rant and rave about the horrors of ISIS, recognize that we also have undercurrents of over the top horrors in our communities and apparently among our young. The SAE chant (obviously not new to the Fraternity) and references to the “hanging tree” is all I need for reinforcement of my view regarding growing racism and hatred form conservatives.

The images on the bus are not far off form the US past and young people who adorned ties and “Sunday-go-to-meet-attire” to witness a killing. 

http://cnn.it/195xjuK

http://www.cnn.com/video/api/embed.html#/video/us/2015/03/09/lv-banfield-sae-racist-bus-song.cnn

SAE has a storied history with roots in the deep US South.

SAE was founded March 9, 1856, at the University of Alabama, five years before the American Civil War, according to the fraternity website. When the war began, the group had fewer than 400 members, of which “369 went to war for the Confederate States and seven for the Union Army,” the website says.

Interesting!  But, let’s jump forward to a more nascent look at the SAE.

CNN’s Carol Costello and a spokesman for the SAE.  Recall…“If is quacks like a duck and walks like a duck…..”

Is there a cultural problem within #SAE fraternities across the country? A history of racial problems @sae1986 @CNN http://t.co/Mui65J4wcx
— Carol Costello (@CarolCNN) March 10, 2015

Think Progress also published a piece with a detailed chronology of recent episodes of outright racist for members of the fraternity. It seems their Confederate army roots continue to sprout saplings.

Think Progress

This is hardy the first time, however, that an SAE chapter found itself in hot water due to the racist actions of its members. To the contrary, a brief search for publicly available articles and in the news database Nexis uncovered several similar incidents: In 2013, the frat’s Washington University in St. Louis chapter was suspended after pledges reportedly sang racial slurs to African American students. According to one description of the incident, One guy began to recite the lyrics to a rap song (Bitches Ain’t Shit by Dr. Dre) as if it were a slam poem. He was reading the lyrics from his phone. The majority of the group of guys he was with found it funny and some were laughing. One member of the group was videoing the event on his phone. The guys in the group asked the black people in the booth to “show some respect” for the performance. As [redacted] continued to recite the lyrics, he came across the word “nigga” and said it with no hesitation. One of the black students tossed an empty bottle at him in anger only to be told by the group that it was part of the song, so it was okay. The black student replied that it was still offensive and the group apologized half-heartedly. The student later apologized and admitted that this stunt was “part of an initiation for Sigma Alpha Epsilon.” The president of the Wash. U. chapter also apologized on Facebook. In December of 2014, SAE’s Clemson University chapterhosted a “Cripmas” party, named after the California-based “Crips” street gang. Photos of the incident depicted attendees at this party flashing gang signs and dressed in costumes intended to make them look like gang members. Much of the chapter’s leadership resigned after this incident, and the chapter “suspended all activity indefinitely” shortly after the incident, according to a statement by SAE’s national office. In 2006, an SAE member at the University of Memphis quit the fraternity after two other frat members harassed him for dating a black woman. According to an editorial in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the former SAE member “said SAE members used the N-word to refer to his girlfriend” and that they “also suggested that he must have met Darden on the street one night and that he couldn’t possibly be interested in a real relationship with someone of another race.” The Associated Press later reported that two students were suspended by SAE’s national office after they determined that these students “made comments that were inappropriate and unbecoming.” In 2006, SAE’s Baylor University chapter hosted an “E-Dawg”-themed party that the university’s NAACP chapter labeled “insensitive.” According to the Baylor Lariat, pictures “captured students wearing bandanas and holding 40-ounce bottles in brown paper during the party. One of the pictures depicted a student who covered herself in bronzer in imitation of a black person.” The pictures were discovered after they were posted to Facebook. In 2000, SAE’s Oglethorpe University chapter was put on probation, along with chapters from three other fraternities, after an incident where African American students visiting from other schools faced racial harassment and assault. According to one news report uncovered on Nexis, officials at two predominantly black colleges that competed in a cross-county meet at Oglethorpe “complained that Oglethorpe students in fraternity houses threw bottles at athletes and screamed racial epithets.” In 2009, Valdosta State University in Georgia hosted a community forum on “Heritage, Hate or Fear?” that was inspired by the university’s SAE chapter’s practice of flying a Confederate Flag on its front lawn. A lawyer for the fraternity’s national headquarters warned that the chapter could lose its charter if it continued to fly the flag.

If you think the SAE episode was that of young people who may have consumed far too much alcohol, think again.

How about the mock family lynching discovered on a US military base at a family housing unit?

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The problem is a deep rooted mindset that flows under the surface in America. A deep core reality that has not been extinguished in part due to US politics, but moreover it thrives within the minds and inner core of people raised by bigots and racists. To argue differently is an exercise in futility.