Unlike Part 1 of this two-part essay, this isn’t about which team should have won in a closely-fought contest. It’s about what you see here. This is a still photo of a moment in a video posted on X on the official Texas Athletics account. The video shows what turned out to be the clinching touchdown (technically, it tied the game; the extra point won it) scored by the Texas Longhorns to defeat the Ohio State Buckeyes in Austin on September 12. There is then a pan showing fan reaction.
The score came with less than 30 seconds left in a game in
which the Horns overcame a 20-point 4th-quarter deficit to take down what had
been the #1 team in the country. That,
if you’re a football fan, especially a Texas fan, is pretty exciting stuff, as
evidenced by the reaction of the young fans you see pictured here. Indeed, there is little that is more
American, more Texan, than celebrating a triumph on the football field. What you and I see in this photo, Gentle
Reader, is such a quintessential moment of Americana.
That is not, alas, what a creature called Bo French
sees. He posted the pic on his X account,
writing “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it.
The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” Yes, really.
When his racist commentary was called out for being, well, racist
commentary, he first doubled down with another tweet:
“Like body-cams exposed criminals, social media is exposing how many Americans
have been displaced by foreigners. It’s everywhere and far worse than any of us
could imagine.”
This was followed, of course, by the whine/funds solicitation:
“BREAKING: The radical left and their allies are attacking me. Join the
thousands of patriots who are supporting our campaign here.” (French is the Republican nominee for Texas Railraod Commissioner.) Anyone who isn’t as big a xenophobic buffoon
as French, you see, is a member of the “radical left.” That would include folks like outgoing Republican
US Senator John Cornyn and GOP Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick,
apparently. Oh, and Karl Rove. Buncha radical leftists, that lot…
If you’re not from Texas, Gentle Reader—or perhaps even if
you are—you may not know that the Railroad Commissioner has literally nothing to do
with railroads. (It’s Texas, after
all.) The job actually entails
supervision of the Oil and Gas industries—drilling, mines, pipelines, that sort
of stuff—which of course are a rather big deal in this state. French has little if any relevant experience
and has said next to nothing about policy.
The Texas Oil and Gas Association and Governor Greg Abbott both endorsed his opponent in the Republican primary, with Abbott declaring
that “His agenda would wreck the miracle that we have in producing more oil and
gas than ever before.”
Ah, but he’s a sanctimonious bigot with a demonstrated history of racism, homophobia, both Islamophobia and antisemitism, and indeed about every form of prejudice one can imagine. That’s enough for the average Texas Republican to think he’s just a dandy candidate. It’s also worth noting that the only prominent Republican to say he’ll vote for the Democrat in the race is Rove. Cornyn says he “might leave it blank.” But as of this writing no one else has even suggested withholding support; most are indeed rallying around French.
Reporter Scott Braddock tweeted that “When the racism is embedded in a proposed law, Republicans around
here vote for it. When the racism is in
a tweet during a tough midterm, they condemn it. Not that hard to understand.” That’s a little cynical even for Curmie, but
he does note that the condemnations from high-ranking Republicans do seem more
than a little hollow if they aren’t accompanied by withdrawn endorsements.
Of course, as a couple of the articles linked about suggest,
it’s not like these folks didn’t know what a racist asshole French is when they
endorsed him to begin with. Party unity
and all that… Yeah, he asked his
followers whether Jews or Muslims are a greater threat to America, but boys
will be boys, after all. Sure, he’s used
“gay” as a slur. But… you know… that
James Talarico guy is kinda baby-faced.
Anyway, let’s get back to that original post and its follow-up. Former GOP Congresscritter Adam Kinzinger has
a good analysis,
and Curmie encourages you to read it if you haven’t already. But there are some other points to make, too.
Let’s start by looking at that photo. You’ll notice that if you look closely, the
overwhelming majority of the people we see are white; it’s just that the dozen
or so folks at the front are of South Asian descent. Many if not most, perhaps even all, of them
are American citizens. French may regard
anyone non-white as “foreign,” but it doesn’t work that way, even in Texas.
Especially striking here is the response of the students
interviewed for Megan Menchaca’s piece on the brouhaha, published first by the Texas
Tribune and subsequently picked up by CBS. The students are described as being “dismayed
but unsurprised” by French’s attack. Again,
Curmie encourages you to read the entire article, but wants to highlight in
particular the commentary of UT sophomore Arsheeya Moreen:
If you were at the game, you know that picture is taken extremely out of context. I'm gonna be completely candid. I think, as a politician, as somebody in the public eye, to take something like that out of context and manipulate it to fit your agenda and your views on a certain race is extremely unprofessional….
There will always be racist people out there who feel OK with hiding behind a screen and commenting things about people that they don't know, but for a politician running for a public office to come out and say those same hateful things just takes it to a whole different level that you truly can't ignore anymore.
Curmie is old enough to remember—hell, people two
generations younger than Curmie are old enough to remember—when Affirmative
Action was the bête noire of the right.
They fought to remove consideration of the race of applicants in
admissions decision. They ultimately won
with a 2023 SCOTUS decision. But in one of those be-careful-what-you-wish-for
moments, the right discovered that the decision in fact lowered the number of
white students, as the increase in Asians more than replaced the decrease in
blacks.
The mostly white right got what they thought they wanted: a
meritocracy based on the individual. We
can argue, perhaps, about how and why a disproportionate number of Asian
students go to UT. Perhaps
they (and their families) value education more and they work harder in high school to
achieve their goals. Maybe their
outsider status focuses their attention.
It could be that the best Asian students are more likely to want to
attend UT, rather than looking at similarly prestigious places like SMU or
Rice. (Curmie has literally no evidence
of this; he’s just spit-balling.) Or
they could, as a group, just be smarter.
😉 What
matters is that they have better credentials, and were admitted on that basis.
There’s also the complaint that seats at UT are being taken
by outsiders, i.e., non-Texans, including foreign students. State law, however, decrees that 90% of
undergrads at the university be from Texas.
Indeed, only 5% of UT undergrads are foreign students. Oh, and there are
more out-of-state black players on the football team than there are white guys,
total. But it’s OK that those guys, many
of whom we might surmise don’t have impeccable scholarly records, are at UT;
they help the football team win. And
that’s important, right? It’s those damned
academically qualified Asian guys who are just cheering for the home team that
are the problem. <Sigh.>
If you want to argue that foreigners shouldn’t make up
almost a third of grad students, you’re free to do so, but, going back to that
tweet, they’re a lot less likely to be attending sporting events. If you added up the baseball, football,
basketball, hockey, lacrosse, and skiing events Curmie saw as an undergrad, it
would probably total somewhere pretty close to 100, certainly several dozen. As a grad student: one basketball game: because his dissertation advisor’s wife had something else to do that
night.
The right-wingers got what they wanted: race-blind
admissions and, as Kinzinger points out, assimilation of minority communities
into mainstream culture. But there’s
little that says “assimilated” into a place like UT more than wearing a
university-branded t-shirt and jumping up and down screaming while flashing the
“Hook ‘em Horns” sign when the team scores a big touchdown. Turns out, the racists
and dominionists just wanted someone else to blame for their own inadequacies.
Go figure.
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