Conservative Donors Have Their Own Cancel Culture
The University of Texas insists that it is willing to confront its past racism and make sweeping changes for the sake of justice. What it won’t do is deal with the racist history of its school song.
Last summer, amid nationwide protests over George Floyd’s death in police custody, more than two dozen Texas football players and other athletes issued a list of demands aimed at making their school more welcoming. In response, administrators announced reforms to improve diversity on campus, to honor historically prominent Black athletes and other Black alumni, invest in recruiting Black students from underrepresented areas of Texas, and make Black students feel safer and more supported in general.
But the university refused one of the athletes’ demands: that it drop “The Eyes of Texas”—the campus anthem steeped in minstrelsy and Confederate nostalgia—and find a song “without racist undertones.” President that the university would retain the current song, which is played before and after football games, despite the discomfort it provokes in many athletes and marching-band members.
