[23318] in APO-L
[APO-L] misunderstanding..AA support.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Diane Clarke)
Fri Dec 20 12:52:16 2002
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 12:52:10 -0500
Reply-To: clarkedt@muohio.edu
From: Diane Clarke <clarkedt@muohio.edu>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Point of clarification- I am not criticising the existance of an all AA
forum, i was just trying to understand its function as it wasnt clear to
me in the previous email.
I personally AM an African-American (I also am in Black Student Action
Association and so i understand that what we discuss among ourselves is
more cultural/religious/lifestyle)That however is a group in and of
itself.
i wasn't trying to say that i have never personally faced any general
adversity (hair touching, naive questions,the whole list)throughout my
college experience- believe me i go to a school of less than 8% AA- my
question was very innocent, i was just assuring that there were not
problems generally within this organization that i am just not aware of
and if so, that i could participate in resolving (i agree that Kwanzaa
celebrations are in order as well as hannikah, Diwali, Chinese new year
and others)in our chapter we have AA members of fraterinities and
sororites who are also members of APO. We also have quite a few of Jewish
members and other religons including many non-religious. We do have very
few AA members on account of the low attendance rate of AAs at our
university. In fact, at our chapter those members taught those non-AA
members how to step and we all performed this Spring at our sectional
opening ceremonies. Part of our service includes assisting Association of
Indian Students with there Diwali celebration and thus getting a greater
understanding of their culture. My point, simply put, is that unless the
non-AA members of APO realize these hardships that AA members and other
minorities face there can be no resolution to these problems-they will
just continue. I am not against having a seperate forum but a constructive
one (which i know is your intention)that allows the whole fraternity to
understand these difficulties (and believe me, i do not believe that
non-AA brothers do not care- but they cannot understand if they are not
included within the solution. My concern is that while i understand the
importance particularly for AA members to find comfort among ourselves i
have seen in groups in the past this become problematic (i.e. its not bad
to have many different groups within APO-Jewish, Catholic, Atheist-as long
as they are talking to eachother)I understand from brother Mike L. Walton
that the adversity faced by us AA members is something that APO cannot as
a whole solve; many of these problems are from outside forces (AA social
fraternities and sororities) but that comes from social greeks in general
to brothers of APO. It is not my intention to pretend that our chapter
does not have our own problems. I hope that clears up my position some...
Best
LFS
Diane
