Maybe they were just costumes. Maybe in a perfect world, we wouldn't have had white performers in blackface as recently as only 50 years ago mocking black culture, and I could dress up as any Jackson without it being offensive. BUT, fact is, white people with black face paint, for any purpose, are a painful reminder for many of awful, racist uses of it in the recent past. And ignorance is no excuse; it is our job to educate ourselves about the world around us - especially as Greeks, who believe in character, learning, being gentlemanly, not being ignorant, and bettering the world around us.
I tend to read most the forums on here, including ones for chapters I am not in, and I've noticed this: Just about every single African American reader on this site thought these guys were out of line. Now there are two possiblities here - either all of the African American GCers are just hypersensitive, or maybe these guys were doing something, that (no matter what their intention) was at the very least ignorant. And I'd think pretty darn carefully before I commit myself to believing the former!
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Alpha Xi Delta
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