Why are fraternities and sororities still so racially segregated?

[bluestateguy]

I find this so troubling, because it suggests that we still have trouble crossing racial lines when it comes to social relations. At so many colleges and universities Greek organizations are segregated by race to such an extent that one who is otherwise ignorant of history might think that there never was a civil rights movement. Many years ago, all black, all Hispanic, all Asian and all Jewish Greek organizations formed in response to discrimination from all WASP fraternities and sororities. That was understandable, and I would never suggest disposing of such groups. Rather, I am disturbed that fraternities and sororities don't seem interested in actually trying to be more racially and ethnically diverse. And yes, I impose most (though not all) of the burden for doing that on the shoulders of traditionally all white fraternities and sororities. For it’s their pattern of years of official discrimination that has resulted in the current segregated state of affairs.

On paper, I'm sure these groups have non-discrimination policies that claim to admit persons of all races, but the way they function in practice reinforces segregation. I remember 10 years ago I went to Florida for spring break with my college roommate. While there we stayed in a fraternity house of some friends of my roommate's sister. The house had confederate flags in several rooms, and several of the young men routinely used the n-word. An obvious atmosphere was created which made it clear that blacks were not welcome, regardless of what the fraternity's policy might have said on paper.

There are exceptions to this rule in more liberal parts of the country. I had a friend who went to UC-Irvine, and his fraternity had 4 black members, but these cases are just that, the exception, not the rule. We ought to expect more than occasional exceptions to the rule in 2006, especially from young people.

It's just so strange that so many colleges and universities are so stringent about affirmative action in admissions and faculty hiring, but curiously turn a blind eye when it comes to Greek organizations that have an official relationship with the institution.

[Cats Against Frist]

1. Why are all the blondes in AOPi and the overweight girls in Phi Mu?

Why are all the Sig Chis beefy, rich and stupid, while the Sig Eps and the Phi Taus are tall, geeky guys or smart guys. Why are the Pi Sigs the biggest druggies on campus? Why do the Pikes all seem like they have little pricks? Why do all the Farmhouse guys wear John Deere hats?

I don't know if it's like this at other schools, but, at all three of the colleges that I've attended, the people in the sororities and fraternities have fit an amazingly consistent image -- even from college to college. And, truthfully, I've never seen a black person in a white fraternity -- keep in mind, however, I went to school in Southern Indiana, Central Illinois, and Iowa.

I don't know why schools are not as concerned with it -- and I don't know that they're actually not, or haven't been, in the past, and decided it was best for everybody if all the guys listening to Korn and Limp Bizkit should stay in one house, and the step team should stay in another.

Maybe everyone likes it that way? And neither the black people or the white people have complained. :shrug:

[LostinVA]

2. My question is: why are fraternities and sororities still even around?

Can't people come up with some new way to make themselves feel superior to others? I went to a college that didn't allow them, so it's just plain weird to me.

Yeah, yeah, "service to the community." Whatever. Every friend of mine that was in one never talks about "service," they talk about sex, parties, pressure to fit into a certain image, etc.

:popcorn:

[bbinacan]

13. I was a Sigma Chi at

at UNC-Chapel Hill and while we did party a lot, we were known for the money we raised for charity. The event in which we raised money was called Derby Days. We raised money for purposes like the Ronald McDonald house and for a locally run school for children with mental problems. Each year, Derby Days had a theme. One year it was the "Jungle Book" and a group of us, dressed up as the characters, visited the children's cancer ward. It made their day. My character was Baloo the bear.

[alarimer]

14. I don't get them either

They feel exclusionary whatever the racial makeup. I knew I would never fit in so I never bothered to try. Some were more snobby than others at my school but the fact is they still choose people based on some criteria and some people, no matter how hard they try, will always be left out. And if these organizations are so important for business connections or employment or whatever, that means that a minority will have advantages that most do not have. But of course, rich people and the kids of rich people have even more advantages, fraternities or no fraternities. Can you tell I am a little bitter about being just an ordinary person? No money, no connections. This country, for all its egalitarian pretensions, has a very deeply entrenched social hierarchy, and it is symbolized by the fraternity/sorority system.

Okay I'll step off my soapbox now.

[ikojo]

20. It's a class thing. Back in the day parents encouraged

their sons and daughters to join fraternities and sororities to assure that they would associate and meet with the "right" people. By associating with frat boys, girls would have the opportunity of marrying someone from the "right" class. It was not so long ago that women were sent to college only to get an MRS.

[Nikia]

3. The Greek organizations at my college were integrated

We did not have any minority Greek organizations. My college was smalland we were all supposed to be integrated anyway as one of the ideals of the college.
The year after I joined a sorority, all the sororities were integrated. One of our black potential new members decided to join another sorority because there had never been a black member of that particuliar sorority, which had been on campus before WWI, before. She eventually became the president of that chapter. As a Panhellenic organization, we tried to promote an image that the Greek women's organizations were very accepting of diversity.
As far as the men, I found it funny that one of the prominent national fraternities on campus had quite a few black and South Asian members. I stayed on campus one year and desk clerked for summer conferences. One Southern white elitist seeming guy commented that he noticed that fraternity on campus, which was his fraternity, and that he would like his son to go to join that fraternity so he'd consider the college. I wondered if he would have been so enthusiastic if he had known that the chapter was probably very different from the one that he had been a part of.

[Nikia]

4. Something you do have to understand about Greek organizations

Is that they are self selecting. That may seem obvious, but that is why often the group remains a particuliar "type" for quite a while. I think that is particuliarly true in bigger groups on larger campuses. They get to select people who are just like them if they so choose. If the majority, or at least the leaders, are somewhat bigotted, diversity will not happen. If the majority are open minded and really acceptant of diversity, the bigotted members won't even speak against a potential new member.
I cannot imagine a Greek organization as racist as the one you described being on my alama mater's campus or not be reprimanded by our National organization. I would think that the Greek organizations in the South probably would be more like that since they do have a history. That is scary though.

[GOPisEvil]

5. I think part of it is economic, and part "tradition".

I think there are certain fees of membership in traditional social fraternities and sororities. For that reason, people of certain economic means might be left out. There are disproportionately more people of color in that group.

There are also "traditional" fraternities for African-Americans. I suppose they are larger at "traditionally black" campuses, but I suspect they are at other schools too.

That's my early-morning stab at an answer anyway.

[leftofthedial]

6. they are artifacts of the class order the ruling elite imposes on society

by creating their own exclusive social order, they seek to enforce a rigid economic order. These are mostly the same as any other exclusive club. These are artifacts of the English aristocracy, clubs that once were the exclusive domain of the aristocracy and then, as the nobility lost their wealth, became open to wealthy commoners.

it is a system intended to preserve the status quo and to foster elitism, pure and simple. In America, "elite" means "wealth" (or the overarching need to appear wealthy). Few members of minorities in this country are economically elite. These institutions give cover to the individual members who may not be racist in their personal lives.

It is just more of the MAN keeping us DOWN!

Until we destroy the last vestiges of this classist elitism, we will always have "racism," and the kind of class war that is now destroying the middle class.

Or then again, maybe it is just a bunch of racist beer guzzling idiots who don't want any darkies sharing their keg.

[Radical Activist]

12. I call them the Country Clubs of the college campus

They serve the same purpose. Good post.

[yellowdogintexas]

7. every campus has a different culture..

remember the historically black Greek Letter groups were founded in the historically black colleges. On campuses where these groups have chapters, many black students simply want to be part of that tradition, which may have been the group that their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles etc were a part of.

On the other hand if those orgs arent on a campus in the first place, then you have the situation of the traditionally white groups with a more diverse student body; what if the black students don't even bother with rush? What if the ones who do are persons that wouldn't fit in with a particular group regardless of ethnic origins?
There are always persons who sign up for rush who don't get bids from anyone...it just happens. At my college, most of the persons I knew who didn't get a bid were rather unlikable in the first place, just not pleasant people to be around, rude, arrogant, bad personalities, etc.

Now the fact that a group will tend to replicate it self is very true. One of our sororites was a "female jock" group, absolutely. All the PE majors ended up there. I am told by a friend who went to college in another part of the country that this same sorority on their campus was the La de da one.
Another group was the whole dyed to match preppie Villager tweed frosted hair we're so cool group(and on my friend's campus, THIS group was the 'jock' sorority).. and the third sorority (mine, I might add) was a very mixed bag of women who really were enormous fun to be around. Back in the late 1960's too and a very tiny black presence on campus(no black women at all). But one of the frats bid in a black guy in a time and place that you wouldn't expect it. I loved them for that.

[bluestateguy]

8. kick

:kick:

[xmas74]

9. My sorority had two black members

and three Hispanic. That doesn't sound like much but there were African-American sororities on campus and my campus was rather small anyway.

My big brother was the president of his chapter. His frat had white, African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Micronesian (small contingent on campus) and Samoan. His was the traditional jock frat and is a well-known fraternity nationwide.

I really think that it's not about race w/ many sororities and frats-it's all about likeminded people. Some are racist, some are overaware of socio-economic status, etc. My sorority only cared about who could party the best. We needed the dues so the money did matter but it didn't matter how you got it. Many of us had jobs and paid our dues that way. As a group, we did party and often. We also studied together, volunteered our time together and overall lived our lives together. We came from different backgrounds and had different interests-everything from cheerleaders to debaters(like myself) to theater to athletics.

If my daughter were to pledge someday I hope she will find a sorority like mine. Pledging was one of the best things I ever did.

[Left Is Write]

10. I have no idea. I've never been a part of the Greek tradition, nor

have my family members. The college I went to (and from which my father and two sisters graduated) disallowed exclusive societies.

[flamingyouth]

11. Ours was pretty diverse.

We had members of all kinds of backgrounds. In fact, my sorority was a lot more diverse than my high school.

[SoCalDem]

15. It costs A TON of money to have a kid LIVE away at college

these days.. There are probably fewer black families that can afford that extra expense. Kids in my generation routinely "went away" to college and lived on campus, but our own kids were unable to do so because of the cost..:(

[Benfea]

16. Mine isn't

The black fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha likes to go around claiming they are the first fraternity to constitutionally ban selection based on race or religion. It's a good fraternity and I got along really well with the Alphas at my college, but they are dead wrong there. ??? was founded sometime in the 1940s if I remember right, and my fraternity ( ??? ) did it before the civil war.

There are of course chapters of the fraternity that are predominantly white, but there are also chapters that are predominantly black. Dunno what causes that to be honest. My own chapter is very integrated, which is to be expected in modern times at an engineering school, but what's cool is that the house library has yearbooks going back to the earliest days of the chapter and you can see that even at the dawn of the 20th century we were racially integrated.

As I'm sure you can tell, I'm rather proud of that aspect of our fraternity. It's one thing to read about people fighting for racial integration in the 1960s, but I frankly can't imagine what my 19th century brothers went through making such a change while slavery was still legal. All I know is that they must have been very brave.

[Taverner]

17. Some are some aren't

Depends on the house, the campus environment and the general reputation of fraternities and sororites.

[bluestateguy]

18. Kick

:kick:

[nemo137]

19. Why would you want to join a group where you'd have to constantly justify

your presence? What's the attraction in being the only black guy in an all white frat?

[bluestateguy]

22. Then nothing will ever change

Don't get me wrong, you make a good point, but if we adopt that attitude than social segregation will continue in our college campuses, social organizations, churches and other social relationships.

It's all fine and good to pass laws, and we've done that, but race relations will never improve beyond a certain point if we don't break down social barriers between people of different races.

[BrotherBuzz]

21. Why are churches still so racially segregated, too?

Just an observation. :shrug: