Posted on 08/19/2015 6:24:59 PM PDT by SJackson
The writer is research associate in American Studies at University of Maryland at College Park, and the author of “Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South” (under contract to University of Georgia Press).
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?
But in that sense UGA was really no different from other Southern schools. Long after many universities had officially done away with a variety of Old South symbols, the feminine figure most clearly identified with Dixie — the Southern belle — continued to enjoy free rein. College administrators who had long since banned the Confederate battle flag, nixed the singing of “Dixie” and given plantation-owner mascots the boot were still saying yes to the dress.
Wearing hoop skirts to unofficial campus social events such as fraternity-sponsored Old South balls, after all, was just feminine. Just fluff. Just women.
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.
The crude campus racism would soon pale next to the June tragedy in Charleston, S.C. After the mass murder of nine African American churchgoers, allegedly by a white supremacist who blatantly linked his views with the Confederate banner, the U.S. public engaged in long overdue soul-searching about the true meaning of Confederate symbolism. One result has been the steady removal of its signs from civic life. But related conversations have not necessarily taken place, and the question remains: Will feminine racial symbols — less noticed, highly effective — ever be similarly called to task? Will observers ever recognize what the hoop — and the contemporary belle — have to do with the hate?
My opinion only, about as much as cotton.
Ban cotton shirts, underwear too.
Another bozo who gets paid by the word.
Wow.
There are a lot of crazy people out there.
Nuts.
I will be absolutely giddy the day that America decides that liberals belong in cages for the safety of all humanity.
And I think we’re outnumbered!
Unless the frat brothers were weaaring hoop skirts, I really fail to see any connection between the two, or for that matter any of the events described.
There are a few aresholes out there waving Confederate symbols.
There are lots of other arseholes out there waving American Flags or wearing blue jeans and tee shirts. Are those going to be banned, too?
Yes, cotton balls are racist, too..........
Do my eyes deceive me? I believe I see two young black women wearing hoop skirts in the attached picture.
And really. WTF??? Everything is racist to the perpetually offended. Unreal. HOOP SKIRTS!!! REALLY!?!?! What insanity.
My daughter is black. She also wants to wear one of those things when she’s a bit older.
... And Q-tips...........
Offended by hoop skirts? More evidence that easily offended liberals have a mental illness.
> declared a ban on hoop skirts
Racist on it’s face. Compare to a ban on “drooping pants”.
Umm....those aren’t really hoop skirts.
-JT
Shaking my head. This is absolutely ridiculous.
Obama needs to have the Justice Department Civil Rights Division issue an order requiring all Southern undergraduate women to dress like U.C. Berkeley lesbians.
The writer is stupid. Black women wore them as well............
Cages. If we can’t load them on rockets and blast them into the sun, they need to be caged until that technology becomes available.
My ideal candidate would be one that criminalized modern liberalism. Lets face it. It has killed more people than Islam and Communism combined when you take into account the deaths resulting from it’s belief structure and ‘laws’.
And it has cost more in real $$$ and actual suffering than any other failed philosophy.
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