Tuesday, November 08, 2005
 Some things just leave a bad taste in your mouth. Yea, campus life is filled with stories of students "acting a fool." But, last months "ghetto" party at the University of Chicago had the wrong ingredients: wealthy white students wearing sideways baseball caps, sagged jeans and gold chains and listening to 50 Cent while sipping from beer bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. This was no innocent toga party; it was making a joke of societies poor.
According to the Chicago Tribune the "straight thuggin' party at the university set off a campus debate about race relations at the school, whose undergrad population is around 4 percent black.
University's president Don Randel called the theme of the party offensive and said it "parodied racial stereotypes based on assumptions about economically disadvantaged members of society."
When you have money, you have a lot more choice in how you shape your life. "Ghetto" is less about choice then just surviving and hoping you make it through the day without being shot. Not many minorities get the option to get a higher education, and if they do they are called "sellouts."
Last week Filmmaker Spike Lee (speaking to a college audience) criticized rapper 50 Cent for a movie poster "Get Rich or Die Trying" -- saying it perpetuated negative stereotypes about black youth.
Lee said he believes popular media today instills the idea that young black men "are called an 'Oreo' or sellout if you aren't drinking a 40, smoking a blunt and holding your balls."
The problem with young black men and women today, Lee said, is that they equate acting intelligently with acting "white," a belief he said is further perpetuated by the media.
Maybe that's why many colleges are only 4 percent black, it's not the cool move to be smart. But why do white kids love it?
One writer suggested copying "ghetto" culture is form of flattery. It’s true that the largest consumers of hip-hop music are suburban white kids, who adopt the music, the language and the dress as part of their youth culture. They all want to be down.
The few black students that make it to a college campus are far from flattered, they are angry. There is a "mean-spiritedness surrounding some of these gatherings." A flyer for a party at another college encourages students to bring empty beer bottles to strew around the dorm, draw graffiti on the walls and steal computers from their fellow students. You get the feeling that the parties have less to do with embracing the culture, and instead making a joke out it.
By Henry Cruz
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