An article that took a hard look at the racism that is seems to be an intrinsic part of sorority life at the University of Alabama blew up this week. The Crimson White, UA’s student newspaper, reported that two black women were rejected from four traditionally white sororities this rush season because of pressures from the alums of those chapters. But what we know is that this isn’t a UA-specific problem.
The Crimson White article made a point of noting that while other southern schools have tried hard to diversify their Greek life, UA has fallen far behind. But on Wednesday I got an email from an anonymous sorority girl at “a very large southern University” who said that racism runs rampant at her school as well:
I have heard multiple stories (not my sorority in particular) that have turned down black women because they are afraid of losing funding from alumna or socials with fraternities who won’t interact with sororities who have black women due to the fact that they also could lose funding from their alumni.
It’s so disturbing that this practice continues to happen, but I think it occurs a lot more than we think. Especially in the south.
The comments on the original post indicate that this anonymous sorority girl is right, and that these practices aren’t so different than those used 40 or 50 years ago. howlingfrog writes:
My mother was in a sorority at Ohio State in the mid 60’s, and they refused to let a close friend of hers in because she was black. My mom considered quitting in protest, but decided to stay in to try to change things from within. She failed. It’s one of her biggest regrets to this day.
A big problem with Greek life is the divide between the overall, national organizations (who, in the case of UA, have stridently denied that they had anything to do with preventing black women from joining their organizations) and the local chapters. In the case of UA, their race issues seem to stem from their chapter alums, a point reiterated by students who talked to Total Frat Move. Explains Steakasaurusrex:
This used to happen fairly frequently in the 50s and 60s at colleges around the country. It’s a little surprising—though only a little—that it’s still happening in certain places. At my college, where I was an active member of a Greek organization, a number of the fraternities were “local” as opposed to “national” as a direct result of this kind of behavior from alums or members of the national chapters. Basically, many of the chapters separated from their national fraternities in reaction to the constant blackballing of African Americans and Jews. It had gotten so bad that members of the fraternity from other colleges were coming in to monitor the rush process and keep out “undesirables,” so most of the houses told the national people to go fuck themselves.
Good for some of these girls for at least speaking up. The bigger a shitstorm this is, the more the University will have to deal with it. Of course, they’re fucked if the alumnae really do pull funding, but what a way to go. “Sorry, we don’t exist anymore because our alumnae are super duper racist!”
But Megganna elaborates, and argues that sometimes, it is the national organization’s issue:
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