White kids behaving badly

First Tarleton State and now Clemson University students have been found to have had parties that "celebrated" Martin Luther King day in distasteful fashion. Here's a description of the Clemson party:

Pictures of the party were posted on facebook.com, showing at least one person in black-face paint, with others dressed in knitted caps and jerseys and some girls with stuffing padding their pants to make their behinds look larger. There's an image of party-goers holding 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor.

...Ranneice McDonald, another Clemson student, said she saw nothing funny about it.

"People painted themselves black. Put fake butts inside their pants to signify the big booty black-girl thing. Fake gold teeth in their mouths caps and jerseys -- depicted us as wearing such things as that are disgusting to me. It's disgusting. It makes me sick to my stomach," McDonald said.

Such sentiment is easy to understand. But here is what escapes me: these images aren't confined to frat parties at southern universities. They are broadcast every day on stations such as Black Entertainment Television. They are reinforced in rap music and hip-hop oriented magazines. Where is the outrage over those?

These stereotypes didn't come out of nowhere. Gold teeth, 40oz malt liquor, football jerseys and the "big booty black-girl thing" are all regular features of rap videos and other media associated with hip-hop and other purveyors of supposedly authentic black culture. Is it any wonder where these college kids got their ideas from, or why they associate such things with black people?

These parties strike me as a symptom of a much larger problem.