University of Texas at Austin are proving to be
adult bullies. They have threatened to cancel future monetary donations to the university and have said they will go as far as to block some students from getting jobs in Texas after graduation.
Imagine going to college and preparing yourself for a career in your chosen field or hoping to play pro sports, being close to graduation then having the people you thought would help you – because of your UTA affiliation – threaten to put up barriers in your path! These threats are over the school song, whether it will be replaced or stand as is? Some current students have protested against the song and started a petition to ban it from getting played during sporting events. Most alumni and donors support the song as is.
Growing up in the 1950s and â60s,
Keith Lester remembers attending schools in New Jersey, where Caucasian classmates always had definitive answers to where their families were from. Lester recalls these classmates, without much thought, could rattle off the names of such countries as England, France, Italy, Romania, Russia, and countless other international locales. Yet, it was a different story for Black classmates when asked about their familiesâ countries of origin.
âI noticed that the Black students in class, including me, didnât know what countries our families were from,â Lester recalls, noting that Africa is not a country. âThe best that we could do was say that our families came from Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi or North Carolina or some other southern state.â