Fight Song for UNH Hockey Team Banned as Potentially Racist
DURHAM, N.H.
“Black Betty,” a rock song used to rally fans at University of New Hampshire hockey games for about a decade, is no more.
Athletic Director Marty Scarano told the campus newspaper, The New Hampshire, the 1977 song by the band Ram Jam was banned because it is “theoretically racist.”
The NAACP deemed the song offensive to Black women when it was initially released, nearly three decades ago. According to the Concord Monitor, the university has received intermittent complaints about it for years.
Two years ago, a student group that studied diversity at the school said it should be banned. Scarano said a more recent complaint pushed him to outlaw it, but he did say who complained.
The song has been played at the starts of the second and third periods of UNH hockey games for more than a decade, according to a school Web site. Complaints have also come in to the Hockey East Association, the collegiate league where UNH plays. Hockey East spokesman Noah Smith says league members have had “a couple of discussions” with UNH officials and decided the song was “probably inappropriate.”
