| Rudey |
04-06-2005 07:44 PM |
You do help very much in answering my question.
Even though I'm someone you don't know and my compliment probably means little, you write rather well.
-Rudey
Quote:
Originally posted by Wolfman
The answer to your query is not a simple one, as a previous poster said. People do have all kinds of motivations to join the organizations they do. But as a matter of history, not hearsay or interfraternal polemics, one major reason people are attracted to or prejudiced against certain groups is due to certain stereotyes that do have an influence among those oriented to NPHC groups. It is ironic though that the websites of our groups don't address this issue head on.
Just as the founding of Kappa Alpha Society led to the founding of Delta Phi and Sigma Phi, and the presence of Alpha Delta Phi at Miami of Ohio led to the organization of Beta Theta Pi, and a rift amongst members of the Dekes at Miami led to the founding of Sigma Chi, simliar dynmaics led to the founding of most NPHC groups. (This is not much discussed nowadays but it is important and interesting;even some historical accounts tend to gloss over this.) Where this knowledge has been lost or obscured, the stereotypes that are attached to the groups are the link to this history. As I have said on numerous occasions, this has a powerful influence on some,favorably or unfavorably predisposing them to certain groups. These issues revolved around class/caste differences, social tastes, etc.
In Arnold Rampersad's magisterial multi-volume biography of Langston Hughes,who was initiated into the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity at Lincoln University(PA) by the Beta Chapter, he notes a letter from Countee Cullen, friend and fellow poet and auteur of the so-called Harlem Reniassance who, when he finds out that Hughes is going to pledge Omega, tries to dissuade him from doing so. (Cullen was an Alpha.) The issue was one of being in the premier black fraternity or, from the viewpoint of Omegas, a sense of false elitism. This was definitley a "hot button" issue with the Sigmas also. Similar dynamics playes themselves out amongst the sororities also.
When I went to a Kappa "smoker" in '79, the Province Polemarch, who was from my hometown and a classmate of my mother, spoke disparingly of Omega men at one point. And a brother in a chapter I was in in California, whose son's college roomate and primary circle of friends were Sigmas, told us that he sat his son down one day and told him that if he pledged Sigma he would disown him, and a DST friend of mine told me that when she was a little girl her DST mom would not let her wear pink and green. These are just examples of sentiments by some NPHC Greeks themselves who hold vey strong views. Are they the majority, I don't think so. But, in fact, if this is the case for informed and well-educated folk, what about the outsiders wannabees. As I've stated on several occasions, when I often meet a non-Greek and they see that I'm an Omega man, they often respond in a certain stereotypical way. It appears to me that most NIC and NPC groups do not have this powerful "branding" that shapes people's perception about them.
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