Frat blows it with "blackout" at ASU

People find many different ways to honor Martin Luther King every January. Some choose to volunteer all day, or various other acts of good will.

Arizona State University’s Fraternity Tau Kappa Epsilon chose to celebrate by throwing an “MLK Blackout” party, complete with party favors mocking African American stereotypes including watermelon cups and oversized basketball jerseys. 

Once Anderson Cooper and other people in the news media got hold of Instagram pictures documenting the event, the backlash was wild.

Such willful ignorance should not still be so rampant in our society. Punishment should be doled out for those insensitive and immature enough to participate.

As for rampant ignorance, IU doesn’t have much room to talk.

Last year one of IU’s own sororities was also caught on camera attending an
offensive homeless-themed party.

ASU’s offense is worse considering the timing. It takes a special kind of ignorance to throw a party that is supposedly in honor of a great humanitarian, and at the same time make that party so completely insulting to him and his message.

You just can’t compress an entire race and culture into a theme without being offensive.

You will always end up stereotyping.

Even if, consciously, the person with the watermelon cup in their hand knows that they aren’t giving a fair and true depiction of the race they are impersonating, face it: they are still holding a watermelon cup.

They, at the very least, thought it was an honest enough representation that people would recognize it and laugh — and that is racist.

Racism is a bigger and more complex problem than just making people see that one race is not the sum of its stereotypes.

This is why we chose to believe this fraternity is more ignorant than evil
.
We believe the fraternity did mean to celebrate MLK Day — the problem is that they failed to understand that dressing up in everything short of blackface demeans an entire race and culture and dehumanizes them.

By doing so, you objectify and offend the very group you think you are celebrating.
It is this dehumanization and representation of African Americans that Martin Luther King Jr. fought so hard against.

The Editorial Board believes stopping future embarrassments like this depends solely on our ability to address this ignorance.

We need to be more aware of the extent that racism still exists, even where we least expect it, and learn how to recognize it before we have theme parties about it.

This brings us to our second concern: punishment.

Obviously, the only way to stop this from happening in the future is through education.
This is why kicking them out of school is probably not the best option.

Perhaps enrollment in some classes focused on diversity in society will help them debunk their misconceptions about a group of people they clearly don’t understand.

Their true punishment, however, will be the media demerit that will follow them for the rest of the Internet’s life.

Because of the media saturated society we live in these pictures, and the news attention they received, are going to haunt these kids — from when they look for jobs, to when their blind date tries to Google them.

That punishment is probably the most effective way they will learn.

opinion@idsnews.com
Follow the Editorial Board on Twitter @ids_opinion.