“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Those aren’t my words, of course. They belong to George Santayana from The Life of Reason. But I’ve come to believe that many of us live in the present so much and repeat mistakes from the past so convincingly that the offenders are left nothing short of baffled when someone calls them on it.
So it is with a small group of Edinboro University students from Theta Chi fraternity and Alpha Sigma Tau sorority.
Realizing that all work and no play makes for dull coeds, the two Greek organizations planned a theme mixer where partygoers would show up as their favorite rappers and ganstas. Some even went so far as to wear black face and body paint, suburban white college kids playing urban for the evening.
That would have been the end of it, a less-than-PC night forgotten in the drunken haze of a dozen others.
Until someone got the bright idea to post photos of the party on the Internet.
That led to a complaint from outside the University, which led to a University investigation, which led to the involvement of the media.
That brings us to this week, when dozens of e-mails began crossing my screen asking why we would make such a fuss over a little harmless college fun.
“Blacks have to chill out,” one told me. “Do the Irish get upset over St. Patrick’s Day or the Mexicans during Cinco de Mayo?”
It’s hard to know where to begin with that one.
I don’t pretend to know what blacks endure in America, but I do know that the idea of whites in black face can be very offensive.
I've never seen a minstrel show but I understand that black stereotypes were cemented in white America through entertainers dressing the wooly wigs and black makeup.
The bottom line is I don’t even have to know the why of it. If an act is offensive to a certain group of people, shouldn’t that be reason enough not to do it?
The partygoers insist that they meant no harm and I don’t doubt them. But the fact that they, along with many of the e-mailers were genuinely baffled by the outcry is what baffles me, and proof that we have a ways to go not only in race relations but also in teaching relevant American events as well.
Clearly, those kids didn’t know their history and as a result were inevitably doomed to repeat some of America’s mistakes.
At the end of the day the students involved won’t be kicked out of school. There might even be a silver lining, lessons learned early that you ignore the heritage of others at your own peril, and that images thrown around on the Internet can come back to haunt you.
Better now than later, when those mistakes can cost careers and permanently damage reputations.
OH YEA! Happy Valentine's Day!!
HEY! What do you think about what happened in Edinboro? Send your thoughts by email to scott.bremner@wsee.tv.
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