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Author
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Topic: Students 'brand' themselves.
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 10-27-2009 04:24 PM
Nothing new, really...
Brothers of Omega Psi Phi, the first national fraternity for Black students, have been branding each other for years.
There are lots of frats, Black and other races, which brand their brothers.
quote:
Burning Messages: Interpreting African American Fraternity Brands and Their Bearers
by Sandra Mizumoto Posey
Some members of Black Greek letter organizations voluntarily scar themselves by branding. Understanding this ritual requires going beyond the brand’s physical form and examining the personal and organizational narrative histories that often accompany it. As participants in a ongoing dialogue about what branding means today, fraternity members informally negotiate with brothers who do not support branding, family members who struggle with what it means to their own group identity, and most importantly, popular culture, which holds negative associations. The men who undergo branding, however, invert the narratives that explain branding as a mark of ownership and slavery and insist on defining its meaning for themselves.
http://www.nyfolklore.org/pubs/voic30-3-4/burnmsgs.html
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 10-29-2009 03:22 PM
If you are in the Marines or something like that, a tattoo of "Semper Fi" or the like is cool. If you are a brother of Omega Psi Phi it might be cool to get a letter "Ω" branded on your arm. Theoretically, they are about the same thing.
But 90% of the time, I think tattooing, piercing or branding just for show is stupid. It cheapens the idea of tattooing.
A tattoo (or brand) is supposed to have meaning: You fought together with your fellow Marines or you lived in a fraternity with your brothers for four or more years. It's a mark of commitment.
When every idiot runs down to the corner tattoo parlor and gets some mystical symbols tattooed on his ass just because he thinks it's cool, he takes away from the meaning. Besides, those three Chinese characters that he thinks stand for "Strength, Courage and Honor" probably mean "I drink yak semen" but he's too stupid to find out what they mean before he actually goes under the needle.
When I see somebody with tattoos and there isn't an obvious meaning like the military or something, the first thought that comes to mind is, "Be a non-conformist. Everyone else is!"
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