At NCAA Tournament, Southern Miss Band Chants ‘Where’s Your Green Card?’ At (Puerto Rican) Player

[Octafish]

Source: Think Progress

By Travis Waldron on Mar 15, 2012 at 2:56 pm

During their school’s NCAA Tournament game against Kansas State University today, members of the Southern Mississippi University band chanted, “Where’s your green card?” at a Puerto Rican Kansas State player. Kansas State guard Angel Rodriguez, who was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and played high school basketball in Miami, Florida, was fouled while shooting during the first half of today’s game in Pittsburgh. As Rodriguez stepped to the foul line, the chants, reportedly started by Southern Miss band members, began.

Puerto Ricans, it’s worth noting, are American citizens. Rodriguez scored 13 points to lead his Wildcats to a 70-64 victory, making four crucial free throws late in the game.

Immigration has been a hot topic lately in Mississippi. Gov. Phil Bryant (R) has endorsed an Alabama-style immigration law, and a version of that law was passed by the state House yesterday.

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/03/15/445583/at-ncaa-tournament-southern-miss-band-chants-wheres-your-green-card-at-hispanic-kansas-state-player/

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College.

[Blue_Tires]

1. classy...

very poor taste, but it's about middle of the road as far a college student heckling goes...

[DallasNE]

19. Members Of The Band Represent The University

Just as the players on the court do. They should be kicked off the band and suffer the consequences related to that action, such as losing their scholarship.

[Blue_Tires]

20. Actually the buck stops at the band director first

that person should be disciplined before any students...

[onenote]

30. Because some morons acted like morons?

If the band director knew about it in advance, sure. But if not I don't see how or why you discipline the band director "before" you discipline the students who actually were the guilty parties.

[Blue_Tires]

31. I know every school is different

but the colleges where I've worked, when the band is on the road somewhere representing the school (especially when on TV), any jackassery falls on the director's head...He has ultimate responsibility for maintaining proper conduct, and the fact that his students felt comfortable to chant this with mics everywhere and tens of millions of people watching reflects on him/her (the students could have been doing this to latino students all season in all those games that no one was watching)

Yeah, punish the students, too but try to figure out how this even happened in the first place...

[tk2kewl]

2. I guess you need a post graduate degree before you learn that Puerto Rico is in the USA

[southernyankeebelle]

5. I get your point. What idiots.

[EC]

3. Every state south of the mason-dixen

used to be hell for black or any other swarthy looking ethnic to play. College and high schools were really bad. My Dad played football in West Virginia for his high school and he used to get slurs shouted at him and his team all over the place. (They were mostly Italians) Sorry to see this still goes on.

[lukkadairish]

14. I hear ya

I live in WV now. We have a player from Istanbul Turkey, name Kilicli (pronounced ku-lich-la). We support him while he gets heckled at away games. Teaches a fabulous lesson.

[MountainLaurel]

18. I love me some Denis

That browline of his just fascinates me. I can't look away. The game tonight should be interesting. There's going to be a big crowd there -- I know a lot of WV folks going for the game.

Former Fairmont girl here.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Are the bigots being more open in the USA these years, or is it just being reported more?

I've been astounded, recently, at how unashamed some bigots, with obvious positions, like this band, are being now. This is not just a voice in a vast crowd, or an anonymous comment on the internet; it's named bloggers (often ones well known enough to get interviewed on TV), or people who you'd think could lose their position, or hurt their institution if the NCAA decides sanctions are needed.

It really seems more than it was a few years ago. Is it just that it gets reported more, when it used to be deemed 'not news'? Or is it really happening more, in public - perhaps because the sustained birther crap has made them think they have 'respectable cover' to do it?

[kiranon]

11. What's changed is it is young people who are bigots and

before the youth of this country was moving beyond bigotry and discrimination. What happened? Reagon's America and the move to the right and religion have made it acceptable to be a bigot and the children chose to follow rather than to rebel.

[freshwest]

16. The Palin southern stump speeches made it cool. I cringed when I saw them.

Finally, I could not look at any of it, period.

Christopher Hitchens defined it very well:

Tea’d Off

Forfeiting a both-houses Republican victory, rational conservatives ignored or excused the most hateful kind of populist claptrap (e.g., the fetid weirdness of Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project). The poison they’ve helped disseminate will still be in the American bloodstream when the country needs it least.

The backers of the Tea Party, Palin and the like are well detailed at the link:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/01/hitchens-201101

[atreides1]

17. Palin was just the start

It became even more acceptable when the TeaBaggers won in 2010...about the same time that going after women's rights became popular!

[alp227]

6. My country embarasses me again. Oh yeah, this state also voted for Santorum.

And Reagan chose to kick off his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where the civil rights workers were murdered 16 years earlier. Of course, these facts tempted Reagan to cloak an appeal to some Mississippians still pissed off over the Civil Rights Act by making states' rights and state sovereignty a main topic in his speech.

In 2010, a high school in this state lied about allowing a lesbian student to go to prom. Eventually, that high school tricked Constance McMillen into attending a small-scale event with other "undesirables" (basically anyone who wasn't able-bodied, straight, and mentally capabale).

In the 2012 primaries, Mississippi voted for Santorum and Gingrich over Romney.

And now THIS? Seriously, some COLLEGE STUDENTS in this nation are so ignorant about grade school geography that they don't even know that Puerto Rico is a US territory? Or I wonder, in a more crazy way, if these students actually support FALN (the Puerto Rico independence movement group); Pres. Clinton granted clemency to 16 members of FALN.

[KamaAina]

7. A green card is a work permit

even if Rodriguez were from another country, he'd have a student visa.

I think I can cross USM of my list for grad school, should the time ever come.

[Lost-in-FL]

8. If you even wonder why PR is thorn between becoming a state or not,...

It is shit like this that piss them off (at least it does to me). Why even bother? The sad part is that they are stupid enough to put their hopes on a referendum that is not even needed (Congress can turn PR into a state with the stroke of a pen).

BTW, those students are wasting thousands of their parents money going to college. Their "green card" chant attest to their grotesque ignorance about even their own country and its relationship with their own territories.


COÑO, DESPIERTA BORICUA!!

[libinnyandia]

23. There was an Italian-American baseball player named Salvatore Persico who played for the

Yankees in 1913. Salvatore was his name at birth, he changed it to Joe Smith to hide his Italian origin. Racism has a long and strange history almost everywhere in America.

[Lost-in-FL]

32. Unfortunately

Did you know that it took >15 years before congress realized that the spelling for PR in all documents related to the island was Puerto Rico, not Porto Rico?

[geardaddy]

9. eejits.

[freshwest]

10. How incredibly crass, vulgar and rude! @#$%!!!

They should all be forbidden to show up again.

[JBoy]

12. Have fun at band camp, losers.

[lukkadairish]

15. I am

Your new #1 fan dude

[Downwinder]

13. You piss some people off and they over perform.

[Renew Deal]

21. There will be a multi-day apology tour over this one

With suspensions of the band members.

The good news is that Southern Miss lost, so they're gone.

[GeorgeGist]

22. They lost that game.

Twice.

[DRoseDARs]

24. Should have been an instant DQ for Southern Miss band members. nt

[Dont call me Shirley]

25. SO glad the Wildcats won. That showed SouthMiss.

[underpants]

26. the embarassing USA!USA! moment 3/8/12 in Texas high school game

Alamo Heights' celebration went sour a few minutes after the final whistle when certain members of the school's fan section began the "USA" chant. Alamo Heights boys basketball coach Andrew Brewer moved quickly to end the chanting, but the damage was already done. San Antonio (Texas) Edison High School - whose student body is 96 percent Hispanic - filed a complaint about the incident with the University Interscholastic League, the governing body of Texas public high school extracurricular activities.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31751_162-57393422-10391697/high-school-basketball-fans-accused-of-racism-for-usa-chant/

VIDEO at link - Alamo Heights is almost all white

[benld74]

27. Stay Classy South Miss! oh and yeah your bb team LOST!!!!!

[cstanleytech]

28. Can the Southern Mississippi University be fined for this? If so then they should be imo.

[SpartanDem]

29. Stay Classy Misssissippi

[fujiyama]

33. This is Mississippi

a state where Barack Obama received some 12% of the white vote.

Some 30% of the state's republican's voters believe interracial dating should be illegal - not whether they approve of it - but that it should be outlawed. And keep in mind that this just polled those that participated in the primary and doesn't take into account many of the Democrats that likely hold the same views (the old dixiecrat).That shit was settled by the SC about half a century ago.

This is also the state where a bunch of kids, raised in that same culture of hate, ran over a black man several times a few months ago.

This is also the state that had districts with segregated proms until some five years ago - it took Morgan Freeman to offer paying for the prom if the school decided to do away with it. Some white families decided to hold their own separate prom offsite.

I live in the south now and as a minority, have mostly had a positive experience (with the exception of a few odd glares and one racist drunken idiot saying stupid shit). But I live in a fairly urbanized area with a lot of transplants as well. I have no doubt that if I ventured into the boonies, the shit we see in MS would occur here too. They just have a ways to go down here with regards to race and tolerance. Not everyone mind you (as I said there are a LOT of genuinely good people out here), but a significant number...The level of education is poor and with nasty beliefs passed down between generations, it's no surprise this kind of thing continues though.

I do wonder about MS and AL. Those two states are really the laughingstock of the nation.

[mistertrickster]

40. B-b-but you can't judge an entire state just because of the actions of the majority . . .

so say the apologists.

[provis99]

34. Southern Miss...even more redneck than Ole Miss.

Mississippi makes Alabama look enlightened.

[Bette Noir]

35. Note to racists and xenophobes:

We won't be in the minority forever.

[BootinUp]

36. Doh!

nt

[PA Democrat]

37. Puerto Ricans ARE US citizens. But the SMU band shouldn't let their deplorable IGNORANCE

get in the way of their xenophobia.

[graham4anything]

38. Frank Rich was 100% correct

it is all about race and racists in the USA.

little petty racist people are all the republicanlibertarianteaparty has left.

[mistertrickster]

39. Oh, Lord . . . now another dozen threads on unjustified "south bashing" nt