Blow on (Black) Leadership: Hazing and Following.

NYT columnist Charles Blow is still processing that band hazing death at FMU. He's thinking back to his younger days ... back when he thought in order to be a campus leader, in order to follow what all the "best and brightest" black men did... he had to haze and be hazed.

"Every body was doing it, dontchaknow!" "Never thought twice about it myself -- I was busy growing my leadership skills..." "Nigga-wha? It's NOT the evil white man beating us down... we choose to lead others by doing this to .. ourselves?"

He's on to something here. Some ephipany of true independence, some unshackling of what it means to be a man, and perhaps, to have have others voluntarily follow... The first rule is: you can't whip them all into following, Charles.

Almost every one of them belongs to one of the black greek letter orgs, and they all hazed, brutally (I include myself among those)

Gravitational pull of the best and brightest into these groups was strong. Ppl who didn't join were labeled GDIs: God Damned Individuals

I never thought twice about it. If you were a campus leader, you pledged. You wanted to, and everyone expected you to.

And here's the third rail of the blk greek letter org brutal beating convo: is it an echo of a past in which others brutalized blks

It has to be the only form of cultural brutality that I know of that is widely-known/widely-accepted in modern blk culture/social circles.

I know these groups are still hazing to this day, even though their national chapters have banned it. Everyone knows, but turns a blind eye...

Speaking as a lifelong G.D.I. (G-d Damned Independent), I'm glad to see when men -- especially black men -- like Blow finally grow up and admit that their "leadership" skills indeed, were lacking when they resorted to private violence for bonding.

Even bigger props for owning up that it's other blacks who propagate the violent cultural whippings and paddlings these days (one pledge mentions being burned) and not the working white man laying on the blows to bring such self-appointed black "leaders" down...