Okay, So Here’s Where We Are
I’m not saying that Donald Trump is responsible for this, but he sure didn’t help any at damn all.
A sorority in Alabama apologized on Friday for a T-shirt that it made depicting a racially offensive image of an African-American person eating a piece of watermelon.
Stacy Bruton, the international president of Alpha Delta Pi, issued a public apology and said the organization will investigate how its chapter at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama was able to commission the making of the T-shirt.
Okay, so here we are, where people in the dirty South think it’s really okay to put pictures of African Americans eating watermelon on a sorority shirt.
Yeah.
These women.
By the way, Samford is 81% white and 6% African American.
Now, here’s where we are with stuff like this. The newspaper felt the need to include this:
African-Americans liking watermelon is considered a racial stereotype and is generally regarded as offensive.
Really? “Generally?” Still? Gee, that wasn’t repealed by the Republican congress? You know, to avoid political correctness and speak your mind?
Thanks to Bryan for the heads up.
Samford U where parents too st00pid to spell Stanford send their children who are too st00pid to spell SAT scores, and other excuses for being too damn dumb to blow a dog whistle.
1I remember when Fuzzy Zoeller made some crack about Tiger Woods and fried chicken and collard greens… it was the end of his golfing career.
2Maybe these stupid idiots are related to that racist asshole…
http://www.businessinsider.com/fuzzy-zoeller-racist-tiger-woods-joke-2013-5
I would like to know what in the holy hell that image had to do with their spring formal.
3To quote JJ, “Ala-damn-bama”.
4What do y’all expect from a school founded by Southern (Aladamnbama) Baptists? http://www.samford.edu/about/history
5RA, the irony of the Samford webpage is precious. Their academic and athletic bragging rights are the accomplishments of the 6% African-American members of the alumni.
6Oh, African Americans and watermelon. What a stereotype.
Of course, I remember back in the ’80s when I was in school the sorority girls were pretty and well-groomed and perhaps bitchy but at least had manners.
Apparently now just pushing your nasty hair behind your ear is considered grooming.
My my, how stereotypes have changed.
7“African-Americans liking watermelon is … generally regarded as offensive.”
Thank you Reuters for Whitesplaining a consequence of cause and effect as noted in your story. It was no doubt a revelation to many of your readers.
8I am an alumnus of ADPi. It was the first US sorority, founded at Wesleyan Female College in Macon, GA, May 15, 1851. The DELTA Chapter (4th chapter chartered) is at the Univ of Tx. While I cannot defend this stupidity and racism, I have to say it breaks my heart. I got an interesting dose of reality while my first husband attended law school at the Univ of GA, where I affiliated with the UGa alumni group, since I was not eligible due to my graduation/married status, to be a member of the chapter there. Lots of high maintenance, snobby Southern Belles in that chapter, and like on many other campuses, the ADPi’s were hot snot, so to speak. The cheerleaders, the homecoming queens, they did their charity gigs and became bastions of southern society after graduating. Married well. I fit right in with that little alumni group, given my husband was in law school and came from an excellent Old Southern family. Some of my friends today still come from that period in my life, even though I have not lived in Georgia since we moved to Denver after Paul’s graduation in 1975. I belong to my ADPi Alumni Assn nationally (based in Atlanta), and to my local alumni chapter in Abilene, where I am fairly certain I am one of the only left wing liberal Democrats in the group. What can I say? For a group of over-indulged, naive Southern Belles, stuff like this never hits their radar screen as offensive. It’s just part of their DNA. Sad Sad. I’m sorry this happened.
9Patticakes, rest easy. I’ve known any number of sororities at several schools over the years and unfortunately they all think they are hot snot, etc. etc. ADPI does not have a corner on stooopid. They are going to grow up and for some of them if not all, its gonna hurt because they set themselves up for it.
10D’jall hear about Hair Drumpf faking as his own spokesperson? Now there is a Spokesperson Name Generator so you can be your own spokesperson too! When I’m faking as my own spokesperson, my name is Heidi Reigns. Woo-hoo!
Try it: https://goo.gl/b1kNEh
By Heidi Reigns
11Drumpf swears up and down he was not his own spokesman,then he is shown evidence where he admits he did the deed, then he says he and a subordinate both did it. That pretty much covers every angle to this story. He used last names of Miller and Barron or Baron when he was doing something he didn’t do and didn’t know a thing about.
Heidi Reigns. huh? Add an s and you either quit or you didn’t. Lesson for Drumpf.
12The president apologized personally in an email? Did he add any little heart emoticons to show his personal sincerity?
13https://twitter.com/Ya_Hayati__/status/730922582577455104/photo/1
a pic of
14We picks and sings.
As for trump, people who pretend to be somebody else so they can review or explain themselves generally think nobody else is going to do it. Which is generally true.
15New words escape me. Tired of the offspring of the treasonous southern states and their converts. Tired of evangelicalism. Tired of the relentlessness of southerners and evangelicals then and now. They are NOT right, they were never right and they are never going to be right. And it seems I will never know peace from them and their rhetoric. Very depressing.
16Even if they could plausibly claim that they were just so innocent that they were completely unaware that African-Americans/watermelon is a hoary racist stereotype, the imagery on the shirts didn’t stop there. As has been reported elsewhere:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/samford-university-apologizes-over-sorority-s-t-shirt-racist-imagery-n574131
the shirts also included images of a slave picking cotton, among other things. REALLY hard to claim you didn’t grasp the significance of THAT. At least, according to my spokesperson, Bryan Admiral. (Thanks Debbo, er, I mean Heidi – that was fun!)
17So I started my internet search to send an email to the grand vizier of AD3.14159 suggesting that goof common sense calls for una$$ing and closing the Sanford chapter, say today by 5pm. I found a picture of her here
http://hottytoddy.com/2014/09/08/alpha-delta-pi-breaks-ground-on-5-million-chapter-house/
yeah that page is named “Hotty Toddy”. F’omg stoopid. “Experience the South”. Here experience THIS.
Then I looked at the rest of the webpage content….
Rebel f’ing Drive??
Rebel Spirit Gallery?????
So ok. I hate this. Hate it. Secede Mississippi today. Please?
18PKM, Southern Baptists do irony very well. When the hubs was in the doctoral program at THE Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville we became friends with several doctoral students from the Baptist Seminary in Ogbomosho, Nigeria. You know, the people we send missionaries to “save” from their sinful ways. All was fine on the seminary campus, but just let these same students venture out into churches in the general population in Louisville and it was often “we don’t want them blak people comin over here, they need to stay where they was.” Yes, this was in the early to mid-70’s I’m sorry to say.
We knew some folks who went to Samford to teach religion. I don’t know who among them might still be there. I did recognize a few names on the Emeritus faculty. The ones we knew would be aghast and appalled at the behavior of this sorority.
Please note, I haven’t been a Southern Baptist for a long long time.
19Whatever the racist history is behind these images, the actual watermelon historical facts are quite interesting. The watermelon is a member of the gourd family, related to pumpkins, squash and such. From Foodeditorial.com “A glance at the pages of history reveals that the first ever watermelon harvest was recorded 5000 years back in Egypt. Historical records also narrate an interesting event associated with watermelons. It is said that a watermelon was thrown at the Roman Governor Demosthenes during a political debate. In reply, he picked up the fruit and thanked the thrower for providing him with a helmet as he fought for the Philip of Macedonia.”
20China and its people actually produce and eat the most watermelons in the world. I personally associate the melon culturally with the Turks, as that is where I first really got to know it. Yeah, I know, I’m not originally from around here!! This is what happens when you let those pesky immigrants into the country LOL
Pretzelogic, is that a slave or a sharecropper? Not that there’s a big difference.
21Blue Meadow: your remark about watermelons and China brought up a memory of traveling there. You can tell when dinner is over if the watermelon is served.
I went to Duke in the ’50’a so saw the stupidity of race up close and personal.
22ADPi sounds like a page right out of “The Help” … snotty Southern ladies who treated their help like “the help!”
23And is that an overseer with a rifle on the top right of the t-shirt? I could be seein’ things, but it would fit with the theme.
24Minny is going to send over some naahce slaahces of choklit paah for Hilly and her sorority sisters.
25Generally regarded as offensive? Does anyone know of an example where it is not offensive?
26Happy darkies all right. That’s what my Gramma used to call them. Of course, she was born in 1900. She stopped using that kind of language in the 1960s because she’s compassionate and smart. Apparently those dumb ADPi girls (not mature enough to be women) aren’t as smart in their 20s as Gramma was in her 60s.
27Debbo, cut them a break– they’ve probably never seen a black person who wasn’t scrubbing the floor or breaking rocks or…. Oops, my mistake, they could have turned on the news pretty much any day and seen that Obama guy… not eating watermelon.
28Rhea – slave or sharecropper (and no, there’s not a LOT of difference, though what there is is important)? Hard to say for sure, at least from the fuzzy image that accompanied the article. But the nbc article I linked to specifically referred to the slave imagery:
“The shirts… depict a map of the state of Alabama containing several scenes — including a black man eating watermelon and a slave picking cotton. University officials said they rejected the design, but the shirts were produced anyway.”
Good (or bad) enough for me, I guess.
29I have an idea. BEFORE that chapter is kicked off campus, which it should be, force every white member to eat an entire watermelon at one sitting, while being videoed. Put it on YouTube.
I bet you no other chapter will be that stupid, because eating enough watermelon at once will make anyone puke and need the toilet fast. Having your glamour girl self shown internationally throwing up watermelon would be a permanent downer.
(I once took part in a watermelon eating contest…and that, folks was a disaster I will not describe, a pyrrhic victory of determination over common sense when the innards rebelled.)
30And I have now emailed the president of said university an email, intended to sting:
Sir,
Racism is not a Christian value, even for Southern Baptists. If you are not “advancing the mission of Christ” by inculcating in your students both respect for all human beings and an understanding of what is hurtful to them, then you can’t “engage the global community in learning, faith, and service.”
Clearly your white students need a solid, unmistakeable, unavoidable education aimed at mitigating their racist upbringing. It is a Christian duty of a school that claims Christian values to ensure that not only are all its students, of whatever race, are treated with respect and courtesy, but that all its students are aware of their own biases and learn that when Christ said to love your neighbor, He did not mean “but it’s OK to ridicule and stereotype the ones who aren’t like you.”
I know there are white Southern Baptists who are not racist (some of them marched with civil rights groups in the ’60s) but too many are. Too many “Christian” schools in the South were started just to maintain segregated schools for whites. So it’s about time you educators got the rest of the Southern Baptists redirected…or stop claiming you are promoting Christian values. Your university, your responsibility, as an educator and as a Christian. And if you care, as an American, as well.
Sincerely,
31Elizabeth Moon
@Elizabeth Moon
During the first Boy Scout summer camp my first son attended, I was tasked with purchasing a dozen watermelons for the Thursday evening watermelon feast. Told it was a tradition of this particular troop to stand down from the camp program and eat watermelon Thursday evening, I asked why? The Scoutmaster told me some of the boys were dehydrated and they wouldn’t be after eating the watermelons, and that the homesick boys had eaten mostly peanut butter since Monday and hadn’t made a bathroom stop since Sunday or Monday. After the watermelon feast they would go to the bathroom. And so the troop would return the boys to their mommas in good health and the mommas in turn would look favorably on their boys returning to camp next year. Plus the watermelons were good, if a little messy, inexpensive fun. And all the above happened as predicted.
32Let’s see if I can remember: “Pink brimm-ed hats, that frame a pretty face, indicate a lady of some style and grace” … It’s not easy to shake that socially unconscious belle-stereotype, but i did.
33Right on, UmptyDump.
34Chocolate pie for all sororities and fraternities.
Those who eat it, deserve it and those who don’t must have read the book or seen the movie and learned at least one thing:
The secret ingredient in Minnie’s chocolate pie.
Even Polly the parrot from the Polly want a cracker saying got racist when asked by a person of color. Poly asked if he wanted a watermelon.
35Micr: That sounds about right. Our watermelon evening came a couple of weeks in. The last night we were given banana splits just before the parents picked us up. Other girls were crying that they couldn’t stand to leave or crying because it would be a whole year before they’d be back. I knew it was my one chance at going to camp, so…I asked the cryers if I could have their banana splits. Banana splits did not make me sick. At all.
My mother had watched crying girls emerge from the mess hall and then cling to their parents, begging to come again next year for the whole summer. I didn’t come out and didn’t come out and she began to worry (knowing this was my one session) that maybe I was caught up in the emotional storm. I finally emerged, grinning from ear to ear. “Are you OK?” she asked, putting the car into gear. “I got banana splits!” I said. “They were all crying too much to eat theirs. But five was enough.”
36Makes me wonder how these girls “brain storming” sessions went that ended up with these shirts:
“Hey girls, let’s come up with an image or a slogan that really defines our sorority – show everyone what we’re all about.”
“……..”
“okay, how about a t-shirt with a black person eating a watermelon on it.”
“Brilliant! Let’s get on that right away. Go sisters!”
37America’s only hope lies with a big honking, white bird with an apt job description for a moniker-Trump Eater Swans- coming soon to a migratory route near you. First Drumpf then Southern Baptists.
38Debbo, the Trump PR agent charade made Sunday morning TV on Meet the Press. It went like this: no, it will not turn the R campaign around and into the ground. What it will do is cause way more people to question Trump’s coherency as in sanity but there are limitations on even that. The sad thing is about a lot that has been happening in the campaign is that my friends and family who don’t live in an area with a newspaper with a pulse know nothing about this or many of the other questionable things Trump has done. Most are not aware of his bankruptcies and they have only a vague idea of his marital background. Yes, they do watch TV but in their market area, regular network broadcasters are the thing, not cable or internet. They pretty much can’t afford that. The Noon, 6 PM and 11 PM newscasts devote only 15 minutes to actual “news” and the rest to sports and weather plus commercials. This is how American is being kept dumb!
39These girls are begging for community service. (yes, girls, as they’ve yet to earn the sobriquet of ladies or women) But the problem is, what are they qualified to do? Teaching adult literacy classes is probably beyond them. Really. What could we expect them to do that wouldn’t require strict supervision? Let their parents participate. If they can afford tuition for their special snowflakes, they can afford to pay for the supervision required for these girls to participate in a community service program. Maybe the parents will learn something, too, if they observe their little dears needing supervision to pick up trash on campus.
40Is a sobriquet a charcoal briquet before the alcohol bath is applied before ignition?
41Good on you, Elizabeth Moon.
42Are those people really smart enough for university?
43I have read the book and seen the movie in the theater and on the ole TV more then a few times and I crack up every dang time Minnie delivers that chocolate pie to Ms. Hilly. OMG … that is absolutely the best part … plus the blonde girl learning to cook for her hubby!! Can’t remember her name, but she was the one the snobs all snubbed and she kept having miscarriages … such a good story “The Help!” Not the miscarriages, but the story itself!! You know what I mean!!
44