So I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed and I saw that one of my friends had posted a picture of a new sorority that she had joined. At first I was proud of my friend for getting into the sorority. Then it hit me, there were over 50 white girls in this picture. There was not a single African American women in this picture. From the looks of the picture, there were no woman of Indian, Middle Eastern, Asian or Latina decent in the picture.
That is hardly a coincidence. And that, my friends, is not okay.
One excuse that popped in my head was, "Well, maybe people of other ethnicity just didn't want to be in a sorority." Yup, there was my white privilege waving it's ugly head again. Even if that was the case, it has more to do with the white culture pushing out anyone that didn't have the "right" look especially in the Greek world.
The Greek world encompasses many different boxes that one has to fit in to be apart of. For example sororities require people to fit in the woman, heterosexual, white box. Fraternities are all about the heterosexual and male boxes. It is so frustrating that this sense of brotherhood/sisterhood is not made widely available to every person that steps foot on our campus.
Observation 2:
There is a bill proposed to cut 40 billion dollars in funding to the SNAP program.
It is sad to see how unrepresentative Greek life can be of our culture on campus as a whole. As our campus grows more diverse, hopefully we can see that change.
ReplyDeleteI, too, have noticed this non-coincidence and have wondered why nothing has been done to fix this problem.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I think it should be said that there are some sororities on campus that are more diverse than the one your friend joined. That being said I know of a sorority that at one time said they don't want to recruit too many (insert a minority race here) girls because then the "big" frats won't want to have mixers with them. This shocked and disturbed me, but I am told that with new leadership this mindset has been changing and the sorority is now encouraging the recruitment of a more diverse group of girls.
ReplyDeleteSara,
DeleteI am glad that there is new leadership in that.
And your right, this isn't the case for all sororities, but i think it is more a problem then anyone wants to admit. Instead we choose the path of least resistance. Making friends is hard enough without picking fights with the "cool" kids.
I've noticed this before as well. But, I have seem some different minorities in these typically "all-white sororities." It's rare, yes, and also every time I do see them, I catch myself thinking, "I wonder how they got in." That's not good I guess, but I can't help it. It happens so often that we began to see it as the norm. It's only here at UT though; when I've gone to Texas State and UTSA, all the big sororities are minority-majorities, surprisingly. Then I find myself thinking that it's not the "real" thing. It's sad we come to subconsciously accept this, I guess we have to wait and see what happens when the first transgender tries to rush. That will make it to the Supreme Court, watch.
ReplyDeleteMy freshman year I joined a sorority, and yes, the majority of the sorority at that time was white, but there were a few Hispanics and Asians scattered among the grades above me. As the years went by, I did notice a change though and more Hispanics started joining. I do think that it is a problem that many sororities are primarily white, but I think/hope that with time, this is changing. Although, I am not sure what the mindset actually is anymore because I dropped.
ReplyDelete