Holiday parties are boring.
College students try to make them fun with ugly Christmas sweaters and lots of pepermint Schnapps as we share depressing stories.
But even that gets boring. The story about you pulling an all-nighter and crashing somewhere among the stacks in the library isn’t funny anymore because we’ve all done it.
And you can try to make the story of how you slept through an important test funny. We’ll go ahead and laugh with you, but we know that you’re crying on the inside.
So how do we spice up these tacky holiday parties?
A fraternity at Clemson University had the perfect solution: “Clemson Cripmas.”
Cripmas was a party organized by the brothers of Sigma Alpha Epsilon where the attendees dressed as gangsters. Because nothing screams Christmas like the appropriation of arguably the most negative stigma of the black community.
According to the Daily Mail, those who attended the party wore sagging jeans, oversized T-shirts and bandanas around their necks, faces and foreheads.
The fraternity has since been suspended indefinitely by the university, and the national organization of the chapter released a statement saying, “The decision of a few brothers to hold this type of social event is inexcusable and completely inappropriate.”
So a bunch of white boys offend an entire culture and they get suspended, someone else apologizes on their behalf and that’s supposed to be enough?
I’m not buying it anymore.
I’m sick of this kind of behavior within white culture. I’m sick of people getting away with it, because when a white kid dresses in baggy clothes, he’s just being funny or he’s ignorant, but when a black kid wears a hoodie he’s probably a criminal and gets shot leaving a convenience store.
Most of all, I’m sick of hearing weak apologies meant to help cover figureheads and people eating them up, thinking that’s enough.
They turned gang culture into a party theme. While they’re guzzling bears and wiping boxed wine stains off their baggy T-shirts, there’s a 17-year-old out on the street somewhere hiding a gun under his, praying tonight isn’t the night he gets taken down in a drive by.
And this is not me defending gang culture, because I absolutely hate it. But I can’t deny that many ethnic youths, especially boys, raised in poor neighborhoods don’t have much of a choice.
Gangs offer protection and a support system that many find too tempting to pass up.
It’s a difficult and serious issue that shouldn’t be made fun of by a bunch of white boys in South Carolina.
This party never should have happened. The very idea never should have flitted through one of their heads.
All these boys are doing is cementing a double standard where black culture worn by black people is a crime and black culture worn by white people is a harmless joke.
No one’s laughing anymore. So just stop.
lnbanks@indiana.edu
