Sunday, March 14, 2010

White Girl Steppers Now Split 1st Place Prize with Black Girl Steppers

Remember that story we posted last week about a white sorority winning 1st place in the annual Sprite Step Competition. Click here to read: White Sorority Wins Sprite Step Competition

Well Coca-Cola who sponsored the event could not handle all that controversy so they went back, looked over the scores and conveniently found a "discrepancy."

ATLANTA (AP) -- After days of controversy over a white group's win in a step competition, sponsor Coca-Cola said Thursday the second-place team will share top honors.

Coca-Cola said in a statement that a review of the scoring from Saturday's national contest revealed a "scoring discrepancy" that it declined to explain. This is the first year of the Sprite Step Off, but step contests are typically dominated by black sororities and fraternities.

Step is a historically black art form of rhythmic stepping and clapping. A YouTube video of the winning performance by a group of Zeta Tau Alphas from the University of Arkansas generated hundreds of comments, some of them inflammatory.

Coca-Cola said Thursday the Alpha Kappa Alpha team from Indiana University, whose members are black, would share first place and would also receive the same $100,000 in scholarships that the Zeta Tau Alphas won.

"Because the scoring discrepancy cannot be resolved and due to the extremely narrow margin between the first and second place winning sororities," the company decided to declare co-winners, the company statement says.

The national offices of both sororities said they were proud of their members and declined to comment on the Internet controversy.

The Sprite Step Off was created to award scholarships, Coca-Cola said. The tournament began in September with a series of regional qualifying rounds around the country. Six sororities competed in the national final in Atlanta Saturday. Six fraternities also competed among themselves. source from wusa9.com

Thumbs up or down for how this was handled?

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1 comment:

  1. I am being honest when I say this, I think those girls are great but since I did not see the other performers, I can't say the deserved to win of course. 2nd. These girls are great and their routines are incredibly good BUT I personally think when most black not all but most black people when they step, it's a certain feeling, rhythm, attitude that they display while stepping which is missing from these girls step routine so therefore I'm not enjoying it as much. That's just me.

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