Reference: Macy’s under fire after calling Black sorority in parade ‘diverse dance group’ | Fox News
The Zeta Phi Beta Centennial Steppers is a group of dancing performers in this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Zeta Phi Beta is a black sorority of long lineage. During the performance, Macy’s tweeted out the following:
“What’s that sound, you ask? Why it’s the diverse dance group, Zeta Phi Beta Steppers! Performing a special routine they put together to help us celebrate this unprecedented year.”
Seems pretty innocuous to us; rather happy and celebratory in fact. But boy oh boy (is that phrase offensive? Good), did that light up the nasty and useless crowd that apparently relies on social media for things to be offended by like the rest of us rely on air to breathe. As the above article by Julia Musto states:
“The tweet prompted a response from MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” host Joy Reid who explained that the Centennial Steppers are “not a ‘dance group.'”
“Zeta Phi Beta is a Black sorority founded at Howard U in 1920 and part of the Divine Nine,” she said. The Divine Nine is a coalition of nine Black sororities and fraternities that make up the National Pan-Hellenic Council.
Social media users called Macy’s description “reductive” and asserted that Macy’s had used the Centennial Steppers.
“I’m tired of businesses using Black entities (including Historically Black Sororities and Fraternities) as a means to look more ‘diverse’ and accepting,” added @_AwesomeKid. “It’s clear how performative this attempt was, due to your lack of research for your own parade performers.”
Now really, you have to go out of your way to be offended by that tweet. Maybe the group isn’t itself diverse, but the Macy’s parade is wildly diverse if you’ve ever seen one. But to jump on a well-meaning sponsor for this gossamer-thin reason just highlights the social backwardness and lack of proportion these morons prowling social media have in their quest to find something – anything! – to be offended by so they can clamber onto their soapbox once more and “educate” the rest of us in their wokeness. (Sorry, that’s a pretty involved sentence).
There once was a rule when writing papers for school – write it, and then put it in your desk drawer and forget about it for a day. That is, think before you speak (or write), because knee-jerk reactions are just that, made by jerks, and usually problematic. That is our lesson for today to all those idiots who get their jollies from prowling social media for things to be offended by. Even if they don’t learn anything from this message, they at least will have found something else to be offended by.