Tales from the White Brotherhood

What would you say if I told you that Donald Trump Jr. was my brother?

I know it sounds stupid to even ask. Of course, it’s ridiculous, but it’s true. I couldn’t believe it either, at first glance. What are the chances? I also found that he is just one among many of my other unlikely and long-lost brothers. There’s Johnny Carson, Jack Nicklaus, E.B White, jeez even Jack Kerouac. It’s hard to imagine that both V.P. Mike Pence and Bob Woodward, as well as Norman Vincent Peale and Bob Mathais are numbered among my brotherly crew! Yes. It’s a fact as evidenced by a page torn directly from Wikipedia. Just look for the entry entitled “List of Phi Gamma Delta members.”

I only bothered to look up this infamous boy’s club upon learning about that poor, 12-year-old, Kansas City Chiefs’ fan slandered by Deadspin's Carron J. Phillips. “On Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas, a Kansas City Chiefs fan found a way to hate Black people and the Native Americans at the same time,” he said as he selectively shared only a side image (left photo) of the boy.

Justin Trudeau seemed to have easily slipped past the blackball for having donned blackface makeup in his youthful days. It turns out that Holden Armenta, the kid in this latest instance of a progressive media smear campaign is of Native-American heritage, according to Shannon Holden, the boy’s mother. Bubba Armenta, the child’s father, is the son of Raul Armenta, a business committee member of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, according to a local news story from 2014.

Meanwhile, here in Vermont…

The local chapter of the Phi Gam frat, which calls itself the Fijis, was issued a four-year suspension several years ago after being found guilty of hazing and violating UVM's alcohol policies. Typical. The Chi Iota chapter at the University of Illinois, of which I was a member, burned their house down… twice! If you are wondering what links all of this blackface uproar to my own band of brothers, it may be found in a “philanthropy” festival that each of the almost 150 nationwide chapters hosts every year called Fiji Island.

I tend to bristle at the thought of manners police continually on alert for any infractions of what has come to be known as “political correctness.” Freedom of speech has a price. At the same time, I applaud the wokefullness movement which seems to be a perfect counterbalance to the Trumpening of America. It’s always fascinated me to walk the razor’s edge by simultaneously carrying two opposing thoughts in mind at once, like opposing abortion while affirming an individual’s right to have the last say about what goes on inside their own body. Like advocating for greater gun control while defending a person’s right to own a state-of-the-art weapon like the AR-15. Like being an atheist, yet believing that there are undeniable realms of higher intelligence beyond the ken of mere homo sapiens.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

Psychologists describe this same, first-rate skill as cognitive dissonance, a state of mental stress or discomfort. I merely find it harder to make small talk defending both sides in an argument. The flip side of the same diagnosis describes cognitive dissonance as the stress that comes from being confronted “by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.” Like Justin Trudeau may be a likable guy, and Justin Trudeau once wore blackface makeup.

Turning now to the Fiji Islands…

Located about 2,500 miles southwest of Honolulu and 1,000 miles north of New Zealand, there is a community of real people hanging on as the waters rise, people who are quite offended at my fraternity brothers. Among them, Savenaca Gasaiwai who called on the brotherhood to cease and desist the appropriation of his culture by collecting 1,895 signers online with a Change.org petition that singled out the Fiji Island party attendees for, “wearing our traditional ‘Liku Vau’ (skirts) along with the ‘Vesa’ (made out of vau) worn around their arms and ankles,” among other complaints.

Savenaca got an email response from the President of one Phi Gamma Delta chapter who explained, “FIJI has been the official nickname of our fraternity since 1894; our Greek letters Phi Gamma Delta are sacred to us so a nickname was necessary for the sake of simplicity and convenience. FIJI Islander has also been adopted internationally as the traditional name of our annual philanthropic effort.”

Savenaca replied to the email stating, that Fijians have been around way longer than 1894, “the history of our existence as Fijians traces back to at least 1500 B.C. (back when Greeks were only found in Greece) ...Fijian is who I am. It is my identity. It is part and parcel of who I am. I do not use it as a nickname. I own it with every ounce of dignity and the fact that your organization uses it in such a manner is inappropriate and incredibly boorish.”

In any case, Savenaca’s 2014 petition is now officially closed. But what surprises me the most, upon finding it, is the omission of any mention of blackface makeup. That’s most likely because back in the 1980s the Fiji brothers abandoned that part of the island party tradition after numerous campus protests and sanctions were imposed on chapters across the USA for their insulting behavior.

Since its founding in 1848, the fraternity has grown to almost 150 chapters in the US and Canada and has initiated more than 195,000 brothers. Let’s be conservative and estimate that if only half of these men were pledged before the dawning of the era of political correctness, there are at least 100,000 closeted executives and others among the professional celebrity class that wore blackface makeup to a Fiji Island Party. My brothers and I simply must be outed, or at least asked to talk about what it was like back in the day. It’s quite likely that all sorts of celebrities from Mike Pence to Johnny Carson all have black-faced skeletons in their closets.

(Texas Tech University - Class of 1964)

Each chapter annually hosts a Fiji Island party where the brothers typically blend rum, vodka, and a few fake palm trees, with orange juice and lemonade hoping to see their sorority-sister dates tossing away their coconut bras for a roll in the hay. One Fiji brother revealed his method of concealing alcohol on campus, “We injected oranges and grapefruit with grain alcohol, better than a hip flask.”

So Deadspin's Carron J. Phillips may find a whole list of famous people who have most likely put on blackface if he simply asks Wikipedia. I confess, I am one of them. I was a 20-year old sophomore at the U of I when I attended my one and only Fiji Island party, and like the rest, I dressed for the occasion. It was 1967 at the Chi Iota Chapter of the U. Of I. in Champaign, Illinois. There was a tent lined with straw, and coolers filled with that alcoholic citrus fruit, and spiked punch, a festival erected in the adjacent countryside at the Shirley Farm on south Lincoln Avenue.

The chapter provided a festive hayride wagon to carry the brothers around the campus where we picked up our dates. Literally, we raided each sorority house or dorm carrying torches, shields, and spears, to find our dates and toss them over our shoulders like captives, and throw them on the wagon. Almost everyone laughed and acted the fool, wearing loin cloths and grass skirts, some of my brothers with chicken bones cleverly sawed in half and clipped into their noses, and all of us, both men and women, painted in full-body black makeup. We spent a great deal of time in getting costumed. No one wanted to be streaky. I’ll do your back if you’ll do mine.

I remember waking up in a tent the morning after, with a splitting headache, an empty stomach, and no idea where my girlfriend went. I was hungry. I picked up an orange and peeled it. The sun was shining, but much too brightly. Quite soon, I was drunk again not intentionally seeking, but nonetheless finding the proverbial hair of the dog that bit me.

Let us now return to cognitive dissonance...

I carry this fond memory simultaneously while also revealing that I was kicked out of Phi Gamma Delta. I was born a troublemaker. In my freshman year, I was elected Pledge Class President of a different fraternity, one in which I led 65 of my pledge-class brothers to quit Phi Kappa Tau at the end of our first semester, just before initiation. Instead of the typical hazing inflicted on new pledges, we reversed roles putting the more obnoxious members of the upper class through our own version of hell… strength in numbers. I left to live in the dorms during my second semester. Most of us went on to pledge different frats, not wishing to remain living in the sterile dorms for the next few years. I chose Fijis because they had several members who were art, architecture, or graphic design majors and it seemed like a liberal crew.

As this story turns out, I soon joined up with four other brothers in launching a house rock band we called Lothar and the Handpeople, soon to test the Fiji’s limits. The band became a campus sensation. We began to take music-making seriously and Champaign was a music town. After graduation, our lead guitarist would go on to join a different “local” band, REO Speedwagon. But in 1967, our hair started creeping over the tops of our ears and shirt collars. We became offensive to the more conservative members of the boys’ club and were no longer welcome to eat among them in the dining room until we got haircuts. I ate in the kitchen. The cook gave me extras.

( Photo L-R: Jack Davis, Stephen Kastner, Bill Fiorio, Frank Eiter)

But the band was making money, playing at bars several nights a week. The lead guitarist and I moved into Bromley Hall, a brand new, 14-story, coed, luxury, high-rise dorm with a swimming pool and a chef that sliced prime rib on Sundays. It was the Ritz, filled with mostly rich Jewish kids from Chicago’s North Shore.

I switched majors from architecture to painting which represented a major shift in my personal identity. I gave up the thought of finding a financially rewarding combination of creativity and career, opting to let my future define itself without restriction. The band dissolved and I immersed myself in art and photography living in my own apartment for a year after Bromley. In my final year of college, I bought a new Ford Econoline van with the same money I would have spent on rent, fitted it out with a bed, and an excellent sound system, and lived in it like a pirate.

At 20, I had no idea who I was and now at 77, I am still learning. Bless me Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was more than six decades years ago.