I'd like to get with that.

I don't think the MLK day tie ins are intentional.. just a 3 day weekend to your average college kid, but the proximity of the holiday does add an extra sting to the story.

For a variety of other reasons, however, I agree these kids are fucking idiots.

Good thing I already lost all faith in humanity last week.

Just goes to show there arent enough abortions happening.

Does the title suggest that people thought college students were classy before all this happened?

Anyone who did has never been with 10 miles of a college campus.

aw, bullshit. the stranger loves all kind of transgressive crap, getting drunk, getting high, amateur porn, vandalism, tagging, sarah silverman to the left on this page and that american apparel ad that's basically child porn to the right.

those students may be bigots alright, but the stranger is in no position to judge that. stay classy nerds!

I believe that children are our future... unless we find a way to stop them now.

Now that you mention it, that American Apparel ad is a little skeevy... I guess it just proves that the media will do anything to make a buck...

These kids should've been blow jobs.

OK someone explain to me how this is less offensive than the teen-age white kid that I saw over lunch that was decked out in a powder blue sweatsuit, cornrows and various bling all quite un-ironically.

I've been working at the UW for 10 years and I can attest that the one thing that does not describe college students is "classy." (Not once have I seen a monocle or top hat.)

the american apparel ads are kind of like child porn except, you know, not children and not porn.

instead, they're real women, usually employees, who are being cute and sexy in real clothes selling products to other women. (there are male models too, who make up a larger proportion of their models than their customers)

somehow, slog readers find this offensive and not the sands showgirls ad featuring the naked plastic airbrushed woman with giant breasts who promises to rub up against men's crotches for $20.

but what's most offensive to slog readers? even thinking that white people having a party in blackface, ghetto clothes, and fake padded butts making fun of black people is itself offensive.

the stranger, how the hell did your readership turn into this? are most of your stranger vending boxes at nascar tracks and klan rallies?

Where does a person even GET blackface? I mean, the stuff they rubbed on their skin to turn it completely black. It can't possibly be actual makeup -- it doesn't look anything like a real skin color.

Whatever it is, one can hope that it's carcinogenic.

Crap, Fnarf beat me to it.

[quote]but what's most offensive to slog readers? even thinking that white people having a party in blackface, ghetto clothes, and fake padded butts making fun of black people is itself offensive.[/quote]

I have no idea what this sentence means. Are you pro black-face or anti black-black-face? It seems like the Slog Posters above, me included, are against it.

Whoever came up with the party concept must have been up at 2 am, high, watching Bamboozled and completely missing the point.

I think there's a major shift going on in people who are college aged and younger where race just isn't much of an issue.

Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, but MLK is just a history figure to people this age, like FDR, and Abe Lincoln.

You guys can feel appalled if you wish, but I don't think there's any purposeful disrespect in parties like this.

"No purposeful disrespect"!?

Who *cares* if it's purposeful? I don't just feel appalled at this, it *is* appalling. 100%. Without a doubt, no matter what post-modern bullshit one tries to pad around it. The entire event is ghastly, right down to the idea of a bunch of white kids deciding to be "pretend blacks" or whatever. It would be just as awful for the kids to put on big hairy fake noses, black hats and have an "accounting party" or put on sombreros, regardless of whatever "post-religious" or "post-national" bullshit you might believe.

This isn't an example of "where race just isn't much of an issue." Sure, for these kids, coddled in college race might not be a big deal. It's easy to be on the winning side of the equation.

How can it not be "purposeful disrespect" to make the party's theme a commentary on an entire race's ability to live up to its hero's dream?

It's like throwing a "too bad they weren't killed in the Holocaust" party on Rosh Hashanah (in Idaho) and then dressing up as big nosed, corrupt moneylenders...

Consider the source: White kids at Clemson in South Carolina. Y'all been down there recently? There are more confederate flags flying there than you could imagine, and plenty of white supremacist hate groups, such as the Conservative Citizens Corps. This is flat out racism, alive and well and being passed on to the fat-assed new generation. Wonder how they got those fake asses on over their actual asses...

This Slog reader--the guy who thought up HUMP, btw--is not offended by those American Apparel ads.

neither am I. I'm just saying the stranger ain't the platform for moralizing.

I'd like to stand up for the sane college kids and say we're not all racist asshole drunks. Some of us ARE classy, progressive, well-read people who get generalized into the burnout, binge-drinking, socially-unaware college-kid stereotype. I'm nineteen and attend the second biggest party school in the country and I find this as distasteful and offensive as anyone else.

Getting drunk and stoned is pretty harmless, as long as you know how to control yourself. Reinforcing racial stereotypes, not so harmless. That seems to be the difference between what the Stranger folks support and deride.

Yeah, American Apparel sure sounds like Shangri-La:

http://www.knowmore.org/index.php/American_Apparel,_LLC

http://adbusters.org/blogs/Clamor_Mag_vs_American_Apparel.html

I'd go on, but SLOG pukes back anything with more than 2 links in it so you'll have to google it yourself.

Maybe ECB could direct some of her moral self-righteousness towards looking into this....oh, wait -- they're an advertiser...

Actually, that first link is one of the most exhaustive and evenhanded accounts of American Apparel I've read yet. A prime example of good journalism. Anyone who wants to discuss American Apparel should read it.

Having read it, it doesn't sound so bad. The company has some problems, and has, thanks to public criticism, shaped up its act in some key ways. I've seen a lot worse.

No 'correctness'involved,this is just astonishing (but expected). The segregation in this society - based on class, but more than occasionally falling on racial lines is manifest here. Not one of these folks knows a single Black person well enough to have mentioned this to them in the course of the planning of the event and had any reason to put on the brakes. Is there hate here? Probably not. Is there a gigantic gulf between the experience of these kids and their neighbors (because last time I was in Connecticut it looked way more black to me than the NW)? Hell yeah, there is. Hate to beat my favorite dead horse, but THIS is what suburban sprawl makes happen: disconnect, disconnect, disconnect.

hotghettomess.com

This is an interesting site; I first found out about it through an article in The Nation. The "From the Editor" page is particularly important to read before much exploration of the site.

Yes, what those stupid collge kids did was unfunny and disturbing. What I find more disturbing, though, is the fact that hip-hop culture IS the almost the only "black" culture presented in the mainstream.

Doesn't excuse the completely pointless and culturally/racially tone-deaf behavior.

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