In defense of Alpha Phi nationally, they can hardly be held fully accountable for the situation at the University of Alabama.
On the other hand, out of curiosity, I googled the sorority at a bunch of northern schools, private and public, and while there were a LOT more brunettes – – and maybe some Latinx or Asian members–I am not a racial/ethnic identification expert–there were apparently no black members.
On the other hand, there are the Divine Nine, and it is perfectly reasonable to assume that young black women may prefer to join one of them, rather than a majority white group. There has to be some kind of tipping point at which the traditionally white sororities become attractive to POC. Unless they actively go out and recruit blocs of such young women, they are unlikely to achieve it.
FWIW, I think that “diverse” probably meant Jews and Catholics, back in the day.
“There has to be some kind of tipping point at which the traditionally white sororities become attractive to POC.”
This varies so much from campus to campus. Chapters at selective private schools with smaller Greek systems sometimes do better recruiting across the student body than the giant SEC, Big XII, etc. schools. That’s a separate issue from the fact that students with family/community attachment to the Divine Nine want to continue that tradition.
Look at the Alpha Phis at Yale, Harvard, MIT, Cal if you want to find sister of color. Here are just a few:
Ugwechi Amadi (Zeta Phi-MIT) was named a Rhodes Scholar
Keizra Mecklai (Beta Nu-Duke) served as Duke Student Government President
Janice Bonsu (Zeta Omicron-Johns Hopkins) served as Executive President of the Student Government Association at The Johns Hopkins University.
Archana Somasegar (Iota Tau-Harvard), women’s rights advocate, teen advisor to the UN Foundation’s Girl Up Campaign and US representative to the Girls 20 Summit.
Alpha Phi has only been an active chapter at Alabama since about 2010. The new chapter house opened in 2014. Alpha Phi was following the other houses in recruitment and became integrated when the others did (2013), although it had NO anti-integration policy before that and has had women of color and all religions for decades.
It’d be a good start if historically white groups would acknowledge their historic, deliberate, and constitutional whiteness.
Individual chapters, in rare cases, do so. The national groups that had exclusionary clauses for 100 years typically do not. Most PWI universities and corporations don’t, either, though if you dig through their online histories, you can often find information that recognizes their intentional whiteness via honoring their first black pioneers and so on.
Thanks, @twoinanddone. I looked at U of W, Cornell, Northwestern, USC, Syracuse, and U of M.
In the 1960s, chapters of various fraternities at Dartmouth disassociated from their national organizations because of racially exclusionary policies. When the nationals reformed, some of them re-associated. (There were, of course, no sororities at that time.)
However, historically white entities may not necessarily be predominantly white now, and entities that are currently predominantly white now may not have been historically white.
Indeed, looking at chapter photos at many colleges around the country suggests that sororities and fraternities commonly (but not universally) tend to be segregative entities. Students considering colleges with high sorority and fraternity participation may want to investigate whether they tend to be segregated at those colleges.
Indeed, if the state of historically black universities (which generally do not consider race/ethnicity in admissions) is any guide, it appears that non-black people largely are not interested in entering environments with large numbers of black people.
This is most obvious with the Florida State / Florida A&M engineering arbitrage situation. The two universities share a joint engineering division, so the engineering education is the same. Florida A&M (the historically black one) has lower tuition and better scholarships. But the vast majority of engineering enrollment comes from Florida State.
At my school almost all the sororities that participate in NPC recruitment are predominantly white with MAYBE 1 or 2 outliers. Some sororities are much more superficial than others and you’d be more likely to find diversity in a “lower tier” sorority than an upper tier. It’s not only the girls though. A lot of your ranking depends on how attractive you’re perceived as by fraternity boys. At a predominantly white school, this is usually the white girls. And most officers are probably terrified of dropping in ranking by having a bad PC (pledge class). Second, the historically black sororities and other ethnic sororities on my campus do not participate in NPC, but you’ll find little to no diversity in those either. It’s rare that non-white people (besides maybe very light skinned latina) will even participate in NPC recruitment. Maybe 10-15 did for the 9 sororities. Of course, this is one school. A lot of the separation is done by the students themselves not wanting to be in different groups. I’m not saying any of this is right, but its complicated to understand before going through the process.
In Alabama, black women were not accepted to white sororities even when they rushed, which would tend to make black women not try. Recall that in 2013, the situation came to a head when a young woman with impeccable credentials (except that she was black) was rejected from all sororities. We discovered that alumnae were encouraging/forcing sorority women to reject African American women. It didn’t speak well either of the racist alumnae or of the young women who knuckled under.
I don’t know if the historically black Greeks have any non-black members. I don’t know if any of the HBCU have chapters of sororities or fraternities that were traditionally white or the Jewish houses.
My kids are in sororities now. One is at a school that is 80% white, and her house was probably more than that when she joined. Now, 3 years later, there are many more women of color, mostly Hispanic but that’s the make up of the school too. Other daughter goes to a school that has many more people of color. Her chapter had a lot of women of color when she (also a minority) joined, but in the 3 years since she joined it has become more white. It’s just the way membership cycles.
What do you mean by impeccable credentials? You’re being judged by 22 year old girls. For the most part, none of them care about or will even look at your credentials besides minimum GPA, looks, personality, and “who you know”.
– and maybe some Latinx or Asian members–I am not a racial/ethnic identification expert–there were apparently no black members.