http://www.salon.com/2015/03/16/my_shucking_and_jiving_years_i_was_the_black_guy_in_a_white_frat/
“There will never be a ****** in SAE!” chanted a bunch of Biebers from the dark side. The OU frat video released earlier this week shocked the nation. But not me. I never believed the lie of a post-racial America, so new heights of white shyttiness don’t surprise me. Instead, my mind went to that kid who still longed to be the unwanted “******” in a fraternity where he’d be like Baldwin’s “fly in the buttermilk.” That black boy or girl who has no idea who the hell s/he is, who thinks that finding a home in places like the SAE house might offer some desperately needed sense of belonging. I write this in the hopes of reaching that lost black body floating adrift in the chaos of racial identity — just like I did for much of my life.
In the fall of 2003, I pledged a fraternity, the only chocolate member in the whole house. White kids trying to be black don’t count, of course. I was a blackout drunk, and I resolved long before setting foot on campus to surround myself with other blackouts, even if they were all white. Never mind that I was the first in my family to go to a proper university. Academia was the last thing on my mind. Fraternity culture gave me a place where I could indulge the way I wanted, without loved ones or teachers or longtime friends to slow me down. During orientation, I asked which houses hazed the worst and drank the hardest. It was nothing short of a drunk’s providence that landed me at 3 Frat Row.
In the house I settled on, the hazing was mental from the jump. Older guys seeking to humiliate me and 10 other strangers laughed when, after being told in a “lineup” to actually “fukk the wall like I meant it!,” I asked said wall if “she” enjoyed my black cock. It was a stupid bit of levity in an otherwise out-of-control 10-week hazing process. (My hell week ended with someone losing the top half of a finger. The chapter has since been shut down.) I took a bleak sort of pride in making the house’s worst hazer laugh so hard he had to leave the room, but I couldn’t see my shucking and jiving for what it was. I signed up willingly for the puking and the push-ups and the fists through panes of glass and the destruction of property and the coke-fueled misery that led to my half-assed suicide attempt and the being shytty to women and all the clichés of being a “frat dawg.”
When I passed the old group photos hung in the frat house, I would scan previous chapters for other chocolate faces. There was one from ’96-’97. Another from ’81-’82. Whooooaaa. One from 2000-’01. That was recent! “They’re probably all proud Republicans,” I couldn’t help but think.
At the time, I saw nothing wrong with this environment. During pledging, there was a frat brother who’d make me sing country music at dinner; no way the house colored boy would be into country, he probably wagered. Clearly, he didn’t know how white my childhood surroundings had been. In school settings, at least.
“There will never be a ****** in SAE!” chanted a bunch of Biebers from the dark side. The OU frat video released earlier this week shocked the nation. But not me. I never believed the lie of a post-racial America, so new heights of white shyttiness don’t surprise me. Instead, my mind went to that kid who still longed to be the unwanted “******” in a fraternity where he’d be like Baldwin’s “fly in the buttermilk.” That black boy or girl who has no idea who the hell s/he is, who thinks that finding a home in places like the SAE house might offer some desperately needed sense of belonging. I write this in the hopes of reaching that lost black body floating adrift in the chaos of racial identity — just like I did for much of my life.
In the fall of 2003, I pledged a fraternity, the only chocolate member in the whole house. White kids trying to be black don’t count, of course. I was a blackout drunk, and I resolved long before setting foot on campus to surround myself with other blackouts, even if they were all white. Never mind that I was the first in my family to go to a proper university. Academia was the last thing on my mind. Fraternity culture gave me a place where I could indulge the way I wanted, without loved ones or teachers or longtime friends to slow me down. During orientation, I asked which houses hazed the worst and drank the hardest. It was nothing short of a drunk’s providence that landed me at 3 Frat Row.
In the house I settled on, the hazing was mental from the jump. Older guys seeking to humiliate me and 10 other strangers laughed when, after being told in a “lineup” to actually “fukk the wall like I meant it!,” I asked said wall if “she” enjoyed my black cock. It was a stupid bit of levity in an otherwise out-of-control 10-week hazing process. (My hell week ended with someone losing the top half of a finger. The chapter has since been shut down.) I took a bleak sort of pride in making the house’s worst hazer laugh so hard he had to leave the room, but I couldn’t see my shucking and jiving for what it was. I signed up willingly for the puking and the push-ups and the fists through panes of glass and the destruction of property and the coke-fueled misery that led to my half-assed suicide attempt and the being shytty to women and all the clichés of being a “frat dawg.”
When I passed the old group photos hung in the frat house, I would scan previous chapters for other chocolate faces. There was one from ’96-’97. Another from ’81-’82. Whooooaaa. One from 2000-’01. That was recent! “They’re probably all proud Republicans,” I couldn’t help but think.
At the time, I saw nothing wrong with this environment. During pledging, there was a frat brother who’d make me sing country music at dinner; no way the house colored boy would be into country, he probably wagered. Clearly, he didn’t know how white my childhood surroundings had been. In school settings, at least.
), but know more than a handful of minorities that went to the private school i went to that lost that battle. I attribute my steadfastness to a couple of things. 1. My family building up the "brown pride". 2. My school and classmates at my private school. No joke they were the most open white folks i've ever met in terms of not being dycks or over doing their richness. I can honestly say in 4 years of going to that school I was never once made fun of...well there was this one polish friend of mine that used to talk shyt but he did it the same way i talk shyt to my boys at home. He'd be like, "you coming over this weekend the bushes need trimming" , I'd say, "yeah, just tell your mom she can't kiss me after she goes down her breath gets funky." We'd laugh. 