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.
Silly me. I thought this article was about a new political party named MLK.
Was Fuzzy Zoeller there?
Ironically, however, it seems that any roadway named after Dr. King invariably runs through the part of the city where murder and crime rates are highest, and violence is a way of life.
Tell ya what, Mr. Elder: why don't you start worrying about that, instead?
Sure, it's ignorant but it's also in the great American tradition of lampooning pompousness.
I seem to remember he went by Reverend King.
He must be upset because they forgot the watermelons.
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GMTA! 
King was a plagerist
That's just too damn funny!
I think there could be a market for the new "Racial Divide Sensor". Any entrepreneurs out there?
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.
Dam straight!
How can you have faux gang apparel and no faux Drive By Shootings. Plus not one Basketball was in sight.
(to boot, they didn't have enough 'Bling')
Except when he beat up his white prostitutes.
I see the problem here. Apparently, MLK day is supposed to be a day to honor him. If you want to be a jive black guy you should do it on Halloween.
I'm amazed at the stupidity of people.
What "stereotype" would that be?...........
So when blacks wear it its real gang apparel?
I am a bit unclear here but I assume the students who had this party were white. Otherwise would there be the same uproar? In any case the behavior was boorish and offensive but what can be done now? Is this sort of thing to be outlawed? Again we would have government legislating thought and speech. I find that scary.
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