Sorority Women Get Hysterical
Posted on January 28th, 2015 in Uncategorized | 32 Comments »
At first I thought this was a joke, but it appears to be real: The Washington Post reports that the national chapters of UVA sororities have ordered the sorority women of UVa not to attend any fraternity events this weekend out of fear for their safety.
At some U-Va. chapters in recent days, students described mandatory emergency meetings with representatives from their national chapter telling them they risked suspension, fines and other penalties if any of them attended bid night parties. Boys’ Bid Night is typically a night when sorority sisters go from house to house sharing drinks with friends.
Mandatory emergency meetings…
Tammie Pinkston, the international president of Alpha Delta Pi, tells the Cavalier Daily that she doesn’t trust the safety of “Bid Night,” which is apparently when fraternities tap their new members and host parties to celebrate the event.
“We believe the activities on Men’s Bid Night present significant safety concerns for all of our members and we are united in our request that the 16 NPC sororities not participate,” Pinkston said.
(I can’t resist pointing out that Tammie Pinkston was once a Tiger Twirler at Clemson.)
The move is obviously a reaction to the Rolling Stone story, so let’s try to comprehend the logic here. A Rolling Stone article says that a woman was gang-raped at a fraternity. She was not. Therefore, it is unsafe to go to parties at fraternities.
But wait—there’s more.
At some chapters, women were told not only to avoid going to fraternity parties on Boys’ Bid Night, but to avoid any social gathering with fraternity members, said Ben Gorman, president of the Inter-Fraternity Council at U-Va. That would mean a ban on attending off-campus parties or gatherings at bars that night after a hotly anticipated basketball game on campus, which pits the undefeated No. 2 Cavaliers against No. 4 Duke. “People are very agitated and very upset, and see this as an obstacle to larger cultural change a violation of free rights and student free will.”
Let’s repeat that: “Women were told…to avoid any social gatherings with fraternity members.”
A few thoughts on this:
1) The idea of banning socializing with members of fraternities is a deeply sexist, anti-feminist idea; it suggests that college women are, in fact, girls or infants, incapable of taking care of themselves or displaying any judgment. (I can’t wait to see what Jezebel says about this.)
(Zoe Heller makes much the same point about “affirmative consent” laws in her recent New York Review of Books essay, writing, “special protections to women based on their difference from men have a habit of redounding to women’s disadvantage.”)
2) This move may also have the effect of dividing women on the issue of sexual assault on campus, possibly creating a constituency of women who feel that emotion and irrationality have gone too far in this wave of hysteria.
3) There’s a kind of Big Brother aspect to this dictate that is deeply unpleasant. “We will tell you with whom you can socialize—whether on campus or off—or you risk expulsion from the national chapter.” It’s not going too far to say that there’s something deeply un-American about this.
4) There’s also an ugly element of manipulation in the move—using the college sorority members as pawns in an attempt to force fraternity members to change their alleged behavior. It’s a modern-day Lysistrata! (I mean—this is the Greek system, right?) But somehow I doubt that the people behind this policy have read Lysistrata. In any case, even if that is the strategy, it’s a deeply sexist one. We’ll use these young women in a game of chess…
5) There’s virtually nothing that the national sororities could have done to faster discredit themselves and increase sympathy for the fraternities.
6) Some people said that the damage that comes from a fake allegation of rape is trivial. Imagine being a fraternity member and having a national organization prohibit its members from socializing with you at a bar. Guilt by association is not trivial.
The Post suggests that a backlash on campus is quickly brewing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the national organizations revoke their ban before Friday.
I wonder what Sabrina Rubin Erdely, wherever she is, makes of this…
32 Responses
1/28/2015 6:32 pm
I remember that when the Rolling Stone article was first making waves, and most people assumed that it was accurate, some feminists were arguing that a sorority boycott of frat parties would be tantamount to “victim-blaming.” The logic went something like: women shouldn’t have to change their behavior to solve the campus rape crisis. The crisis is caused by men, therefore men are the ones who have to change their behavior. To say that women have to change their behavior by doing things like stop attending frat parties is effectively “blaming” the women who have been going to frat parties all these years, for having a hand in causing the problem.
When I encountered people making this argument (in the comments section of Jezebel and elsewhere), I was quite taken aback.
1/28/2015 6:34 pm
Since this is being done by a few distanced executives rather than an emotional mob, the word ‘hysterical’ is clearly wrong.
The correct word is ‘stupid,’ ‘misguided,’ ‘benighted,’ ‘counterproductive,’ ‘deplorable,’ or similar.
The problem with the word you chose should be obvious.
HYSTERICAL - 1610s, from Latin hystericus “of the womb,” from Greek hysterikos “of the womb, suffering in the womb,” from hystera “womb” (see uterus). Originally defined as a neurotic condition peculiar to women and thought to be caused by a dysfunction of the uterus.
Stupidity and misguidedness like the ones on display in the linked article — although in this case they are running very deep and the stupidity is very stupid indeed — are not unique to women.
Why the clumsy gender-baiting? Pandering to your new readership?
1/28/2015 6:44 pm
You are always so paltry with credit, SE. I chose that word precisely because it is so loaded, to suggest that the women making these decisions are reinforcing old and unfortunate stereotypes about female behavior (because the decisions are void of reason and logic). The intention was to show how the lack of logic from some participants in the debate over campus sexual assault is actually anti-feminist-as the post itself says at greater length.
1/28/2015 7:05 pm
Ah! Irony. I’m sure all your readers will get it, and will understand that you’re calling feminists to their higher feminist selves, rather than, oh I don’t know, implying that feminism is a stalking horse for general irrational shrieking bitchiness.
Your point (1) doesn’t do the former thing with any conviction, and it’s a highly familiar right-wing maneuver to accuse progressives of perversely undermining their own doctrine. In fact, this maneuver has been documented as a right-wing trope: “Hirschman argues that a triplet of ‘rhetorical’ criticisms-perversity, futility, and jeopardy-‘has been unfailingly leveled’ by ‘reactionaries’ at each major progressive reform of the past 300 years.”
I posted a link here to Amazon: “The Rhetoric of Reaction, Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy.”
I’m not calling you an anti-feminist, but I think you are baiting them and hiding behind a claim of irony.
1/28/2015 7:10 pm
On a more basic level, it sounds like you’re saying certain feminists give feminism itself a bad name when they act stupid. That could be true, but only if you think the stupid people in question are acting on behalf of feminism. Which in turn only makes sense if you think the feminist agenda has a tendency to make stupid sweeping generalizations. (Which is what plenty of recent commenters certainly believe, and they claim to see evidence for it everywhere.)
I don’t see anything in the article that suggests the sorority executives are claiming that their stand is ‘feminist,’ and I certainly don’t see anyone justifying their stand in terms of feminism. They are just being stupid.
1/28/2015 7:42 pm
SE, thanks for femsplaining all that to us. Another fun little buzz word since you’re all about the semantics, the term being a reversal of the feminist word mansplaining, just so we’re clear for my fellow neckbeard, mouth-breathing, neanderthals. Also… what’s this thing called irony?
Catch my drift here… or am I being obtuse? In other words… condescend much?
1/28/2015 7:46 pm
I’m pretty good at irony and I didn’t see the irony in the original post.
1/28/2015 7:50 pm
Speaking of things Greek, Richard, it is nice to see that your Greek Chorus, SE, is back. It keeps things in balance, interesting, and infinitely entertaining. Thank you both for your insight into this issue, and also, for a good laugh!
I know that Jezebel is an unreliable source for just about everything, and I am well aware that it is difficult to glean much of anything of consequence from that site due to the nature of “Jezebelian eloquence”, as Helen Rosin (I think) put it, but there is an article on the site in which the writer catalogues sexual assault charges brought at different universities over the past year. These are charges only-allegations-but they are quite disturbing. At Ramapo College in New Jersey, two men were arrested. These men, like the Vanderbilt football players, took pictures of the alleged victim. You have already mentioned the Stanford Olympic swimmer. He, like the convicted Vanderbilt students, allegedly assaulted an unconscious woman. There is another alleged assault in which the woman was videotaped and the video sent to other students.
These are uncharted waters, as far as I am concerned, and it all has to do with alcohol, the Internet, and hook up culture. Many lives are being destroyed in the process: those of women who are victims, those of men falsely accused, and those of young men who are actually becoming criminals, who should be getting a college education instead. As far as the baton twirler sorority CEO goes: whatever. The great feminist thinkers knew that the tradition they were creating grew out of a great tradition, and that tradition was Western male patriarchy. I don’t know when that all fell apart, but it did. And we are suffering the consequences now-or more precisely, our children are.
1/28/2015 8:43 pm
Well, this would certainly help the lawyers make their case if there are ever to be any libel actions brought against Erdely, her editors & Jann Wenner that real, lasting damage to innocent people’s reputations has been inflicted with Rolling Stone’s reckless disregard for the truth in choosing to publish that mess of a story without the barest minimum of fact checking.
As the saying goes, you really cannot unring that bell, that much is clear.
1/28/2015 9:13 pm
“The great feminist thinkers knew that the tradition they were creating grew out of a great tradition, and that tradition was Western male patriarchy. I don’t know when that all fell apart, but it did. And we are suffering the consequences now.”
“[There are disturbing] sexual assault charges brought at different universities over the past year. These are charges only–allegations–but they are quite disturbing…. These are uncharted waters.”
“as far as I am concerned, [] it all has to do with alcohol, the Internet, and hook up culture.”
That third quote clarifies things quite a bit. It would have seemed otherwise that the writer was blaming terrible campus rapes on feminist thinkers who have forgotten that their place is to be deferential toward their male predecessors. Instead, the last quote reveals that rape is caused by the Internet (a recent invention that by its nature actuates physical contact), by alcohol (a recent invention), and by “hookup culture” (which of course has no link in the writer’s mind to those upstart feminists previously mentioned).
I actually do think it’s important for all thinkers to acknowledge the predominance of past writers. So I don’t mean to scoff at that part. But everything else about the “st” post is just looney tunes.
Anyway, Richard, I think you should reread your post and ask yourself if honestly you didn’t intend your “ironic” statements to appeal to a number of enthusiastic recent commenters who are down on (sane, mainstream) feminism. (It’s hard for me to tell if st is in that camp, but to the extent he lionizes the patriarchalness of the patriarchal tradition, rather than its other kinds of nontesticular greatness, I’m thinking yes.)
1/28/2015 10:50 pm
SE, you have read this blog for years now. You of all people should know that I write what I think and feel, not what I think will please people.
1/28/2015 11:08 pm
Okay then.
I honestly thought maybe you didn’t know the etymology.
1/29/2015 4:06 am
Great, a chance for me to have “sane, mainstream feminism” defined. Would you care to do so, SE?
1/29/2015 7:19 am
SE,
Good try. I am not a man. Try again. I actually respect your position, but not when you stoop to ridicule. It is unbecoming.
I agree with Anonymous. Define “sane, mainstream” feminism for everyone, please.
1/29/2015 7:53 am
A sane mainstream feminist expects that no more or less skepticism be initially applied to the statement “he raped me” than is applied to the statement “he swung a baseball bat at my head.”
You go hear the other side of the story, you inquire and re-inquire, and then you make a judgment.
1/29/2015 8:11 am
“Ah! Irony. I’m sure all your readers will get it…”
Just because YOU didn’t get it doesn’t mean we’re ALL that thick, SE.
Give us a bit of credit, hey?
1/29/2015 11:00 am
Apologies for having forgotten to sign my Q about sane, mainstream feminism. Thank you, SE, for replying. I think I could get behind your definition, although it is a bit short. Let me give you my definition, which you may discount as much as you want due to me being a man.
“Sane, mainstream feminism insists on equal rights and equal opportunity for women and girls.”
And here is my definition of insane, unhinged feminism:
“Insane, unhinged feminism insists on equal or better outcomes for women in high-paying and/or high-prestige careers (assuming, without proof, that under-representation of women is the result of their being discriminated against). Any suggestion, be it ever so cautious, that fewer women than men might be cut out to be Fortune 500 CEOs or Fields Medal winners, will result in the offender being destroyed. Also, male over-representation in low-income and/or low-prestige occupations like security guard, sewage worker, garbage collector is not a problem requiring correction.”
1/29/2015 1:19 pm
SE,
“A sane mainstream feminist expects that no more or less skepticism be initially applied to the statement ‘he raped me’ than is applied to the statement ‘he swung a baseball bat at my head.'”
Agreed. This is also the belief of Nashville’s DA, apparently, who said that rape is rape, a Class A felony, and perpetrators will be prosecuted. Period. I doubt the DA is a feminist. Just a realist.
I think I see where you misunderstood me, or where I did not make myself clear, take your pick: my statement that it all has to do with the Internet, alcohol, and hook up culture. I guess that makes me a rape apologist. (I assure you, I am not)
Years ago I taught a college adjunct course for young men coming out of prison and entering the Job Corps program. (Funding was cut in one year, leaving the kids essentially with nowhere to go) I was very young then, and plenty naïve. I printed out Hamlet for the students to read. Not only did they refuse to read Hamlet or anything else, I could not get control of the classroom until the Center Director came in and basically laid the law down. These students-black, white, and Hispanic-were extremely bright, extremely manipulative, and truly lost. I shelved Hamlet for a while, and had them write an essay on a “life changing” event. One wrote about how he, at eight years old, witnessed the murder of his mother by his father. Another wrote of an attempted suicide. And two others wrote of a drive by shooting that they both participated in. All of these students had severe substance abuse problems that helped lead them to do things they would not do if not high and feeling invincible. Jail stopped them, but did not help them. It did not make them better people, either.
The Vanderbilt students are guilty and they are responsible for a brutal rape. I do not think they would have had the nerve to do what they did, however, nor the impulse, had they not been drunk out of their minds, unless they are truly sociopathic individuals, which they may very well be. They are going to jail, nevertheless, and should. Hopefully they will come out and live productive lives.
The Internet:
I think easy access to pornography is definitely influencing young men and women today, and helping to push the boundaries of what is considered acceptable behavior to the limit.
Hook up culture:
Reminds me of the old Virginia Slims cigarette commercial in which women were told we had come a long way, baby. Now we could smoke like men and kill ourselves, too! I really would like to hear a plausible explanation of how “hooking up” is liberating. I have read what some women say, and I don’t buy it:-ie, men can do it, now we can, too. Do what? Take meaning out of most everything?
Feminism as a great tradition, growing out of a great tradition-
I mean this, not as in a rib taken from, Adam say, but as in Miriam standing next to Moses and asking God if he heard only the words of men. Derrida, Irigaray, Cixous, Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf did not, each in their own way, deconstruct Western thought to destroy it (in my opinion) but to create something better built upon its deconstruction. The feminists lost me when Hemingway became a patriarchal pariah. Forget it. I am not giving up The Old Man and the Sea. If this has changed, please let me know.
I like the title of your book . I intend to read it, unless you insult me again, lol. I thought you were Native (as in Native American) You thought I was a man. I guess that makes us even….Thanks, Richard, all….
1/29/2015 1:51 pm
How ridiculous!! Bid night is one of the rare nights that sororities travel as a whole to “meet and greets” at the fraternities. It’s probably one of the safest night of interaction since the sorority sisters there are a whole and the visits at each fraternity are short.
Once again, UVA’s Greek system is having rules and regulations applied to them because of one student’s false accusations, an author’s lack of ethics, a magazine’s inability to fact check and an administration’s rush to judgment. Shame on the national sorority council for not better understanding the facts.
1/29/2015 7:16 pm
st -
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have recently announced that they want 50% of their officers (cops) to be women - currently it’s ‘only’ 29%. On the surface it’s difficult to put that number into perspective as to whether it’s good or bad. Here’s the thing - the Canadian government’s own research shows that only 27% of women are interested in police work as a career. It probably won’t surprise you that even though the women are over-represented in the RCMP already, the government is going to relax the physical requirements in an attempt to goose the numbers, although they do tell us that the relaxed standards are completely unrelated (do you believe that?… neither do I). Do you know who is complaining the hardest about all of this? A female 40 year RCMP vet who was the very first female Mountie… she says not only is it offensive to her that these women are getting a pass where she did not (not that she wanted one), but she’s also rightly complaining that it’s also insidious soft bigotry to think that women aren’t capable of passing the current tests.
1/29/2015 10:58 pm
Once the fear is out of Pandora’s box it’s a lot harder to close. The cycle of over-reaction is too much.
Re-quoting here:
“Once again, UVA’s Greek system is having rules and regulations applied to them because of one student’s false accusations, an author’s lack of ethics, a magazine’s inability to fact check and an administration’s rush to judgment. Shame on the national sorority council for not better understanding the facts.”
Here, here.
1/29/2015 11:05 pm
This really is upsetting. The students are doing nothing wrong. Just another example of misplaced meddling by the grown-ups.
Again I am no apologist for fraternities and sororities. I knew people in them but had no friends from them. But sheesh, enough is enough. Just let them be, the fraternity/sorority system is not the enemy…stereotypes certainly are as are misplaced agendas and reckless reporting.
How the cover-up that wasn’t ever led here…just wrong. Like I said before I at first believed the article from Rolling Stone - it was so sensational and chilling. As it crumbled I thought, no - this is wrong. This is dead wrong, how could the reporter Erderly and Rolling Stone get this so wrong?
It hasn’t helped to talk with alums that said they’d never set foot on campus - and still might not given that they believed the story! So etched in our brains that something that never happened, happened.
For all irresponsible journalists out there…thanks for burning the public trust.
1/29/2015 11:57 pm
[…] This is probably a better link to illustrate my […]
1/30/2015 7:45 am
Interested Observer,
I think that the 40 year RCMP is correct in her assessment that the assumption that women cannot pass the test is a form of discrimination. Women can pass the test, and more. Women have proven to be excellent officers in law enforcement and in the military.
However, as I am sure you know, at one point it was necessary to require law enforcement agencies, the military, businesses and universities to allow women to join their ranks. I remember some of the old arguments about why women could do none of the above, and they were very unattractive arguments, to say the least.
I do not know where the balance is now.
The early feminists argued that the idea of the “exceptional woman” can become a form of discrimination as well. That is, she (the exceptional woman) made it, so what is keeping all of you other women from making it, too? The problem has been solved.
Well, the question is, has the problem really been solved? Do all women have the opportunities that Hilary Clinton has had? If not, is that because they are women, or because of other factors, such as economic class, where a lot of arguments do break down. Does a woman working at Walmart-or a man-really have a chance to achieve success in America? How about their children?
I am trying to position myself here. I guess I am center/left. It depends upon the issue. That certainly drives the politicians crazy and is one reason they detest Independents.
I liked your comment about Winston Churchill having meetings in which widely divergent viewpoints were presented. We seem to have lost that capacity today. Most everyone seems to feel a need to suit up and prepare to defend themselves. A lot is lost that way.
I don’t know if President Obama actually sent a bust of Churchill back to the UK. (I haven’t checked to see if Pluto is a planet again, or an asteroid, or an alien entity, either) but if he did, in whose name did he do that? If true, I just cannot understand that. Really. It is offensive to me, and I am-was- an Obama supporter.
1/30/2015 8:06 am
JMil,
“For all irresponsible journalists out there….thanks for burning the public trust…
Spot on!
I believed the RS story, too. One, because it confirmed biases. And two, I just assumed that members of the staff at RS had all done their jobs.
wrong, wrong, and wrong again
Thanks to responsible journalists, we are starting to get back on track.
As we have it now, Erdely has written Uncle Tom’s Cabin-a little article that has started a big war. That would all have been well and good had she told the readers that she was writing of an alleged rape. Maybe she truly did believe Jackie. I don’t know at this point. But what I and a lot of other readers do know is that Erdely did not do her job. Her fellow professionals called her out on it, starting here on this blog, and so on and on it goes.
1/30/2015 9:22 am
Well, footnote on Churchill: Please see The Independent, article titled, “Not his finest hour: the dark side of Winston Churchill.”
That explains Obama’s reaction. Nevertheless, he is President of the United States and cannot allow personal history to dictate national policy, even when that “policy” involves a seemingly insignificant symbolic gesture. He did the right thing, in the end, it appears. Pluto is a planet again.
1/30/2015 10:31 am
From the Independent; article on Richard Toye’s history Churchill’s Empire.
A pretty good synthesis of two seemingly irreconcilable histories, imho:
“So how can the two be reconciled? Was Churchill’s moral opposition to Nazism a charade, masking the fact he was merely trying to defend the British Empire from a rival?
The US civil rights leader Richard B. Moore, quoted by Toye, said it was ‘a rare and fortunate coincidence’ that at that moment ‘the vital interests of the British Empire [coincided] with those of the great overwhelming majority of mankind’. But this might be too soft in its praise. If Churchill had only been interested in saving the Empire, he could probably have cut a deal with Hitler. No: he had a deeper repugnance for Nazism than that. He may have been a thug, but he knew a greater thug when he saw one – and we may owe our freedom today to this wrinkle in history.
This, in turn, led to the great irony of Churchill’s life. In resisting the Nazis, he produced some of the richest prose-poetry in defence of freedom and democracy ever written. It was a cheque he didn’t want black or Asian people to cash – but they refused to accept that the Bank of Justice was empty. As the Ghanaian nationalist Kwame Nkrumah wrote: ‘All the fair, brave words spoken about freedom that had been broadcast to the four corners of the earth took seed and grew where they had not been intended.’ Churchill lived to see democrats across Britain’s dominions and colonies – from nationalist leader Aung San in Burma to Jawarlal Nehru in India – use his own intoxicating words against him.
Ultimately, the words of the great and glorious Churchill who resisted dictatorship overwhelmed the works of the cruel and cramped Churchill who tried to impose it on the darker-skinned peoples of the world. The fact that we now live in a world where a free and independent India is a superpower eclipsing Britain, and a grandson of the Kikuya ‘savages’ is the most powerful man in the world, is a repudiation of Churchill at his ugliest-and a sweet ironic victory for Churchill at his best.”
I have never thought of Churchill as a thug, and still don’t, but he did some thuggish things. So, from Churchill to Hemingway to Sabrina Rubin Erdely, do we improve the framework, traditions, history, culture, we were handed, or do we do away with it altogether? (joking here) Who knows? As for me, I think I will join a fraternity! (also joking)
Thanks, Interested Observer, for your input.
I do not know who has posted what, because nothing is coming up on my computer screen, so I will definitely stop here, since I am way outside of the scope of the blog post. Thanks again, Richard. I can see why you might not want to blog full time. It takes a lot of time and energy just to comment on a blog, much less write posts for one and monitor it. My hat is off to you for doing that and holding down your day job, too, plus taking care of your children.
1/30/2015 6:27 pm
st -
For the record, I am a huge admirer of Churchill, although it may not seem like it from the observations that I’m going to make… I reconcile (rationalize?) that dichotomy by noting that he was like most people a complex character.
Churchill didn’t necessarily disagree with Hitler that the Germans were superior to other peoples except in one crucial detail - he excluded the English as being inferior to them.
Churchill and Hitler were amazingly similar, although Churchill was by far the most accomplished of the two: 1) They were both orators, although Hitler delivered screeds instead of inspiring speeches; 2) they were both authors, with Hitler writing a book-length polemic while Churchill was an accomplished historian; and 3) they were both painters, with Hitler painting rather crude postcards while Churchill exhibited real talent in his landscapes.
I note that you use the ‘Queen’s English’ in spelling ‘cheque’ rather than the American ‘check.’
… And if you thought your post was getting off-topic…
1/31/2015 9:38 am
Interested Observer,
Thanks for your reply.
I am an admirer of Churchill, too. I knew, of course, of the UK’s role in colonialism throughout the world, and specifically, in Africa. I was not aware, however, that one of Obama’s ancestors was imprisoned by the British when Churchill was PM. This was probably common knowledge for most. I just did not follow up on the case of the vanishing bust of Churchill, because it seemed a trivial political ploy in which the Republicans and Democrats were making pretty big fools of themselves. (The picture that the White House put out of Cameron and Obama’s behinds as they leaned over to examine the other bust of Churchill was comical) But, in light of the fact that the United States did not send a “high profile” official to Paris to show solidarity with European allies as the world does, indeed, face one of the worst threats to freedom since the Nazis-Islamist extremists-has made me reconsider this. Maybe the issue over the bust of Churchill was not trivial.
Obama’s position, as an individual, is impossible. His maternal grandparents are from the WWII generation; his paternal ancestors from Kenya. He contains within his own identity and experience the paradox of Western civilization alluded to in the article cited above: how freedom for those never meant to be included within a broad sweeping quest for freedom in Western thought and Western reality, achieved freedom anyway because of our ideas-and our ideals-and moreover, because of their own blood, sweat, and tears and determination never to surrender. Dr. King knew that, and knew it well: the promissory note mentioned in Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and referred to as “cheque” by the writer of the article cited, came due one hundred years after the Civil War, according to historian David Blight. I agree with that assessment. During those one hundred years much suffering took place down here in the South.
I am an American, IO. I have posted here before as UVa 1977. I came on board because of the RS article and this blog is ground zero for that article’s demise. Plus, I just like the blog.
1/31/2015 10:56 am
IO
Dr. King actually does use the word “check”:
From the “I Have a Dream” speech:
“….In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check….”
To clarify (and grossly over-simplify) Blight’s point: we sometimes tend to gloss over that early part of the speech in which Dr. King told America that the promissory note of promised freedom was one hundred years past due.
2/1/2024 9:59 am
st -
I wasn’t questioning your citizenship… it merely struck me as unusual. In any case, even if you were a Brit, or from another country with that form of English, you are still entitled to your opinion and to post here.
2/1/2024 3:45 pm
Interested Observer,
Thanks for the clarification. I was quoting someone else and wanted to make certain that I had indicated that. (The writer of the article is Johann Hari)
This has been an interesting discussion. I have enjoyed it. It is nice to know that I am not talking to myself, on the worldwide web, no less, lol. So thanks again for your input. Have a great day. Until the next topic…..