Black Fraternity Hazing Turns Lethal, Again—DAILY CALLER Removes Value From Story
04/25/2013
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When you see in a headline that someone has died in a fraternity hazing incident, it's almost always a black fraternity. This is a fact unlikely to appear in a headline, but the Daily Caller seems to have removed it altogether:

Police charged four men in a hazing catastrophe that led to the deaths of two Virginia State University freshmen who drowned in the Appomattox River while completing an initiation ritual.
The students were attempting to become members of “Men of Honor,” a group with no official relationship to the university, officials said.Two students drown in hazing incident, By Robby Soave, [Email him]The Daily Caller, April 24, 2013

There's no mention of race, and this is the only graphic:

 

 

They do say that

Earlier this month, three students, including the student government president, were also charged with hazing pledges at the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

Alpha Phi Alpha is a black fraternity. (There are, officially, no white fraternities, because of the Civil Rights act of 1964. There are still black fraternities, as there are black colleges. ΑΦΑ claims that it's been open to "men of all races" since 1940.) But Alpha Phi Alpha was not the group involved in this drowning incident.

A university spokesperson described the group as “an underground, shadow organization,” that purports to mentor male students, according to the Richmond-Times Dispatch.

And the Times Dispatch story that The Daily Caller links to does contain the race of victims and accused: River crossing was final step in initiation ritual, By Mark Bowes, April 24, 2013. Here's a screenshot of the sidebar to their story.

 

blackfraternity

 

This is a problem specific to black fraternities: see“Hannibal House”: Black fraternity hazing deaths on the rise, Maryland Daily Examiner, March 7, 2013 . The surprisingly frank headline on that story is due to the fact that that the Maryland Daily Examiner is a black news site, and they're less concerned—white liberal style—about what you're not supposed to notice, than they are about young black people being killed.

See also Black Fraternities, Sororities, and Violent Hazing: Lots of Causes, Few Solutions,  By Shani Hilton,  October 8, 2010. Again, a good headline, because Shani Hilton is black, and concerned about the victims.

The New York Times has a story with a useless headline: Hazing Accusations Against a Sorority, By Tamar Lewin, October 5, 2010. The Times story does have a startling and useful fact:

Many white fraternities and sororities haze their pledges, too, but there are differences, according to Lawrence C. Ross Jr., author ofThe Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities."
“Most predominantly white fraternities and sororities haze around alcohol, but African-American fraternities and sororities typically haze around something physical, violent,” he said.

Kids who die in white fraternity hazings die of alcohol poisoning, or aspirating vomit. In black fraternities, they're typically beaten to death.

The "hazing" that killed Florida A & M Drum Major Robert Champion was more like being "jumped in" to a street gang than joining a fraternity.So if you're a white kid who wants to take ΑΦΑ up on their offer to pledge "men of all races", don't.

But the point here isn't only about black fraternities, it's that the Daily Caller, the conservative website that's supposed to be saying things that the MSM and Daily Beast won't, instead of adding value to this story, went in and took it out.

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