Gatekeepers of Tomorrow and Yesterday
The news of Syracuse frat’s effrontery doesn’t aim high enough
For those of you who will look at this video and laugh, considering this the youthful pranks of college life, I can only suggest to you that you are as racist and uninformed as the young men in this video.
Here’s a bit of play by play for you:
“Do you know the oath?” The presenter holds a what appears to be a beer can, as an ersatz penis upon which the pledge is being taken. The pledge, on his knees, grabs the can and recites the Oath.
“Fuck Black people?” <an explosion of laughter from the crowd of young men standing around the two of them.> “And fuck spics!” <another explosion of laughter.>
“Syracuse (yes, THAT Syracuse) University suspended it’s chapter of engineering frat Theta Tau after this leaked video showed its members using racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic slurs.”
Let’s continue, shall we?
The presenter continues: “I solemnly swear — “
“I solemnly swear,” the pledge continues.
“To always have hatred in my heart for — “
“To always have hatred in my heart for — “
And in a motion reminiscent of the knighting of a squire, the ersatz penis, is used to christen the shoulders of the pledge while continuing the pledge — “niggers” christening the left shoulder, to an embarrassing explosion of laughter and applause at the word, and commentary from the audience, — “Oh, no. Niggers!”
The pledge continues, “Spics!”
“And most importantly,” the presenter exclaims.
“And most importantly… Finish the sentence. The what, Aaron?”
“The fucking kikes.” And the room explodes again in guffaws.
This whole exchange may take a little over forty-five seconds but explains at least two hundred years of racial hatred laughed away except for the fact that to become a student at Syracuse in this program costs approximately $45,000 a year; meaning to graduate you would need just over $200,000.
One of the most expensive educations in the United States. Meaning these are not the poorest members of society, doomed to preach impotent hatred, toothless from their shack in rural Alabama, Tennessee or Kentucky. No, these are the scions of the richest and most hateful members of our supposedly post-racial society. Because according to White Christian evangelicals, Blacks are not being persecuted, Whites are.
I would, after watching this video (technically, I could have refuted this before the video) but I most certainly will AFTER seeing this video that “white, reverse racism” is like so much of the White experience in America, all in the mind of the people espousing its existence.
Most people will read what I have written and somehow blame me for writing it, rather than blaming the people who were stupid enough to film their event and save a record of their personal pride in their hatred.
Thank you gentlemen for your venal and petty hatred and the desire to save it for all posterity.
If you are reading this and have not seen the video, it doesn’t matter, because even if they scrub the Internet tomorrow, the truth is still out there.
If you sympathize with these young men, you are as shortsighted as the administrators of this University trumping this up to a momentary shame this fraternity will bring to their institution and others like it.
But if you can know any one thing assuredly, this is not a unique incident.
I am without doubt such an initiation appears in colleges across the nation, whenever White men with empty heads and emptier hearts gather to voice their fears of minorities.
Fears created not in absentia of their parents voices, but directed by those parental units, and carried off to their alma mata by their scions; those young men who nursed on the milk of hatred, will create the solidified cheese of our society in which they will inherit the cheese and the rest of us, the whey, the castoff opportunity they can’t be bothered with because it is beneath them.
These young men did not arrive at this state of mind by themselves. They were taught this racism at home. They came to college to solidify it. To franchise it. To create networks to propagate it. This is the real purpose of college in America. Not to educate but to indoctrinate.
The conservatives of America will tell you of the liberal agenda of colleges, how they are influencing the lives of students by teaching them to think subversively, against the expectations of a nation born of violence, maintained by cruelty, dominated by a legal system which does everything within its power to further the control of White leadership in all aspects of American society.
What the conservatives fail to ever mention is events like these, the true subversives who pledge in their hearts to destroy the nigger, kill the kike, torment the Muslim, and strengthen Whiteness at every turn, using the advantages of wealth, connection to the Old Motherfucking Boy’s Network, walking from college into directorships, vice presidencies, and CEOships which will dictate the rules for hiring, controlling and firing anyone that does not toe the line of racist, white supremacist, patriarchal, misogynist thought.
I hope I didn’t leave anyone out, because as these young parasites come into leadership positions, you can be sure, this pledge of hating and destroying minorities will not fade into youthful exuberance like a game of beer pong. These thoughts will become a reality, a battle they will be forced to engage in, because they believe it is their duty to follow the will of their forebears, to execute their dream of the White ethnostate, and having the money, connections, and willpower to do so by throwing their wealth at any problem.
Like this video, for instance.
While the dean and presidents of the school will feign shock and surprise, I assure you, they know of this behavior. They know EVERY face in this video. And you have not, and will not hear of a single one of these young men being outed. You will not hear of a single one of them being expelled and shamed out of college life.
Why? Because the college is indebted to their patrons. The fathers and mothers of these monstrous bastards who will, in due course, become the ascending gatekeepers of your children’s futures.
They will determine where, when, and if your children will work. It doesn’t mean your children will have to work FOR them, but you will most likely have to compete against them for any opportunity they can hope for.
But remember, these aren’t just the gatekeepers of the future, their forebears were the gatekeepers of the past. If you have ever experienced anything that looked like racism, it started in a group, just like this one.
A privileged group with too much money and too little understanding of the responsibility of running society. Yet everything around you is the result of the thinking of men just like these thirty or so years ago.
Syracuse, if you ever meant to do anything to change the future, here is your opportunity. Expel every single one of these students. Yes, their parents will be angry and may take away your endowments. But imagine what would happen if the world didn’t have to fall under the regime of monsters-in-training like these. Imagine if students who understood what the world was truly about had a chance to fill those seats with a future worth living in.
Wouldn’t it be worth it?
I think so. These men, if I can call them that, deserve to be homeless on the street for a few years to gain some perspective of what their privilege affords them. You won’t do it, of course, because, well because, they’re white.
You would have to acknowledge the culpability of putting generations of these bastards in power everywhere. This is America, we don’t acknowledge when we are wrong. That’s what lawyers are for.
As a person of color living in America, all I have to look forward to is in this burgeoning age of media revealing the hidden horrors of our daily existence is another amateur film showing the lives of minority citizens ostracized in public places, being cut short by police violence, or oaths to our very destruction being enacted by the richest and most privileged among our number. People who have never known a day of hardship willing to mock anyone who wasn’t a member of the lucky sperm of the month club.
Maligned, marginalized and murdered… all in a day’s work for the good old U. S. of A.
With a perspective,
The Cognitive Dissident
Thaddeus Howze
Thaddeus Howze is a writer, essayist, author and professional storyteller for mysterious beings who exist in non-Euclidean realms beyond our understanding.
As a prolific writer of speculative fiction, scientific, technical and cultural commentary from his office in Hayward, California, Thaddeus’ speculative fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals. He has published two books, ‘Hayward’s Reach’ (2011), a collection of short stories and ‘Broken Glass’ (2013) an urban fantasy novella starring his favorite paranormal investigator, Clifford Engram.
Thaddeus works as a writer and editor for two magazines, the Good Men Project, a social men’s magazine as well as for Krypton Radio, a sci-fi enthusiast media station and website. He is also a freelance journalist for Polygon.com and Panel & Frame magazine. Thaddeus is the co-founder of Futura Science Fiction Magazine and one of the founding members of the Afrosurreal Writers Workshop in Oakland.
