What really is racism?

After writing my blog on the Bengals slogan last night, i brought the subject up at the dinner table. We got in a really good discussion about it, with even my 10 year old brother bringing up some good points. My mom brought up a similar point that shocked me. When she was in collage, she was a part of a sorority, and when she was a senior, became the vice president of that sorority. Before pledge week began, each of the sorority and fraternity houses had a meeting with the administrators, to go over the requirements each house had to meet to be able to continue at the school. One of that requirements was that each house accept at least one pledge of a different ethnicity into their house. I thought that this was absolutely ridiculous. These houses should accept everybody based on whether they feel they should fit their sorority or not, and not just to fill a quota. If a person found out about this requirement, they wouldn't know whether their were there because they absolutely deserved to be, or because they were just needed to fill a quota. I understand that the administrators may be trying to be sure peoples bias about race isn't put into the decission, and that everybody has a change to join a sorority, but still. I think it would be better to be in no sorority, then to be in one that you dont belong in, or that your disliked by people in. This whole requirement could cause alot of resentment, i think its a really bad idea.

Who dey?

Today in class we talked about racism, and the steryotypes put on people of different ethnicities, and it reminded me of something that i never even thought about as a racist comment. Growing up in cincinnati, ohio. my family and i were always huge bengals fans. The bengals slogan is "Who Dey" which comes from "who dey think gonna beat dem bengals". This slogan came from african americans, or how they supposedly would say that sentence. This slogan is written on shirts, signs, and all other propaganda that the bengals put out, is yelled at the games, and its also the name of the bengals mascot. This slogan started in the 1970's, and you would think that by now, the bengals would have gotten rid of this steryotypical and racist statement. Many highschools who have names like "redskins" have had to change their names because their racist against Native Americans. If the government is making highschools get rid of their racist names, shouldnt they also be making our football teams change their racist slogans? The bengals have a lot of african american fans, and they probably find this statement very offensive. The phrase shows bad grammer, and is spelled like they would supposedly say it. It doesnt make african americans seem very intelligent. Now that i think about it, i dont really feel comfortable saying something that is so offensive to so many people.