Second Racist Verse, Same As The First Racist Verse

Another day, and we have yet another racist incident involving a fraternity and a viral video. When racist incidents happen on college campuses, we hear repeatedly how universities and colleges are supposed to be spaces of learning and enlightenment. In the case of the University of Oklahoma chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon and the recent video of a racist chant, the university president David Boren released a statement about how “real Sooners” are not racist. Booting SAE off of the university’s campus “sends a signal” that the university community cannot and will not tolerate racist acts.

However, what we have seen time and again is the inability of universities in particular and American society in general to participate meaningfully in critiques of racist structures. We cannot divorce what we saw in that video from the systemic disregard by police for black lives as we saw and continue to see in various cities across this nation. We cannot reduce what we are seeing to discrete acts that are not connected to a larger history of chattel slavery, de facto and de jure segregation, and the terror of lynching.

If we want to understand this latest outrage, let us parse the words in this chant: “There will never be a ni**** SAE. You can hang him from a tree, but he can never sign with me.” Obviously, the use of the N-word is telling, as it is part of a centuries-long devaluation of black life. When deployed by racists—and in various forms, like the word “gangster” or “thug”—the word is not just a pejorative. It is a threat. It is a reinscription of the violence that is white supremacy in this nation. It is a reinscription of the terrorism that accompanies white supremacist thinking and action. A black person is not a person; rather, they are inhuman objects always subject to the killing power of white supremacist thinking. It is a reminder that, not long ago when we consider the span of human history, a Supreme Court justice affirmed, “the negro had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

“You can hang him from a tree…” This too reinforces the power of white supremacy. This reinforces the imagined and real power that most whites in this country have held over black bodies. Black bodies are useful only as they are described, defined, and discarded by whites. Lynching and other forms of state violence has been a powerful and primary way of controlling black bodies. When OU President David Boren says that those members of SAE are not “real Sooners,” I am forced to wonder what he would say about the white Tulsans who murdered, pillaged, and burned North Tulsa during the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921? Those were quite real Oklahomans who, when they couldn’t lynch Dick Rowland, destroyed the businesses, homes, and lives of hundreds of black Tulsans.

Black bodies have always been disposable bodies in American history. In The Cross and the Lynching Tree, James Cone writes, “Lynching was the white community’s way of forcibly reminding blacks of their inferiority and powerlessness. To be black mean that whites could do anything to you and your people, and that neither you nor anyone else could do anything about it.” This particular line of SAE’s chant revolves around the words “You can.” The “you” is implicitly a white subject who has the power to do what he will with black bodies. The disposability of black bodies is a given in this clause of the lyric.

“…but he can never sign with me.” Any white fraternity could have sung this chant. The whites singing this chant assume that their organizations privilege and protect whiteness. The white supremacy that pervades every facet of American life ensures that chants are merely verbal affirmations of deeply held beliefs, in this case, the belief that Sigma Alpha Epsilon is, naturally, a whites-only club. By extension, SAE reaffirms and protects constructions of white manhood.

Interestingly, one of the students involved said—using the passive voice—that the song was taught to him. He does not mention who taught him. We may certainly assume that this song was handed down through the years. We may also assume that those who sang this song did so safe in the knowledge that they would not be taped, as such is the privilege that attends to white supremacist thinking.

However, they were not just taught the song. These people, along with much of this nation, have learned and benefitted from the privilege of white supremacist thinking and the devaluation of black lives. This is not just a problem of fraternities nor is racism and white supremacy reducible to a “red state vs. blue state” mentality. The racism and white supremacy in this chant itself is built upon a historical system of dehumanization. SAE is but a manifestation of the larger malady of American white supremacist thinking.

“All That Was Left of His Home after the Tulsa Race Riot, 6-1-21 (Ag2013.0002)” by Unknown – http://digitalcollections.smu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/nam/id/361/. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.