Racism is indeed alive and well in the United States of America. It has been with us carefully concealed behind closed doors but it has recently festered and been lured out into the open by the presence of an African American President. If you have been in the South long enough and have been around the "good ol' boys" behind closed doors you have eventually heard the racist remarks especially if they think you are a "good southern man".
The incident at the University of Oklahoma is not a rare event. The fraternity in question, the SAE or Sigma Alpha Epsilon has numerous incidents of racial hatred and the fact they tout their connection to the antebellum south or the south while slavery still existed reveals the underlying rot and any expulsion of students from the Oklahoma SAE chapter by it's national headquarters is just window dressing for damage control. I once heard the loud and open use of the "n" word in the adjacent dorm to an SAE dorm and it was clearly used as if it was nothing new around there. I was actually looking around to see if any minority students were nearby so naïve then that such a backward racist condition could exist in a place where people have generally been understood to be at least relatively intelligent. Everywhere you looked in this area everyone was white and very well dressed, tight custom haircuts, all of it. The place reeked of privilege and entitlement and now the image of an SAE song-leader in his conservative suit and little bow tie leading by hand flip loudmouthed use of the "n" word in a blatantly racist and hate based song to bus riders from an SAE fraternity becomes all the more pathetic and you know that by the open and unashamed atmosphere on the bus that this has already occurred on occasions before.
So you have heard of this blatantly racist and hate infused sing-a-long on an SAE bus and yes the year is 2015, and you probably heard where the racist song-leader went to school before going to Oklahoma University. It was a prestigious 16,000.00 a year private prep school called Jesuit Preparatory Of Dallas. It would be nice if they understood the Jesus part of it but it is a private school like so many of the residents of fraternities and sororities hail from and it is part and parcel of what contributes to the growing sense of indifference in the 1%.
Today there is a blatant and clear schism growing in our land and it is at the core of why there is so much indifference to the growing income gap between rich and poor and why corporate profits soar while wages for the 99% remain stagnant even in the face of inflation. You would think that as soon as an income gap of the kind we have today raised it's ugly head there would be a rapid response to it in the government legislatures across the land. You would think that such a growing gap would not be tolerated by fair minded people with any real sense of justice. That people in power show a cold shoulder to it seems very strange considering the kind of nation we have always been taught this should be since the 50's, 60's and 70's.
The gap between rich and poor has been growing for over thirty years and at first it was something that could be considered temporary but we have far passed that in the timeline. There should have been serious action taken by now but there is a reason that is hasn't and that reason is the rabid sense of privilege, entitlement and gross indifference that surrounds the insulated leaders of today. The leaders present in the 50's to 70's had been galvanized by a world war and they understood the plight of their less fortunate brothers but a different condition exists today however. The leaders of today were once students at very prominent universities across America and the vast majority of them have come from wealthy families that can afford to send their children to private schools and house them in exclusionary fraternities at expensive universities. The majority of these "money first" families are rightwing ideologically and racially tinted toward an elitist attitude or supremacist mind. Their children are raised in privileged upscale communities or gated communities and too many grow up spoiled with an ensuing sense of entitlement and expectation transferred from the parents and make no mistake they have their counterparts among the low income that have been manipulated by the same rich and powerful to favor anti tax/anti government ideologies translating into much the same positions on issues as elitists but that of course is another story.
So the very wealthy have everything going their way except for that old stick in the mud affirmative action that may cause a fluctuation some where down the line in their 1% best laid plans. It is not hard to see how these students can connect the dots of ignorance but of course many parents have laid it all out for them to create the mindset of elitism and racism. The result are spoiled rich brats that cry and whine behind close doors because they may not always be able to maintain their longstanding white preferential treatment. Yes the parents are complicit but the blame has to fall eventually on the adult student.
So somewhere along the line there is the genesis of a self-serving spirit spawned from the halls of previous rightwing elitists that work to make and provide bubble worlds for these students when they come to face everyone else at college. The SAE fraternity among others are created to bring like minded rich kids together so that there is less likelihood they will be "polluted" with common working people's thinking. The rich and privileged then do not have to room and board with others exposing themselves to attitudes and beliefs of others from different income worlds. They never have to really hear the other side of the story of those living on less. Instead, in one of the most grievous mistakes of our society we allow these kinds of students to corner themselves off in a privileged fraternity or sorority bubble world extension of the wealthy gated community bubble world they come from. Thankfully there is no World War as in the 1940's but lost is the impetus that brought young people of different income levels together to identify with each others predicament. What happens now is they never learn about the other side of life at this formative point in their lives. The rich student never learns of the struggles and pain of those on different income levels. They would learn all that if they lived with them in a democratically mandated dormitory setting and they would learn to empathize with many but such a gut check realization never ensues as they now easily sit by and gaze with indifference on the exploding gap between rich and poor.
Universities and colleges are the one place where we should require students to mix relative to race, ethnic origin and income level. All things considered it is the intelligent thing to do and universities are supposed to be bastions of intelligence but what in the world do we end up doing? We provide fraternal bubble worlds for rich kids further reinforcing their expectation of elitism. Children of the wealthy are sent to private elementary schools, then private high schools and then with a chance to finally mature into a well-rounded qualitative intelligence they are instead placed into an exclusionary fraternity.
For too many years we have essentially created an elitist class of indifferent leaders through in and throughout the strata of our land in every business and every corridor of government. This is at the core of why outrageous growing inequality is tolerated. Too many wealthy students destined for corporate management and representative government are essentially taught that the love of money will override any and all other principles of humanity in their elite insular bubble world and fraternities insure that state of mind is fixed. They never feel the pain and they do not realize the importance and weight of those higher principles that are written in the most respected annuals of religion and our founding government. For the elitist student it becomes the game of finding the place especially prepared for them in the elitist world they expect to occupy and you can be sure that anything like affirmative action that tries to level the playing field is received poorly at best as attested to in the SAE fraternity expose' at OU. Racism and elitist entitlement go hand in hand so well in this kind of environment. That many of their parents instill in them this mentality is a crime in the beginning.
Wisdom declares that fraternities and sororities should be abolished completely. They should be an embarrassment for an intelligent people and it is only the corrupting influence of the wealthy that maintains them for the most expansive of self-serving motives. The fact that the national SAE blatantly discourages minorities with it's touting of antebellum south origins, has repeated racist incidents and is in fact the largest fraternity in America should cause everyone to do a double take in their dream world of expected reality and wake up furthermore to the meddling and corrupting tentacles of the rich and powerful.
The bottom-line is that encouraged indifference maintains the growing gap between rich and poor and the fraternal order system for undergraduate students maintains and reinforces that indifference at a core turning point in college students lives.
The incident at the University of Oklahoma is not a rare event. The fraternity in question, the SAE or Sigma Alpha Epsilon has numerous incidents of racial hatred and the fact they tout their connection to the antebellum south or the south while slavery still existed reveals the underlying rot and any expulsion of students from the Oklahoma SAE chapter by it's national headquarters is just window dressing for damage control. I once heard the loud and open use of the "n" word in the adjacent dorm to an SAE dorm and it was clearly used as if it was nothing new around there. I was actually looking around to see if any minority students were nearby so naïve then that such a backward racist condition could exist in a place where people have generally been understood to be at least relatively intelligent. Everywhere you looked in this area everyone was white and very well dressed, tight custom haircuts, all of it. The place reeked of privilege and entitlement and now the image of an SAE song-leader in his conservative suit and little bow tie leading by hand flip loudmouthed use of the "n" word in a blatantly racist and hate based song to bus riders from an SAE fraternity becomes all the more pathetic and you know that by the open and unashamed atmosphere on the bus that this has already occurred on occasions before.
So you have heard of this blatantly racist and hate infused sing-a-long on an SAE bus and yes the year is 2015, and you probably heard where the racist song-leader went to school before going to Oklahoma University. It was a prestigious 16,000.00 a year private prep school called Jesuit Preparatory Of Dallas. It would be nice if they understood the Jesus part of it but it is a private school like so many of the residents of fraternities and sororities hail from and it is part and parcel of what contributes to the growing sense of indifference in the 1%.
Today there is a blatant and clear schism growing in our land and it is at the core of why there is so much indifference to the growing income gap between rich and poor and why corporate profits soar while wages for the 99% remain stagnant even in the face of inflation. You would think that as soon as an income gap of the kind we have today raised it's ugly head there would be a rapid response to it in the government legislatures across the land. You would think that such a growing gap would not be tolerated by fair minded people with any real sense of justice. That people in power show a cold shoulder to it seems very strange considering the kind of nation we have always been taught this should be since the 50's, 60's and 70's.
The gap between rich and poor has been growing for over thirty years and at first it was something that could be considered temporary but we have far passed that in the timeline. There should have been serious action taken by now but there is a reason that is hasn't and that reason is the rabid sense of privilege, entitlement and gross indifference that surrounds the insulated leaders of today. The leaders present in the 50's to 70's had been galvanized by a world war and they understood the plight of their less fortunate brothers but a different condition exists today however. The leaders of today were once students at very prominent universities across America and the vast majority of them have come from wealthy families that can afford to send their children to private schools and house them in exclusionary fraternities at expensive universities. The majority of these "money first" families are rightwing ideologically and racially tinted toward an elitist attitude or supremacist mind. Their children are raised in privileged upscale communities or gated communities and too many grow up spoiled with an ensuing sense of entitlement and expectation transferred from the parents and make no mistake they have their counterparts among the low income that have been manipulated by the same rich and powerful to favor anti tax/anti government ideologies translating into much the same positions on issues as elitists but that of course is another story.
So the very wealthy have everything going their way except for that old stick in the mud affirmative action that may cause a fluctuation some where down the line in their 1% best laid plans. It is not hard to see how these students can connect the dots of ignorance but of course many parents have laid it all out for them to create the mindset of elitism and racism. The result are spoiled rich brats that cry and whine behind close doors because they may not always be able to maintain their longstanding white preferential treatment. Yes the parents are complicit but the blame has to fall eventually on the adult student.
So somewhere along the line there is the genesis of a self-serving spirit spawned from the halls of previous rightwing elitists that work to make and provide bubble worlds for these students when they come to face everyone else at college. The SAE fraternity among others are created to bring like minded rich kids together so that there is less likelihood they will be "polluted" with common working people's thinking. The rich and privileged then do not have to room and board with others exposing themselves to attitudes and beliefs of others from different income worlds. They never have to really hear the other side of the story of those living on less. Instead, in one of the most grievous mistakes of our society we allow these kinds of students to corner themselves off in a privileged fraternity or sorority bubble world extension of the wealthy gated community bubble world they come from. Thankfully there is no World War as in the 1940's but lost is the impetus that brought young people of different income levels together to identify with each others predicament. What happens now is they never learn about the other side of life at this formative point in their lives. The rich student never learns of the struggles and pain of those on different income levels. They would learn all that if they lived with them in a democratically mandated dormitory setting and they would learn to empathize with many but such a gut check realization never ensues as they now easily sit by and gaze with indifference on the exploding gap between rich and poor.
Universities and colleges are the one place where we should require students to mix relative to race, ethnic origin and income level. All things considered it is the intelligent thing to do and universities are supposed to be bastions of intelligence but what in the world do we end up doing? We provide fraternal bubble worlds for rich kids further reinforcing their expectation of elitism. Children of the wealthy are sent to private elementary schools, then private high schools and then with a chance to finally mature into a well-rounded qualitative intelligence they are instead placed into an exclusionary fraternity.
For too many years we have essentially created an elitist class of indifferent leaders through in and throughout the strata of our land in every business and every corridor of government. This is at the core of why outrageous growing inequality is tolerated. Too many wealthy students destined for corporate management and representative government are essentially taught that the love of money will override any and all other principles of humanity in their elite insular bubble world and fraternities insure that state of mind is fixed. They never feel the pain and they do not realize the importance and weight of those higher principles that are written in the most respected annuals of religion and our founding government. For the elitist student it becomes the game of finding the place especially prepared for them in the elitist world they expect to occupy and you can be sure that anything like affirmative action that tries to level the playing field is received poorly at best as attested to in the SAE fraternity expose' at OU. Racism and elitist entitlement go hand in hand so well in this kind of environment. That many of their parents instill in them this mentality is a crime in the beginning.
Wisdom declares that fraternities and sororities should be abolished completely. They should be an embarrassment for an intelligent people and it is only the corrupting influence of the wealthy that maintains them for the most expansive of self-serving motives. The fact that the national SAE blatantly discourages minorities with it's touting of antebellum south origins, has repeated racist incidents and is in fact the largest fraternity in America should cause everyone to do a double take in their dream world of expected reality and wake up furthermore to the meddling and corrupting tentacles of the rich and powerful.
The bottom-line is that encouraged indifference maintains the growing gap between rich and poor and the fraternal order system for undergraduate students maintains and reinforces that indifference at a core turning point in college students lives.
