“He called me ‘Nigger’ ”
Editor’s note: I have decided not to edit out the repulsive word in the title. It goes to the heart of what happened to me and what happened at the University of Oklahoma today. If this disturbs you, I encourage you to continue reading anyway.
I have been called “Nigger” to my face twice in my life. It happened many years ago, but the memory stings as if it happened yesterday.
I thought about this Monday morning. Those painful memories don’t emerge from the depths of my hippocampus often, but they came rushing back when I heard members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity singing racist lyrics in a video.
University of Oklahoma SAE members, on a bus to a party, sang the following lyrics. Two videos captured the events and were leaked via YouTube and Instagram.
There will never be a Nigger in SAE
There will never be a Nigger in SAE
You can hang them from a tree, but he can never sign with me
There will never be a Nigger in SAE
Watching the video, and the raucous group of white students on the bus sing the now viral lyric, I recalled those two days when white boys yelled “Nigger” at me.
Both times were at celebratory events, where people had fun, food and drink.
The first time happened when I was 21, and a reporter in Northwest Indiana. Some colleagues and I went to a fireworks event in Hobart, Indiana. The crowd grew, and people sat along on curbs along the road, trying to get a good seat. Three of my colleagues, also reporters, and I were standing behind the curb-sitters. My group was mixed —me, two white women and a white man. It was dusk, not quite dark enough for fireworks, so we were waiting for the fun to begin. Cars passed by, looking for parking spaces. We were talking and laughing with each other when I heard a voice, “Go back home, Nigger!”
I thought, “He called me Nigger.”
We stopped talking and laughing at once, turning our heads to follow the sound and the car, but suddenly I turned away, sickened and afraid to look at the man’s face, that man who uttered those words.
I was angry. No, I got mad. Disgusted.
One of my friends started apologizing. “Oh, Yvette, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” she went on. I wondered why she was apologizing. It wasn’t her fault this idiot said what he did. I told her as much.
The memory of what happened later is a little fuzzier. I believe we stayed for fireworks, but it wasn’t as fun after that.
In Oklahoma, someone on the party bus leaked the video to The Oklahoma Daily, the student-run paper. Unheard, an OU African American campus organization, also acquired the video and posted it to YouTube, then to Twitter. A second video was released to Instagram, according to media reports.
The release of the video provoked an immediate reaction. The national fraternity closed the house and members had to pack and get out. Unheard helped organize a rally on campus early Monday. OU President David Boren appeared at the rally, and also spoke at a press conference Monday. He then went on to appear on CNN’s “Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer Monday afternoon.
Boren echoed a statement he had released earlier that day. “Real Sooners are not racist. Real Sooners are not bigots.”
The second time I was verbally attacked was in Dallas, Texas, outside a nightclub on famed Greenville Ave. I was 26. Again, I was in a multiracial group of friends when several young white men emerged from the club we had previously been in.
“Hey you, nigger!”
We ignored it. The abuse seemed farther away to me, not as close as the passing car.
No one in my group said anything. No one.
I tried to enjoy the rest of the evening, wondering if my friends had heard it. Of course, they did, but it seemed no one wanted to give credence to what was said. We never spoke of it.
It hurt, again, because we were out for a fun evening. It hurt, again, because there was no cause. We weren’t near them. Had they seen us in the club? I wasn’t the only black person in there. Why did they single me out?
No answers were forthcoming. Never would be. I just packed the memory away, hoping it would be the last. And thankfully, it has been up until now. After this is posted online, I might hear that word again from more people I don’t know — this time, via the internet.
People praised OU student groups and athletes for an organized and peaceful response Monday. Boren also was praised for OU’s reaction and swift response.
SAE’s national offices also weighed in after closing the chapter. In a statement posted on the national fraternity’s website, SAE President Brad Cohen said, “I was not only shocked and disappointed but disgusted by the outright display of racism displayed in the video. SAE is a diverse organization, and we have zero tolerance for racism or any bad behavior. When we learned about this incident, I called an immediate board meeting, and we determined with no mental reservation whatsoever that this chapter needed to be closed immediately. I am proud of my fellow board members because we mean what we say.”
Will this be the last time we hear racist language on a campus? No, and students from the organization, Unheard, told CNN that this wasn’t the first time, either.
Am I the only black person to be called a Nigger to her face? Certainly not.
I don’t know all of them, but I bet I know they can remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the word used to address them.
Cruel. Vile. Some memories are hard to forget.
Updates: Two University of Oklahoma students have been expelled, apologies have been given, and more demonstrations have occurred. See http://newsok.com/ongoing/fraternity-racism-video
