Bit difficult, as I'm listening to Alexandra Robbins on Morning Sedition, discussing Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities. Perhaps if it wasn't validating/reinforcing my prejudices. . . hang on, I'm supposed to actively seek out things that validate and reinforce my prejudices. I should be loving this. Weird.
I expect I should ask Jessica about this sort of thing, good little Kappa Slappa Ho that she is. . .
Caller just declared that, really, Black sororities aren't like the ones described in the book. And some of 'em are headed, en masse to DC this weekend for the March for Women's Lives. Robbins had mentioned she'd seen no indication that. . . mainstream, let's use mainstream as a euphemism for white. . . mainstream sororities were even aware of it, or had any interest in participating.
Expect I could have a look around the Zeta Phi Beta and AKA sites to confirm this, but I'm too busy pretending not to have noticed that the women pictured on the latter site are all lighter-skinned than those on the former.
Unclouded by hate. I can do this.
Clearly, reading or thinking about anything having to do with Greek systems is a bad way to accomplish this.
Forgot to mention that last Thursday at Northwestern was their Take Back the Night march. And that April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
Determining why I mention these last two events/facts in an entry about Greek systems is left as an exercise for the reader.
Update: Knew I'd seen this mentioned recently. . . very brief write-up of Pledged at Blog of a Bookslut from a few days back.
Also, there's a very nice t-shirt with art from Spike that you can buy to support the site. Ignore the bit saying his website is ironcircus.com. Typo, I'm sure.
Hi, Aaron. Hmn. On the general subject of sororities, I recommend to you "Girls on the Verge", by Vendela Vida--a look at how girls are coming of age across many cultures within America.
I grew up in the late 60s and early 70s, there were frats on campus but not sororities. It was a rather anti-Greek time.
As a middle-aged white woman, the African-American sororities were invisible to me until recently. A general observation is that Black folks seem to be more club/group oriented than white folks, in the current episode. (The men's service clubs such as Elks, Lions, etc. have aging declining membership)--I don't know why.
re: group participation
not just black v. white thing, more like everybody (asian and arab too) v. white.
not that it should make anyone feel better, but maybe there is something sickly comfortable in knowing that whitey don't just hate the world of color, they generally hate most of their own kind too.
liz, thanks for the book recommendation. Guess that goes on the list with Abigail's, and Inga Muscio's, the title of which I'll spare everyone. . .
s.m., having recently spent some time reading the sites linked at La Shawn Barber's place, and some bougie black blogs, I can say with conviction that I ain't thrilled with a large percentage of the Negro population. For what that's worth.
And not sure about Arab, but there's sometimes a wee of hostility within the catch-all designation Asian. . .