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Monday, September 4, 2006
Frat boys of the Old South
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
OK, I don’t want a fraternity house in my neighborhood either. But when a proud, old fraternity like Kappa Alpha Order, ousted from its Athens home by University of Georgia officials, proposes to rebuild in a mostly run-down rental area, it should be nothing more than a routine development issue. (Read the original story.)
Ah, but… The Kappa Alpha Order is an Old South fraternity where brothers dress for ceremonial occasions in Confederate uniforms, cavort with the Confederate battle flag, and live in house designed to look like an Old South plantation. That’s half the story. The other half is that the new home they plan — on a site purchased by 13 KA alumni for $2.7 million nine months ago, is in a neighborhood that was “once a center for black professionals, ” writes the AJC’s Andrea Jones. Though, as she notes, few of them remain.
A black preacher, the Rev. Ben Rivers, invokes the weapons of class and race to declare that “they are using their wealth to rape the community, not make it better.” The house design and location evoke memories of “pain and abject poverty,” says he.
Unless Rivers and others wish to buy the property and compensate the fraternity for the delay, KA should proceed as planned. There’s nothing illegitimate about the fraternity, its costumes, rituals or heritage. The issue may be that the neighbors don’t want a rowdy frat house in the neighborhood. Fair enough. White neighbors didn’t want Sigma Nu to relocate to their neighborhood, either. Ah, that I will live to see the day that race is not invoked in every dispute where skin colors differ, and simple little zoning disputes are simple little zoning disputes.
