Oklahoma University Expels Two Students Over Racist Chant, Looks to Identify Further Fraternity Brothers to Expel Them As Well

Personally, you know my Hobbyhorse lately is using coercion to punish speech.

Still, no one's going to defend these guys too hard, because 1, they broke the Big Rule (the one about the n-word and open admissions of racism), and 2, part of the chant could be characterized as creating a "hostile environment." Part of their chant was something about "hanging from a tree," which I took to be further racial insult (hanging from a tree = monkey), but which other people characterize as a "reference to lynching."

I don't think that's right, but it's very hard to make the case, "No, that's a bad rap to claim they were singing about lynching; in fact they were merely saying that black people resembled monkeys hanging from a tree. See? Perfectly innocent!"

That's a hard row to hoe. *

So now they're expelled and OU will presumably have the Long Knives out for all remaining ex-SAE students.

I do not understand, at this late date, why people revel in such ignorance and hatred. All I can think is that this is somehow a "defense of their class," that their daddy and his daddy talked this way, and they will not be "bullied" into saying a bad word about their daddy, so they're going to vindicate daddy's casual racial slurs by using them giddily in a sort of childishly tribalistic affirmation that "We are right, we always were right, and we always will be right, and we've got nothing at all, ever, to apologize for. In fact, we're gonna start doing some new things that need apologizing for, and then not apologizing for them, just to prove we won't apologize!"

That kind of stupid, arrogant egotism usually results in tears. These guys lives will never be the same; they might not realize this yet, but they are now fated to live third-class lives, working third-class jobs, marrying, if at all, third class women.

Young people tend to think they're immortal, both physically and socially as well. No one should ever forget that when the Entire Pack comes baying for your blood, they will have it, and no, you're not the Eternal Hero who is capable of beating the pack off.

No one is. Unless you're a Democratic presidential candidate, they gots no one else at all, they will bring you down, if you provoke them enough.

I don't know what stupid reason these little idiots, half of whom probably never even encountered a black person in a personal setting, had for their stupid, raucous, egotistical racial boasting.

I do know they will now receive Wisdom, wisdom being, as they say, what God gives you when he decides he won't give you the thing that you actually want.

Stupid kills. So does Ego. Combine Ego and Stupid and you're going to have a poor, and likely short, life.

* Actually I just heard the chant again. They say, "You can hang them from a tree..." It does appear to be lynching reference.

So the defense would have to be, "Oh sure they're talking about lynching, but in a joking way."

Some people are just so stupid they're born doomed, and there's not much point trying to save the little idiots.

Update: Commenters are telling me that this speech is more protected than I figured, citing, maybe, this Volokh Conspiracy piece.

Maybe so.

posted by Ace at 05:45 PM

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