Quote:
Originally Posted by fascination
I just looked at several pages of the most recent pictures in the "post your bid day pics" thread. In virtually all of them, there are 0, 1 or 2 black faces among 30-150 white ones from non-Southern schools. In only one photo of a small group did I see more than 10% black members. Ole Miss should not be the only school called out specifically on this issue. If it is true that "Ole Miss had explicit national policies excluding members of color for most of their history, " how do you explain the sea of overwhelmingly white faces at those other schools? This smacks of the pot calling the kettle black, if you'll pardon the pun. The reality is that it's not a Southern thing and it's not an Ole Miss thing. The bid day pictures prove that the "Whites Only" sign is still hanging at schools in the North, South, East and West.
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You misquoted LowCSharp. Ole Miss didn't have explicit national policies, "most (all?) of the HW GLOs at Ole Miss had explicit national policies excluding members of color for most of their history." Those are the same organizations that are on other campuses as well.
There are greek systems in Michigan that are as racially mixed as their student population. The most racially integrated greek system I've seen is at the University of Toronto. But, I also know of campuses where the "whites only" sign, as you put it, has been gone for 30 years but the numbers of minorities who go through recruitment is still very small.
I do think there is a "chicken and egg" problem here. I don't know the solution but I think that is a good dialogue to have because I think the segregation perpetuates itself even on campuses where race wouldn't be a barrier to joining any of the NPC groups, from the membership selection perspective. When we read some of the recruitment stories of regulars on GC who went through NPC recruitment as African Americans, we see them describe the attitudes from both sides. Many of them are questioned on why they want to join a "white" sorority instead of a "black" one. And, as the article said, if you don't see people "like you" in the chapters, you may not even consider joining.
I think it is more useful to ask "How do we attract more African Americans to our organizations?" than it is to just say the "whites only" sign is still up. I think that for most chapters, that sign isn't up. Before I could say that for sure, I'd want to see numbers of African American women going through recruitment and being dropped from the process completely. Is that happening? Or are they just not coming through recruitment at all? If it is the former, shame on us. If it is the latter, then how do we change that?
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