The University of Oklahoma’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity is the topic of a surfaced Instagram video this week. This nine-second video features a racist chant to the rhythm of “If You’re Happy And You Know It.” The chant (below) references lynching and claims that “a [black person] will never be in SAE.” However, the referencing to black people was replaced with a racial slur.
“There will never be a [slur] at SAE. There will never be a [slur] at SAE. You can hang them from a tree but they’ll never sign with me. There will never be a [slur] at SAE.”
After this video gained attention, the University of Oklahoma cut all ties with the fraternity. As a result, SAE lost their house and were told to get all of their belongings and vacate the premises by midnight on Tuesday. The President of the University, David Boren, commented on the video:
“This has broken my heart that this can happen on our campus… Real Sooners (University’s nickname for students) are not racist and bigots… I do not have words in my vocabulary to adequately describe how I feel about people who would use those words that way and chant that way.”
On Monday morning, students in a black student group hosted a rally against racism. Mr. Boren has promised an investigation and an activist apart of the black student group has stated to CBS that they “do not believe it is an isolated incident.”
Research has revealed that the fraternity has only pledged two black men and the last one was an active SAE pledge 14 years ago. The last black member, William Bruce James II, spoke to “KFOR,” a local news channel, about his experiences in the fraternity:
“For a lot of guys, I was the first black guy they were around all the time. I didn’t fit their stereotypes and they realized they had unrealistic stereotypes [about black people].”
He even brought up a great point that the chant was yelled by multiple voices, so it is obvious that the chant was not only done that night. It must have been practiced beforehand.
2014 ended with racial hostility and 2015 begins in the same fashion.
Ironically, a story fueled with so much modern day racism surfaces the same day President Obama marches on Selma to mark one of the most powerful protests of the Civil Rights Movement era. It seems that as far as all people have come, it is never far enough.
