A fraternity at the University of Georgia has been suspended after a video showing students in the organisation appearing to mock slavery and using racial slurs.
In the video, several white students can be seen laughing as one playfully whips another who is in bed.
“Pick my cotton, b****,” the white student whipping the other with a belt says in the video, referring to an industry in America that thrived on slave labour.
“I’m not black!” the other student says at one point.
A third student who is out of frame then tells the first young man that he is “not using the right words”. The student with the belt then revises his phrase to include the N-word.
The school’s Student Government Association said in a letter sent to the student body on Friday it was aware of the video, and that the fraternity chapter had been suspended so that an investigation can take place.
“The executive officers of the Student Government Association are aware of a video circulating on social media that depicts individuals identified as members of a UGA Greek organisation using racist language and engaging in behaviours that mock the suffering of enslaved peoples,” the letter says. “We have been notified that the chapter is currently suspended, and we can confirm that there is an investigation underway regarding the students involved in the video.”
Individuals posting online later identified the organisation in question as the Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE) fraternity.
The TKE national chapter toldThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a statement that the organisation is “disgusted, appalled and angered” by the video of the four men.
“TKE will not tolerate any actions such as these that would be defined as racist, discriminatory and/or offensive,” the statement says. “After being alerted to the incident yesterday, Tau Kappa Epsilon professional staff and members of the Xi-Lambda chapter at University of Georgia immediately began a thorough investigation into the actions of these four men.”
The video appears to show the men in a bedroom, and it has been reported that it was not an official event for the fraternity.
The school released the following statement: “The University of Georgia condemns racism in the strongest terms. Racism has no place on our campus. We will continue our efforts to promote a welcoming and supportive learning environment for our students, faculty and staff.”
The video represents just the latest incident implicating American fraternities in racist episodes. A 2015 video showed students in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon at the University of Oklahoma singing a racist chant on a school bus.
The fallout from that video was severe, and the spread of the clip resulted in the shuttering of the school’s chapter of the group.
