A fiery debate is raging after a white team from an Arkansas sorority took top honors in a recent step competition in Atlanta.
Visit any of the nation’s more than 100 historically black collegesor universities and you’ll see clusters of men and women engaged in therhythmic clapping and foot stomping routines known in black Greekcircles as “stepping.”
Now a white Arkansas team’s win in an Atlanta step competition hasstarted a fiery debate over the African-inspired tradition and whetherthe integration of a once-ethnically exclusive activity constitutes aform of cultural theft.
The uproar began when the all-white Zeta Tau Alpha team from theUniversity of Arkansas beat out five other sorority teams to win lastweekend’s national final in the Sprite Step Off competition. A YouTube video of their performance, inspired by the movie “The Matrix,” generated hundreds of comments.