After that viral video of Sigma Alpha Epsilon one must wonder if we’d have a lynching image on our minds if “SAE” didn’t rhyme with “tree.”
But if they rhymed with “Epsilon” then we’d likely end up with a hanging at “dawn,” or a cross on the “lawn.”
Doesn’t matter.
The chant had another key word that provided the nation with an example of what the sociologist Elijah Anderson often refers to as a “nigger moment.”
Nikki Jones, from UC Berkeley’s African-American studies department, brought it up last Friday at what has to be as good a community model for a public conversation on race that I’ve ever experienced.
Jones explained that society has its White spaces and its Black spaces, and when Blacks (or really any people of color) are upwardly mobile, their success depends on how they act in the White spaces, and how they deal with those moments that are consciously or unconsciously intended to put us in our place.
I’d never heard that idea before, which is why it’s always a good thing to have a sociologist like Jones present in any race conversation because if some people think such events are mere intellectual exercises, then it helps to have real intellectuals.
