Deja Snyder hardly ever got a welcoming sense at a fraternity house during her four years in college.
The walls plastered with signs that read ‘Make America Great,’ she knew she was out-of-place the moment she stepped into a fraternity house. She knew she would be treated differently than her white peers, even when there was the off-chance of seeing the token Black fraternity member.
“If we ever wanted to go to a frat house, I and my friends would really be the only Black people there,” Snyder said. “You felt it in the air… and it was uncomfortable.”
Snyder, a recent graduate from the University of Arkansas, remembered one incident from where she felt like an outcast due to her race.
During her freshman year, Snyder was at a fraternity party when she realized she couldn’t find her keys. Scanning the floor of each room of a fraternity house, she searched around the bar area when a couple dropped food on the floor. Blaming her for the incident, they yelled at her ‘get out!’ and ‘you don’t belong here’ drawing the attention of bystanders. Once she finally did find her keys, she left the party crying.
“It was humiliating because I was getting screamed at in front of all these people, watching this guy and girl screaming in my face,” Snyder said. “No one did anything about it.”
Snyder’s experience is another one of the many narratives of racial discrimination that envelopes fraternities and sororities every year within Greek life at predominantly white institutions.
Bestselling author Lawrence Ross regularly tours college campuses, speaking on the history of discrimination at universities. His popular lecture based on his book, “Blackballed: The Black & White Politics of Race on America’s Campuses,” explores the contemporary issue of systemic racism.
Sororities and fraternities are not “inherently racist,” Ross said, but rather were built around philosophies during a time where their biases were more commonly accepted by public opinion.
“Students are going to come into a space where the organization has not … dealt with (their past) at the root,” Ross said. “If your roots still are based on that… it’s going to create the various tumors that come with Blackface and come with the ‘Cinco de Drinko’ (parties).”
A heritage of resentment
Vicki Blanton, an alumna of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, the first Black Greek-letter organization at the University of Texas at Austin, attended UT Austin from 1984 to 1988. She fondly recalled the soul dancing nights at the Student Union every other Thursday, the block parties across from Jester dormitory, and the Greek step shows she participated in.
In the fall of 1984-1985, African American students made up 3.3% of UT Austin’s undergraduate population, according to the University of Texas at Austin Statistical Handbook. In 2020, the Black undergraduate population of UT Austin is approximately 4%.
Blanton’s friends were mostly from her sorority and other Black Greek-letter organizations, and she couldn’t remember a time when her sorority was asked to participate in a University Panhellenic Council or an Interfraternity Council event.
“It was a very divided culture,” Blanton said. “There was limited interaction between the white Greek-letter organizations and the Black-letter organizations.”
None of the Black fraternities and sororities had a house, Blanton said, and the predominantly white fraternities and sororities would often socialize in their own houses off-campus.
In order for an organization to be officially recognized on-campus by the university, it was required that organizations sign a diversity and inclusion statement. Blanton said that many Greek-letter organizations did not sign it.
“We couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t sign the inclusion statement and would rather be off-campus,” Blanton said. “They thought that was in their best interest, that it was true to them in their organization.”
During her four years at school, Blanton never attended a fraternity party or went to Roundup, an annual spring event hosted by fraternities. Roundup gained a problematic reputation over decades since its conception in 1930 — its historic traditions include parade floats with racial slurs and minstrel shows where fraternity members would wear Blackface, according to the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at UT Austin.
“It was pretty well understood I was not invited, I did not expect to feel welcomed or invited, nor would I expect to feel safe.”
Vicki Blanton
In response to the police killings of Black Americans, the Texas Interfraternity Council acknowledged the history of Roundup in an Instagram post on June 1 and the “dissonance caused by the event.”
“(Roundup) is something we are going to work to structurally change through … a complete re-evaluation of the racist history and shortcomings of the event,” according to the statement from the Texas Interfraternity Council.
Their statement included plans to build better relationships with marginalized groups and donating a portion of Roundup revenue to organizations fighting racial discrimination.
Rayna Ware, the president of the Epsilon Beta Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority at the UT, said that more needs to be done by universities to make a difference.
“It feels like we’re just tolerated on campus rather than uplifted and celebrated,” Ware said.
There’s no escape, Ware said, as she walks by the sorority and fraternity houses every day on her way to class. Nearly 40 years later, Black Greek-letter organizations at UT Austin still don’t own a house.
“It would be really naive to think that things that have been the norm for more than 100 years of the University’s existence will actually have a long-lasting change due to this moment in time,” Ware said.
Strength in numbers
One commonality Ross said he notices within Panhellenic and Interfraternity councils is incrementalism — small steps to deal with systemic racism instead of eradicating it on an organizational level.
“Incrementalism says, ‘We’re going to respect that element that denigrates the people who we say we love and we so usefully on the front pages of our websites show a wonderful picture of a multicultural organization,’” Ross said. “Unless you’re actually doing the deep dive, you’re not going to make the change that you want your organization to actually make.”
Sororities and fraternities are facing a critical time, Ross said, when statements of support won’t cut it anymore.
“Organizations are getting smart in terms of being able to create … the pro forma, triple-vetted, word-salad statement that doesn’t say anything,” Ross said. “(However) we have an election coming up, a pandemic, economic instability, and then overt racism. That’s a combustible combination.”
Some panhellenic members resorted to more radical actions to push sororities to make more efforts to increase diversity.
Elena Cuascut, a senior at the State University of New York College at Geneseo, was one of over 100 members to disaffiliate from Sigma Delta Tau Sorority at the beginning of June. Her disaffiliation is a part of a nationwide effort for the Sigma Delta Tau national headquarters to make more strides in diversity than just a statement.
“It really angered me,” Cuascut said. “This organization was created as a safe place for Jewish women who were oppressed, so it’s extremely disappointing that they failed to acknowledge the marginalization of Black people in this country.”
The collective letter addressed their national board of directors and sisters nationally, stating disappointment with Sigma Delta Tau’s social media response to the Black Lives Matter movement and a declaration to strip their letters.
“How are you going to say you support the Black Lives Matter movement if you don’t use the word Black in your statement?” said Christina Huynh, a senior at Pace University.
Victoria Zumaeta, an alumna of Pace University, initially drafted the letter, including demands of diversity and inclusion investigations on all campuses, mandatory anti-racist training for all Sigma Delta Tau volunteers, and creating a new intersectional motto.
“While I created the bones of (the letter), it was more … hearing from sisters what they felt like we needed,” Zumaeta said. “Women just want to feel empowered, and that they can actually do something and change things in an organization they fell in love with.”
Sigma Delta Tau has untagged its Instagram account from all posts containing the disaffiliation letter. They’ve since formed the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee in their “first steps to becoming truly inclusive and actively anti-racist,” according to their national website.
While Zumaeta said that the organization has been definitely trying so far to improve inclusivity, there is still a lot to do to elevate the voices of women that are marginalized.
“It’s important to make members feel as if they have a voice and an opportunity to really change the organization,” Zumaeta said. “There’s power there … We need to hold them accountable, all while we hold ourselves accountable as well.”
The reckoning
Snyder posted about her experience on Twitter using the hashtag #BlackatUark. Scrolling through the hundreds of tweeted anecdotes, Snyder felt comforted in the fact that she wasn’t the only student to have faced prejudice.
“There are so many injustices many of my fellow Black peers shared experiences of. The hashtag just showed me this does happen to every person.”
Deja Snyder
She remains hopeful that this period will finally bring genuine change as she and other students apply pressure on their institutions to change the racial stigma.
“Every Black person on our campus has dealt with racism or racially insensitive comments before,” Snyder said. “This is not going to just be pushed aside.”
Ross’s lectures often talk about racial controversies in Greek-letter organizations, the more recent ones tinged by acts of white supremacy. Seeing all of these instances unfold, Ross said he is deathly afraid that some sorority and fraternity members may not be immune to acting violently.
Although worried, Ross said that change is inevitable as there is increasing pushback to the status quo. This change, Ross said, can come by tapping into your organization’s DNA and understanding its history.
“Sometimes change is forced upon you. Sometimes you’re proactive about that change. Sometimes you have to deal with a reckoning,” Ross said. “Before you can get healthy, you have to first recognize you’re sick.”
Do you have a story to share? Your information will be kept confidential. You can contact reporter Lauren Goodman directly at laurgoodman27@gmail.com.
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