The language in the university fraternity’s “Halloween in the Hood” party was pretty clear.
It urged prospective attendees to wear “regional clothing from our locale: fur coats, bling bling ice ice, grills, hoochie hoops, white tee’s and Air Force Onez.”
Sound familiar? Don’t we hear about “bling bling, ice ice, grills, hoochies, Air Force Onez” and “da hood” from black rappers all the time? Of course we do.
Except the senders of the invitation aren’t black. The invitation came from a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity on the campus of -- Are you sitting down? -- Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Justin Park, a Hopkins junior, sent the invitation prior to the “Halloween in the Hood” party on Oct. 28 (And Mr. Park, that’s “Halloween in DA Hood.”). Add his attempt at using black lingo to the skeleton dressed in a pirate’s costume that was dangling from a rope outside Sigma Chi’s fraternity house the night of the party and what you have is a regular poop storm on what many folks consider the dullest campus in American higher education.
Advertisement
Infiniti in Black Witness Inspiration as it happens. Watch Mike Thompson's film, "Act Two - The Process" now.
Members of Hopkins Black Student Union staged a protest. The party was only one issue, BSU members said. Among their other complaints: white and Asian students routinely snub black students when it comes to forming study groups; there aren’t nearly enough black tenured faculty members and white faculty advisors routinely pressure black students to either change majors or drop courses; and the assumption that black students are unqualified to attend Hopkins and got a free affirmative action pass.
It’s a good thing black students at Hopkins brought up these other grievances, because when they point to Sigma Chi’s “Halloween in the Hood” party and the invitation as an example of anti-black racism, they don’t have a leg to stand on.
Black students claim the hanging pirate was meant to symbolize a lynching, showing once again how quickly some black folks can shift into victim mode. Pirates WERE hanged. That was the penalty for piracy. All hangings were NOT lynchings. Not all lynchings involved hanging.
And the language in the invitation? Well, it just goes to show that non-black folks have SO got to stop listening to rap music. Because that’s where the language comes from. Park, a Korean student who’s been expelled from Sigma Chi, didn’t learn about Air Force Onez, bling bling, ice ice, hoochie hoops and “da hood” from listening to his parents talk at home.
He learned it by listening to the folks who purvey and perpetuate the worst stereotypes of black folks today: black rappers. These guys leave me pining away for “Amos ‘n Andy” reruns, which at least had the redeeming quality of being funny.
The stereotypes of black folks nearest and dearest to the hearts of black rappers -- black males as thugs, pimps and gangstas and black women as hoochies and ‘hos -- aren’t funny in the slightest. Neither is Mr. Park, who claimed the first invitation he sent was meant to be humorous.
When someone broke the news to him that it wasn’t, Park sent ANOTHER invitation. Apparently he still had the itch to be clever.
“(Thank you) Johnnie L. Cochran for being a true homie and getting Orenthal Simpson, commonly known as OJ, acquitted.”
And I thought it was only white folks who had a problem getting over the verdict in the O.J. Simpson criminal trial. Apparently some Asians are afflicted too.
I teach a writing class at Hopkins. For the past four or five consecutive semesters I’ve had to tell at least one white student to let that O.J. Simpson thing go. When I mention to the class that there are people involved in the lynching of Emmett Till who are still alive and haven’t even been charged, much less prosecuted, they look at me like I’ve grown an eye in the middle of my forehead.
“Who’s Emmett Till?” they ask.
A group of tenured black Hopkins professors -- all six of them -- told the university’s president that Hopkins students come to campus with little to no idea of the history of racism in America. They proposed that Hopkins introduce courses, seminars and workshops that will teach students that history.
Justin “Funny Boy” Park had better be the first to sign up.
