Remove the Southern belle from her inglorious perch

[struggle4progress]

By Elizabeth Boyd
August 14

When administrators at the University of Georgia declared a ban on hoop skirts in the spring, I could only think, what took you so long? ...

The hoop skirt ban was enacted in response to an ensuing uproar in March at the University of Oklahoma after members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, a fraternity with Southern roots, were caught on video chanting a racist song with references to lynching. The ban also came just weeks before University of Mississippi student Graeme Phillip Harris was indicted on federal civil rights charges of leaving a noose and a flag bearing Confederate insignia on a statue of James Meredith, the school’s first black student. Harris has since pleaded guilty. Of the charges, then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. noted, “No one should ever be made to feel threatened or intimidated because of what they look like or who they are.” The Mississippi NAACP branch has called the actions a hate crime ...

While donning a hoop skirt on occasion may not constitute a hate crime (whether it is a crime of fashion is another matter), make no mistake: The Southern belle performances routinely staged on campuses across the South constitute choreography of exclusion. And most do not even require a hoop skirt. In campus productions — sorority rush, beauty revues and pageants, sporting traditions — young white women serve as signs of nostalgia for a bygone, segregated South and all its attendant privileges ...

The hoop skirt ban is a great start. But university officials should know that there is more than one way to perform Southern belle. When the University of Mississippi effectively banned the Confederate flag from football games in 1997, that incendiary symbol migrated onto the bodies of young women, who continued to sport it in the form of whole-flag wraparound skirts and Greek T-shirts incorporating the insignia. As a mechanism of white Southern remembrance, feminine bodily performance often succeeds where masculine symbols falter because it is not taken seriously. Just feminine. Just fluff. Just women ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/removing-the-southern-belle-from-her-inglorious-perch/2015/08/14/ea929b2a-3f96-11e5-9561-4b3dc93e3b9a_story.html

[Fred Sanders]

1. What is the connection between hoop skirts and racist symbolism, I am not following??

"The hoop skirt ban was enacted in response to an ensuing uproar in March at the University of Oklahoma after members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, a fraternity with Southern roots, were caught on video chanting a racist song with references to lynching."

I need a translation - and what is the connection between the racist acts and the "response" of a ban on hoop skirts??

[struggle4progress]

3. Hoop skirts banned at UGA following Oklahoma frat video

By LEE SHEARER
updated Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - 9:10pm

... The hoop skirt ban came after UGA Student Affairs administrators met Monday with some UGA fraternity and sorority leaders, including representatives of the UGA chapters of Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Kappa Alpha fraternities, both of which have deep roots in the Southern Confederacy.

The ban comes a week after the University of Oklahoma expelled two SAE fraternity members and shut down the university’s SAE chapter because of a racist video made by members. In the video, SAE members chant about lynching, and using a racial slur, vow that there will never be a black member of the fraternity. The video went viral on the Internet and soon found its way to University of Oklahoma administrators. Talk during Monday’s UGA meeting at UGA was about presenting the university and Greek organizations in a good light, and not inviting negative attention, said Victor Wilson, UGA’s vice president for student affairs.

Part of the talk was about dress at such events as KA’s “Old South Week” and SAE’s “Magnolia Ball.” The discussion included hoop skirts, and the messages conveyed by such dresses or other articles of clothing, Wilson said ...

It wasn’t administrators who made the ultimate call on attire, it was the fraternity and sorority leaders ...

http://onlineathens.com/uga/2015-03-17/hoop-skirts-banned-uga-following-oklahoma-frat-video

[struggle4progress]

4. Why a UGA sorority waved goodbye to the hoop skirt

BY DAVID LAUDERDALE
March 19, 2015

... Georgia had a discussion of Greek events like "Old South Week" and the "Magnolia Ball" and what kind of message can be conveyed by antebellum dress. The university did not want to invite negative attention, the vice president of student affairs told Lee Shearer of Onlineathens.com.

The context also includes decades of dealing with divisive Lost Cause symbols at universities across the South. Slowly, a lot of that stuff has gone with the wind.

They don't play "Dixie" at football games anymore, or wave the rebel flag. Ole Miss' mascot "Col. Reb" was replaced by the "Rebel Black Bear." Fraternity boys no longer wear Confederate uniforms to parties or in horseback parades across campus.

To its credit, the University of Georgia banned the Confederate uniforms four years before a fraternity's national office ordered it in 2010. That came after its chapter at the University of Alabama paraded in front of a black fraternity ...

http://www.islandpacket.com/2015/03/19/3654871_lauderdale-why-a-uga-sorority.html?rh=1

[struggle4progress]

5. The answer seems to be that some fraternity and sorority celebrations at the school

involved antebellum dress and "Old South" nostalgia, which seemed to devolve into opportunities for racist displays

[Fred Sanders]

6. Banning racist parapanalia I understand, and if the hoop skirt is seen locally as such, then I get it.

Thanks.

[Rozlee]

2. There's a question of inclusion and exclusion.

A lot of those white Southern belles would probably be outraged to be reminded that many Southern black women can also be considered Southern belles because of the rape and sexual assaults committed on them by the masters of Southern plantations. I almost keeled over from laughter when an African-American man contacted my sister-in-law about about talking to her concerning her recollections of her grandparents and any materials she and relatives might have on their ancestry because his family were descendants of her own great greats who had owned a plantation in Louisiana. They were her cousins several times removed and lived in San Antonio and owned a half dozen successful BBQ chains in Texas. They kindly invited her family and relatives to their family reunion. She was flabbergasted. I was gleeful as hell. She's gotten used to the idea now and is even a bit intrigued, but it's a part of Southern life most Southerners really don't want to be reminded of or outright deny.

[kiva]

7. Because no woman in the north ever wore a hoopskirt.

[struggle4progress]

8. The reason for the ban was simple: there was some history there

of fraternity/sorority "Old South" celebrations turning into ugly racist displays

My understanding is that the ban simply applies to certain fraternity/sorority events

[kiva]

9. It's deflection.

Banning hoopskirts is easier than dealing with hate chants, because only someone wearing a hoopskirt would ever say/sing racists things. This makes absolutely no sense, it's feel good rulemaking so the school can say they are addressing racism on campus.

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

Who's the hoopskirted woman in the photo? That would be Harriet Beecher Stowe.

[struggle4progress]

10. Mebbe. But SAE doesn't have a pretty history

SAE Proudly Touts Association To The Confederacy On Its Website
BY IAN MILLHISER MAR 9, 2015 12:48PM
Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE), the fraternity that was kicked off of the University of Oklahoma’s campus Sunday night after video emerged of some of its members singing a racist chant that celebrates lynching, proudly touts its history on its website. “Sigma Alpha Epsilon is the only national fraternity founded in the antebellum South,” the fraternity’s national webpage explains, adding that it initially “confined its growth to the southern states.” Though SAE had “fewer than 400 members when the Civil War began,” 369 fought in the Confederate army ... The video that thrust SAE’s University of Oklahoma chapter into the national spotlight certainly has echoes of the old South. It consists of a segregationist refrain repeated over and over again — “there will never be a ni**** in SAE” — interspersed with an allusion to the campaign of terrorism white supremacists once used to maintain Jim Crow rule in the South: “You can hang ‘em from a tree, but he’ll never sign with me” ...
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/03/09/3631366/racist-chant-frat-long-history-racist-incidents/

Deadliest and Most Racist?
March 10, 2015
Jake New
... In 1982, the University of Cincinnati suspended its Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter after they organized a racist party around Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. According to .. The New York Times, .. the event encouraged revelers to "bring such things as a canceled welfare check, 'your father if you know who he is' and 'a radio bigger than your head.'" In 1992, the Texas A&M University chapter hosted a "Jungle Fever" themed party which .. featured "black face, grass skirts and 'slave hunts.'" In 2000, members of SAE at Oglethorpe University were among men from four fraternities who threw bottles at black athletes and yelled racial slurs during a cross-country meet. In 2002, a member of the Syracuse University chapter of SAE wore black face out to local bars. In 2006, two SAE students were suspended at the University of Memphis after harassing another member for dating a black woman ... In 2009, the Valdosta State University chapter caused outrage on campus after flying a Confederate flag on its front lawn ... In 2013, the Washington University in St. Louis chapter of SAE was suspended after some of its pledges were instructed to direct racial slurs at a group of black students. Last year, 15 SAE members at the University of Arizona broke into a historically Jewish off-campus fraternity and physically assaulted its members while yelling discriminatory comments at them. In December, Clemson University's SAE chapter was suspended after the fraternity hosted a "cripmas" party at which students dressed up as gang members ...
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/03/10/several-sigma-alpha-epsilon-chapters-accused-racism-recent-years

Is SAE racist? Or did a racist chant on a bus tarnish 15,000 brothers?
By Susan Svrluga and Nick Anderson
March 10
... The same night the racist video surfaced, a Confederate flag was displayed in the SAE house at Oklahoma State University — about an hour and a half north, in Stillwater, Okla. — clearly visible from outside ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/03/10/is-sae-racist-or-did-a-racist-chant-on-a-bus-tarnish-15000-brothers/

After Oklahoma Racism Incident, SAE Chapters At Other Campuses Face Scrutiny
Posted: 03/12/2015 5:54 pm EDT
Updated: 03/13/2015 11:59 am EDT
Tyler Kingkade
... Officials with the University of Alabama, the home of the original SAE chapter and a school criticized in recent years for a segregated Greek system, declined to say whether they've received reports of offensive language from SAE members on campus ...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/12/racism-sae-chapters_n_6857500.html

SAE chapter at University of Washington accused of racist behavior
Black students say UW fraternity members called them 'apes,' came forward after Oklahoma SAE's racist video
March 13, 2015 2:42PM ET
by Marisa Taylor
... The Times said on Thursday that the University of Washington was looking into allegations from members of the school’s Black Student Union that SAE members had harassed them when they marched by the fraternity house during a Black Lives Matter protest on Feb. 25. Senior neurobiology major Dirir Abhullahi told the newspaper that several white men in front of the SAE house shouted racial slurs at the marchers, including, “You apes, why are you here on our campus.” Several other students said they also heard the slurs ...
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/3/13/sae-accused-of-more-racist-allegations-at-uw.html

A History Of Racism At Sigma Alpha Epsilon
Tasneem Nashrulla
posted on Jun. 29, 2015, at 8:58 a.m
... The fraternity hosted minstrel shows in the 1900s, “Martin Luther King Jr. trash” parties in the 1980s, and “n*****s and hoes” parties in 2010. Blackface was used in the 1930s, and a white brother impersonated Tiger Woods in the 2000s. Confederate flags were draped proudly in some SAE houses from at least 1950 to 2015. The institution of slavery, supported by an SAE member in the 1860s, was celebrated as part of a chapter’s party in 1987. And the segregationist chant sung at the University of Oklahoma was apparently longstanding tradition. The university’s investigation of the incident found that older brothers taught the chant to the younger ones during a “leadership cruise” ...
http://www.buzzfeed.com/tasneemnashrulla/a-history-of-racism-at-sigma-alpha-epsilon#.hq95jb10p

[kiva]

11. Out of all six of the sources you linked to

'hoop skirts' was referenced exactly once. Kick these organizations off of campuses, shut them down, prosecute them if possible...these are all things that might reduce racial tension on campuses and make POC safer. But banning hoop skirts is easier...and I say that as someone who never has, and never will, wear one.

[struggle4progress]

12. UGA Greek Life: Silence, Rumors, Race and Misogyny

Written by an anonymous Panhellenic sorority member

... Quickly following the events at the University of Oklahoma, UGA’s student leadership made the decision to officially prohibit the use of costumes in Kappa Alpha Order’s and Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s annual spring events Old South Week/ Founder’s Day celebrations and Magnolia Ball, which traditionally recreate the cultural themes of the Confederate South and plantation life. Female attendees have traditionally donned antebellum style hoop skirts and men have worn suspenders or other period attire. Until around 2006, KA members sported Confederate style soldier uniforms.

... While being a blatant celebration of whiteness and a time period characterized by the institution of slavery, the insensitivity of these events is only heightened by the stark absence of non-white participants.

Few seem to understand that it is not the hoop skirts themselves that are problematic. It has little to do with the hoop skirt itself and all to do with the context. It’s the costumes coupled with a celebration of Confederate roots. It’s the costumes coupled with the reputation of racism. It’s the costumes in conjunction with an exclusionary pretext and rumored incidents of racism. It’s the costume as a symbol of white privilege in a time period inextricably intertwined with slavery.

It’s the combination of conditions that makes these events a social, cultural, and public relations disaster for UGA. Those who see the hoop skirt ban as an infringement on their fun are oblivious to the way the message of these costumes affects non-white UGA students. These are symbols that negate and diminish social equality, mobility and sensitivity. It negatively affects the interests of all involved ...

http://infusionmagazine.com/2015/04/20/uga-greek-life-silence-rumors-race-and-misogyny-2/

[kiva]

13. If racist southern women were the only ones who ever wore

this garment, they would have a point.

I'm a historian who teaches a lot of US women's history. Fashion says a lot about the status and role of women, and clothing like hoop skirts is a good example. Dismissing them as solely a symbol of racism is missing the point that pretty much every middle to upper class woman in this period wore this style of clothing no matter where they lived. Banning them is short-sighted and provides an illusion of striking back at racism.

[Waiting For Everyman]

14. This is the silliest thing I've seen in a quite a while.

In a world of silly things, that's remarkable. No, on second thought, it's worse than silly, it's irrational. Just what I like to see from a university. (facepalm)

Why didn't they ban the fraternity, if they wanted to do something effective and meaningful?

[AngryAmish]

15. #waronfashion