Posted on 01/25/2007 6:31:46 AM PST by Arec Barrwin
MLK Party Causes Uproar on Texas Campus Email this Story
Jan 25, 5:47 AM (ET)
By JEFF CARLTON
DALLAS (AP) - Authorities at Tarleton State University said they plan to investigate a Martin Luther King Jr. Day party that mocked black stereotypes by featuring fried chicken, malt liquor and faux gang apparel.
"I feel like there is no excuse for this type of ignorance," said Donald Ray Elder, president of the Stephenville school's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Photographs posted on social networking Web site Facebook.com showed partygoers wearing Afro wigs and fake gold and silver teeth. One photo showed students "mocking how African-Americans do step shows," Elder said. In another picture, a student is dressed as Aunt Jemima and carries a gun.
"That upsets me," Elder said. "That's someone who knows nothing about Dr. King, because Dr. King was totally about nonviolence."
Wanda Mercer, the school's vice president of student life, said an investigation was planned into the Jan. 15 party.
More than 400 students attended a university-sponsored forum Wednesday night that Elder described as "a shaky baby step" in bridging a divide between black and white students on the campus, which had about 400 black students out of 7,800 overall last semester.
Elder said he sensed a racial divide at the forum, with black students sitting on one side of the room and whites on the other.
"It was civil, but it also escalated into a shouting match," he said in a telephone interview afterward.
Some of the students shown in the photos apologized, Elder said.
University President Dennis P. McCabe said the photographs were reprehensible.
"I am personally insulted by these photographs and am disappointed that Tarleton students have demonstrated such insensitivity," he said.
Stephenville is about 60 miles southwest of Fort Worth.
Good for you.
I imagine that some racists would find that offensive.
Perhaps, the GOP could have fund raisers of the same theme if Obama gets the GOP nomination.
yes i rember all the nonviolent bullets,nonviolent base ball bats nonviolent rocks and sticks they used,the nonviolent fires in memphis.yes i rember the whole nonviolent movement.
Do you pick which conspiracy theory to believe?
... and yet he was for affirmative action as it was called back in his day. I say if he truly believed his slogans he would of not supported affirmative action, and neither would his worshipers.
I could make a rude comment about a type of Irish folk dance, but I will leave it to you imagination.
You bet, free country!!!
Some might,so would some black women.
I am shocked, OUTRAGED, and deeply saddened that these ignorant students could so demean and mock Mr. Spock!
They may send the apology and check...or at least the check, to me at...
Where are the FUBU clothes?
Those are, quite possibly, the tamest college party photographs I have ever seen. That's probably what has the liberal college officials upset. "Where's the debauchery? Where are the free condoms we give out?"
Wow. I just saw those TSG photos.
This...is pretty bad. But my opinion may be slanted due to obvious reasons.
As one of my white team mates in college told one of our black players....after he had been with a black gal.....Now I know why you prefer white girls...
The FBI can not "seal" criminal records. So who knows what that fantasy is really all about.
My friend....I tell everyone that the most difficult position in America is to be in your shoes. A good guy who happens to be black...unfortunately all too rare... Please understand that most of us share that thought..
Have a friend who lived in LA and when King came to town he phoned ahead for my friend's white girlfriend to meet him.
"That upsets me," Elder said. "That's someone who knows nothing about Dr. King, because Dr. King was totally about nonviolence."
You mean Elder would have been OK with the Aunt Jemima costume without the gun???
Not just "toward the end."
Folks' memories are pretty selective; I just put it down to symbolism: King symbolized what a good man could have been.
Like the story of George Washington and the cherry tree.
In the south of a half century ago, a Black man (then a Negro) wearing a suit and tie was assumed by whites to be a preacher or undertaker, and would generally be treated with a little more respect than would be shown a laborer. Of course, he still had to remember his 'place'.
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