Let's Not Enable Bad Parenting

SAN DIEGO -- America, we have a problem. We already knew that a lot of people were flunking Parenthood 101.

But a racist video of students at the University of Oklahoma shows that the problem extends to people in society who are willing to excuse those who are failing the course.

Welcome to the new social order, where kids call the shots and parents try not to run afoul of their offspring.

Guess which group is getting pushed around. Recently, I heard a dad joke that he tells his son: "I hope you're not talking to your teachers the way you speak to your mom and me. Because they'll slap you."

Yet many parents still think it's their duty to defend their children when they misbehave, to offer excuses, or to make it seem as if it's those who are offended that have the problem.

There was a lot to be offended by at the University of Oklahoma, where members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity were caught on camera reciting a racist chant that included the "N-word" and a reference to lynching.

Two of the students were identified as Parker Rice, a 19-year-old freshman, and Levi Pettit, a 20-year-old sophomore. Both were expelled from the university, and the fraternity has been banned from campus.

Rice apologized soon after the video was made public earlier this month, but Pettit didn't say a word for more than two weeks. He recently broke his silence, reading from a prepared statement at a news conference in Oklahoma City where he was flanked by local African-American leaders.

"There are no excuses for my behavior," Pettit said. "I never thought of myself as a racist. I never considered it a possibility. But the bottom line is that the words that were said in that chant were mean, hateful and racist."

But what has most interested me all along is the reaction of the parents.

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