The confluence of neoliberalism and neoconservatism allows white students one last chance to party like it’s 1899.
October 10, 2007 6:42 PM   Subscribe

Although not a new phenomenon, it seems that over the last year “ghetto,” “gangsta,” “south of the border” and “taco and tequila” parties have become college chic and cool. Parties at more than a dozen colleges and universities received national coverage in the past year, with countless others going unnoticed save for the pictures posted to sundry websites. It is tempting to interpret such events as clichéd racist expressions. They are, after all, contemporary minstrel theaters that allow middle- and upper-class white Americans to cross moral and social boundaries by racial crossdressing. But such easy explanations keep us from fully appreciating the circumstances on today’s college campus that make minstrel parties pleasing and powerful for so many.
posted by Pope Guilty (47 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
wait, college kids are doing ill-considered stuff now?
posted by kuujjuarapik at 6:45 PM on October 10, 2007


White kids are lame. Shocking.
posted by chunking express at 6:48 PM on October 10, 2007


there is a really simple explanation for this. only people who travel about the world a bit, or some, perhaps, who watch an inordinate amount of non-commercial television could know it...white people don't know how to have fun.
posted by kitchenrat at 6:48 PM on October 10, 2007


As of 2004, the Young America’s//check spelling// Foundation had an annual budget of more than $13 million, while the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, another prominent conservative group on campuses, dedicates additional millions for conservative endeavors.

Proofreading your final draft is so corporatized and militarized.
posted by felix betachat at 6:54 PM on October 10, 2007 [3 favorites]


White Trash parties are also quite popular.
posted by birdherder at 6:56 PM on October 10, 2007


felix - you beat me to it. Who needs an editor these days?
posted by MythMaker at 7:08 PM on October 10, 2007


Well, you can only have so many toga parties before you need a new idea.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:24 PM on October 10, 2007


Ugh, how typically caucasians. They whine all the time about their victimization at the hands of the majority minorities, waving about how all the good scholarships are handed to those because people of Brown and Black have some supposed "institutional bias." This neo-white empowerment movement makes me wonder if there might be some sort of bad humor on the part of the whites, some sort of genetic predisposition towards the desire to be oppressive and ill disposed in relation to the privileged underclass.

You can be sure I will write a letter to universities nation wide to scold them for allowing the caucasians to cause such an unseemly stir. I'm sure they'll write the local chapters of White People's Advancement (WPA) in support of ghetto fabulous or Immigrant Hunt parties via arguments of supposed "progressive" protection of free speech. Really it's just more liberal nonsense, and I am aghast at any professor who would favor European/Western/White American ideals and subject matter over our Western/Black/Latino ideals.
posted by Mister Cheese at 7:25 PM on October 10, 2007


Good thing something like that would never happen in an enlightened metropolis like New York.
posted by dersins at 7:35 PM on October 10, 2007


or, you know, we could just... not care.
posted by mr_book at 7:36 PM on October 10, 2007


mr_book: you have a point. More and more I'm convinced that college is where people go to become assholes of some stripe for four years and then go into the real world and if they're lucky learn how full of shit they are.
posted by jonmc at 7:50 PM on October 10, 2007


or, you know, we could just... not care.

and that is why racism continues, people just don't care, unless they are the ones affected

(BTW, nice plagiarizing pope guilty; perhaps some italics next time?)
posted by caddis at 7:54 PM on October 10, 2007


I am not entirely proud to admit that I once went to a "come as your favorite black person" party.

There were a lot of Arthur Ashes (easy costume); this was before Tiger Woods, or there would have been nothing but golfers.

My point, other than bringing up an embarassing episode in my past, is that "outrage" will always appeal to the young.
posted by yhbc at 8:06 PM on October 10, 2007


*Yawn*

Tempest in a teakettle. Is that really the most significant race issue they can find?

Also, I think the refusal of some on the far left (e.g. ColorLines) to acknowledge that there might be some merit to the accusations of hypocrisy that underlie the backlash against diversity, multiculturalism, and affirmative action initiatives, does nothing to encourage dialog.

There's no decent discussion of race issues in this country because neither side wants to admit that the other side might have anything right.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:25 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]


At these Tacos and Tequila parties, do they have tacos and tequila? Because that sounds like a good party.
posted by Divine_Wino at 8:27 PM on October 10, 2007 [4 favorites]


the confluence of neoliberalism and neoconservatism allows white students one last chance to party like it’s 1899.

Both neoliberalism and neoconservatism have almost nothing to do with racial politics. But I guess for the sake of a snappy concluding sentence you can ignore the actual meanings of the words.
posted by afu at 8:32 PM on October 10, 2007


I remember back in the late 1980s being invited to a "ghetto" party at U of M; the invitation indicated that to get in you had to bring "a cancelled welfare check, a radio bigger than your head, and a picture of your father (if you know who he is)." There was a minor brouhaha afterward when the Detroit Free Press got wind of the invite.
posted by Oriole Adams at 8:34 PM on October 10, 2007


23skidoo - when I was at UF there was at least one "Mekong Delta" party sponsored by certain Greek organizations, where guys dressed as GIs and girls dressed (as per usual for these events anyway) as hookers.
posted by casarkos at 8:54 PM on October 10, 2007


23skidoo, a racist Asian-themed party would probably require the racists to act smarter for a few hours. Too ironic to be fun for them.
posted by faster than a speeding bulette at 9:09 PM on October 10, 2007 [3 favorites]


not to take away from the seriousness and insensitivity of these privileged assholes, but there's an even more provocative thought that struck me -

In 2001, the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA conducted a survey that found 75 percent of students described “being very well-off financially” as a “very important” life goal, whereas “influencing the political structure” and “writing original works” rated very low on the scale, with only 16 percent and 13 percent of students respectively describing these as very important life goals.

and i'm sure that people of my generation (college class of '79) would have answered fairly opposite of this

my point being that WE didn't get what we said we wanted then, not most of us, anyway

i wonder how this generation is going to react when they find out that nothing close to 75% of them are going to be "very well-off financially"

combined with their tendency to regard minorities as targets of ridicule or even hatred, i find that just a little frightening
posted by pyramid termite at 9:15 PM on October 10, 2007


White kids are lame.

... white people don't know how to have fun.

Ugh, how typically caucasians.


Way to raise the level of discourse, team!
posted by Scoo at 9:19 PM on October 10, 2007


"Gangsta" and "ghetto" have nothing to do with crossing racial lines... it's all about embracing thug culture. I live in a Texas town where all the white kids like driving around playing ghetto rap. It's clearly not a skin color thing.
posted by rolypolyman at 9:33 PM on October 10, 2007


Oh, dangit, scoo. I meant that to be "caucasian." Sorry about the misplaced plural. It used to be, "caucasoids," but I figured that would probably be a little insensitive towards white people.

I'm conflicted on this one. As a non-white mutt (as race goes) recently graduated, I get this kind of sick feeling in my stomach when I hear about these ghetto parties. I'm quite clueless personally about the whole racial intolerance issue because I've been raised in an environment where it just doesn't fly because... well, I wouldn't be here if it did!

But once again, it doesn't stick well with me. And it worries me that some are so quick to dismiss it as either shenanigans or blatant racism without inspecting the cause. The author goes in to depth on his ideas about his cause. But who's going to bother reading articles like this? Who cares about what college students are doing? It's not like they're the future of the United States or anything like that.

In one way, its really just the superficial trappings surrounding the tendency of conservative minded people in college towards. You dig deeper and you find other things. The mild experience I've had is the push by conservative papers on my campus campaigning to discredit minority groups by associating them with their radical roots/origins in order to pull their student group funding. The less than mild experiences my sister has experienced and seen in Texas range from racial epithets to racial violence.

I would say that certain parts of the population will be concerned about this issue. I will also agree with Metafilter in that it's not the most significant race issue that this nation has to deal with. On the other hand, there are plenty enough people to go around and deal with the aspect of racism here that they believe they have expertise to deal with. Less and, "all racial issues are equal," sort of thing than, "we have the resources to handle all of them."

I can't help but think that to get at the base of it all you have to encourage people to understand each other. The article seeks to understand why whites might put on the parties. Insecurity? Something more nefarious? I'm not one to decide. There might not even be a bottom to it!

So I'll say this: it doesn't sit well with me as a person. As a minority, it scares me a little. As an American, I see it as typical and kind of meh.
posted by Mister Cheese at 9:50 PM on October 10, 2007


(BTW, nice plagiarizing pope guilty; perhaps some italics next time?)

The entire fucking post is a paragraph from the article, including the title. What are you, stupid?
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:13 PM on October 10, 2007


i wonder how this generation is going to react when they find out that nothing close to 75% of them are going to be "very well-off financially"

combined with their tendency to regard minorities as targets of ridicule or even hatred, i find that just a little frightening


I find it hard to believe that all those college students who want to be "very well off financially" are white. I live in CA so I might be biased but is 75% of the entire US population even "white"?

Making fun of trashy people cuts across all racial lines I think.
posted by fshgrl at 10:15 PM on October 10, 2007


The entire fucking post is a paragraph from the article, including the title. What are you, stupid?
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:13 AM on October 11 [+] [!]


Enough of the personal insults. We had a whole meta thread over this little style faux pas recently. Yes, you cite to it, but when you take someone else's words verbatim you should provide some indication regardless of how easy it is to check. If you were in my class in college and pulled this stunt you would have been kicked out. MeFi is less severe. Nevertheless, it is still rude to quote someone else's stuff with no quote marks, no italics, nothing but "oh, if you actually read the link you will find it buried inside." Jeez, you don't even need to remember "em" as Matt has conveniently provided a little button to take care of the whole thing.
posted by caddis at 10:25 PM on October 10, 2007


Wiki says the "white alone" category of the Census Bureau's 2005 American Community Survey accounts for 74.7 percent of the US population. So, yeah... I'd say that about 75% of the population is "white." Which I don't think really relates to the "75% of them are going to be very-well off financially" since I think that quote had to to more with the author's argument that materialism is multicultural education out of college education.

Making fun of trashy people does cut across racial lines, I'll agree. But inevitably the trashy people will get upset... even more so if the people making fun are of another race.

Not to sure if holding mock immigrant hunt parties cuts across racial lines. I imagine it doesn't, if at the very least on the part of the recent immigrant populace. But who knows?
posted by Mister Cheese at 10:25 PM on October 10, 2007


Making fun of trashy people does cut across racial lines, I'll agree. But inevitably the trashy people will get upset.

Yeah, poor people are such suckers they really deserve all the scorn heaped on them by rich Aryans, especially if they are poor Black or Latino people, man aren't they the scariest? Who do you think is trashier, the Blacks or the Latinos?
posted by caddis at 10:34 PM on October 10, 2007 [2 favorites]


If you were in my class in college and pulled this stunt you would have been kicked out.

Fortunately, I'm pointing out interesting web content on MeFi and not turning in a paper.

"oh, if you actually read the link you will find it buried inside."

The second paragraph of the article, how obscure!

Yeah, poor people are such suckers they really deserve all the scorn heaped on them by rich Aryans, especially if they are poor Black or Latino people, man aren't they the scariest? Who do you think is trashier, the Blacks or the Latinos?

I suddenly like you more.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:58 PM on October 10, 2007


My knit about your post is so minor by comparison to my disgust with people who think that racist tirades by drunken frat boys are just humorous rather than evil. Think pea vs. Sisyphus's boulder. (I just don't want anymore MeTalk posts over this small crap, so I post it here.)
posted by caddis at 11:11 PM on October 10, 2007


Yeah, poor people are such suckers they really deserve all the scorn heaped on them by rich Aryans, especially if they are poor Black or Latino people, man aren't they the scariest? Who do you think is trashier, the Blacks or the Latinos?

Actually, there are a lot of black people who are repelled by thug/"ghetto" culture, even though they may live in the same areas where it originates; in fact I strongly suspect that once you get out of the under-30 demographic, where there are a lot of white people doing the thug thing as well, it's pretty universally viewed as trashy.

Where you cross the line from just making fun of something lame, to outright racism, is when you jump from "thug culture" to "black culture" as if they're the same thing. That, to me, is when it starts to get ugly, because there's an unspoken assumption that black culture is thug culture.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:20 PM on October 10, 2007 [2 favorites]


I ended up at a "ghetto" party in college, at an engineering school where everyone was basically middle class. The 40s were better than the shit beer normally served, and I think the party was about 15-20% black. There were 3-4 guys who were taking it a bit too far with the mocking (hey, frat guys, you know), but for everyone else it was about the same as tropical night.

Here is the entire reason why these parties happen on colleges: frat boys need to put on parties. Frat boys aren't particularly creative in general. Frat boys have gone to other racially-themed parties and found them enjoyable. Thus: Ghetto party time!
posted by JZig at 12:11 AM on October 11, 2007


Can someone simplify and explain the somewhat confusing (to me, at least) correlationfest between what is seen as rampant institutional conservatism and fratboy racism? Or is afu right in saying that they ignore the meaning of words?
posted by honest knave at 12:49 AM on October 11, 2007


Good thing something like that would never happen in an enlightened metropolis like New York.

Except that there were plenty of black people at that party. Sorry to let that little detail get in the way of your generalization-fest.
posted by Tlogmer at 2:24 AM on October 11, 2007


From an ignorant outsiders view, it strikes me as a great tragedy that in America class politics seems always to be trumped by race politics. Maybe not surprising, given the legacy of slavery, but in one sense a monumental waste of energy and as neat a bit of divide-and-rule as ever we managed in the British Empire.
posted by Abiezer at 2:28 AM on October 11, 2007 [1 favorite]


Most white frat boys are racist, some proudly so. Yet, most of their heroes (Kobe, Tiger, Kanye) are black, and most of the music they listen to, at parties or in their cars, is hip-hop. Yet they've been conditioned to believe in the inferiority of the black race, which sets up a paradox. These parties allow them to both celebrate and denigrate black culture, making a comfortable place to express themselves as they wish to be, but still retain a cultural hegemony that non-ironic celebration would not allow.

/amateur sociologist
posted by cell divide at 6:00 AM on October 11, 2007 [1 favorite]


Can someone simplify and explain the somewhat confusing (to me, at least) correlationfest between what is seen as rampant institutional conservatism and fratboy racism?

Conservatism has historically been almost inextricably bound up with open racism. You don't have to be an open racist to be a conservative, but you pretty much have to be a conservative to be an open racist.

(And spare me the OMG DIXIECRATS nonsense, those worthless scumfucks were southern conservatives who flipped to the Republicans before the ink was dry on the Civil Rights Act.)
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:10 AM on October 11, 2007


In northern New England, where we don't have black people, we used to have "grit" ("dirtball") themed parties where we wore Slayer t-shits and Canadian Tuxedos. Some people even wore fake hair in the back of a mesh ball cap to simulate a mudflap/mullet haircut.

"thank god I have class, unlike those people" is a common theme among young adult parties. Decent people grow out of it. And then look back and wince.
posted by Mayor Curley at 7:26 AM on October 11, 2007


Wow I think that people getting mad about a ghetto or taco party is stupid. Bunch of kids get together and have a theme party. Do you think the Romans and Greeks would be pissed off about toga parties? For the most part, it's a bunch of college kids dressing like rappers and girls dancing trashier and sluttier than normally. I doubt the fact that a bunch of college kids throwing a party imitating another part of another culture is going to tear a hole in the fabric of America.
posted by Mastercheddaar at 7:51 AM on October 11, 2007


Wow I think that people getting mad about a ghetto or taco party is stupid.

Wow, I think racists and people who defend them are stupid! Amazing what one learns.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:05 AM on October 11, 2007


I agree with Pope Guilty, however, MeFi has never been very sensitive to race issues. Folks here can get all riled up over cat claws, foreskins, fat and sexual orientation, but no so much race.
posted by caddis at 8:53 AM on October 11, 2007 [3 favorites]


I also wonder how many attendees at these parties grew up in all-white neighborhoods. It's so much easier to boil down members of another race to a stereotype if you've never really met any.
posted by jonp72 at 10:55 AM on October 11, 2007 [1 favorite]


Coming from a white, lower-middle-class area, I got used to thinking of racism as something that poor, ignorant people relied on in order to have SOMEONE to feel superior to. That's why I get an especially queasy feeling when I see "educated" people from families that are better-off acting so witlessly and insensitively. Of course I get the same queasy feeling around young black and hispanic people who don't see anything wrong with it either. Amazing what people will tolerate under the banner of "just having a good time".
posted by hermitosis at 11:38 AM on October 11, 2007


I ended up at a "ghetto" party in college, at an engineering school where everyone was basically middle class. The 40s were better than the shit beer normally served, and I think the party was about 15-20% black.

A fair percentage of the students at the Santa Clara University "Latino" party were Latino. Yes, SCU is a Jesuit college, but the overwhelming culture on campus is standard California liberal. The Jesuits risk arrest every year in the annual protest of the School of the Americas. The Young Republicans group on campus has little to no influence.

Like honest knave, I'm having a hard time understanding the link between the neoconservative "ivory tower" backlash and these parties, as much as I'd love to blame neocons for everything awful.
posted by IcyJuly at 12:13 PM on October 11, 2007


Toga parties are Greece-ist!!
posted by psmealey at 3:55 AM on October 12, 2007


Honestly, though. I'd prefer to party like it was 1848. That would be a riot.
posted by psmealey at 3:56 AM on October 12, 2007


Honestly, though. I'd prefer to party like it was 1848. That would be a riot.

You're thinking of partying like it's 2099, when the Republicans... well, I've said too much already.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:21 AM on October 12, 2007


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