UT students attacked by Bo French call his comments “disgusting” and too familiar, by Megan Menchaca, Sept. 14, 2026

7:52 AM · Sep 13, 2026

·52.9M Views

Friends:

My students shared this with me the other evening. What happened was that someone named "Bo French" saw a group of University of Texas students in burnt orange celebrating a Longhorn touchdown and read something else into the picture: foreignness. Nothing visible in that photograph established where those students were born, what passports they carried, where they went to high school, or how long their families had lived in Texas. Yet French treated their appearance as sufficient proof that something had gone terribly wrong at the state’s flagship university.

The photograph was not, as French initially suggested, a graduation scene. It captured students celebrating a touchdown in the closing moments of UT’s game against Ohio State. French nevertheless posted it alongside the ominous declaration that “the problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined” and subsequently argued that foreigners were displacing Americans at the university (Menchaca, 2026). What transformed an ordinary scene of college football fandom into a supposed demographic crisis was not information about the students. It was the way they looked.

The Indian American Advocacy Council identified precisely that problem, condemning French for assuming that brown students pictured at UT must be foreigners (Kharade, 2026). Consider how much French did not know when he made that judgment. He did not know the students’ hometowns, their citizenship, their family histories, or even their names. Dhairya Gupta, one of the young men visible in the photograph, is in fact a naturalized American citizen (Menchaca, 2026). French’s inference therefore worked backward: appearance produced the conclusion, and the conclusion supplied the story. The faces themselves became the evidence.

French subsequently reframed the controversy as a policy question: Should American universities prioritize Americans? But that defense raises an empirical question, and UT’s enrollment structure provides a fairly clear answer. Texas law already makes Texas residents overwhelmingly dominant in undergraduate admissions. Up to 75% of each entering class is filled through automatic admission of highly ranked Texas high school graduates, and beginning with the fall 2026 entering class, UT reduced its automatic-admission threshold to the top 5% of graduating Texas seniors (Dey, 2024). 

International students, meanwhile, numbered 1,923 among 44,314 undergraduates—roughly 4% of the undergraduate population (Texas Global, 2026; University of Texas at Austin, 2025). Those numbers do not support the picture of a university being overtaken by foreign students. They describe a Texas public university whose student body increasingly reflects the diversity of Texas itself.

Nor was the objection to French’s rhetoric confined to his political opponents. Republican leaders criticized the post as well, including U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, who described it as intolerant and racist (Kharade, 2026). That matters because the issue here is larger than a conventional partisan disagreement over immigration or university admissions. There is a legitimate public debate to be had about international enrollment, admissions priorities, and who public universities are designed to serve. But that debate begins with facts. It cannot reasonably begin by looking at brown students in a football stadium and presuming that they are foreigners.

And perhaps that is what makes the original photograph so revealing—but not in the way French intended. These students stood in the heat, crowded into the student section, raised their hands in the Hook ’em Horns sign, and erupted when their team scored. There is nothing anomalous about that scene. It is Texas in 2026. The students pictured should not have to produce birth certificates, passports, or family histories to establish that they belong in the stands—or at the university. Their faces are not immigration documents. Theirs are the faces of Texas.

References

Dey, S. (2024, September 16). UT-Austin tightens automatic admission threshold to 5% of Texas' top high schoolers. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/09/16/ut-austin-top-five-percent-threshold/

Kharade, P. (2026, September 14). Indian American Advocacy Council condemns Bo French's racist post on brown students from University of Texas. The Free Press Journal. https://www.freepressjournal.in/world/indian-american-advocacy-council-condemns-bo-frenchs-racist-post-on-brown-students-from-university-of-texas

Menchaca, M. (2026, September 14). UT students attacked by Bo French call his comments "disgusting" and too familiar. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2026/09/14/bo-french-university-texas-austin-students/

Texas Global. (2026). 2025–2026 international enrollment. The University of Texas at Austin. https://global.utexas.edu/about/international-enrollment

University of Texas at Austin. (2025). Facts and figures. https://www.utexas.edu/about/facts-and-figures

UT students attacked by Bo French call his comments “disgusting” and too familiar
In a statement Monday night, university officials indirectly addressed Bo French’s comments, calling students at the game Saturday night “incredible fans.”
by Megan Menchaca Sept. 14, 2026, 9:03 p.m. Central | Texas Tribune

Texas Longhorns fans and players celebrate following the NCAA football game against the

Ohio State Buckeyes at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin on Saturday.

Students said they were not surprised a Republican candidate lobbed racist attacks about

South Asian students seen celebrating the win. Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch/

USA TODAY Network via REUTERS

Students at the University of Texas at Austin said they were dismayed — but unsurprised — by the racist attacks lobbed at them online after a Republican candidate for statewide office suggested white Americans were being “displaced.”

Bo French, the Republican running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, on Sunday posted racist comments on X that included an image of UT students of South Asian descent celebrating the victory.

“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this,” French wrote in a post featuring a photo of the students. “I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”

On Monday, French defended his comments on a conservative radio talk show. But by then, the posts had reverberated across social media, attracting comments like “Bollywood University” “Are we watching a cricket game,” “I didn’t know the stadium was in India,” and “The America we grew up in no longer exists.”

Dhairya Gupta, a senior at the University of Texas, is included in the bottom right of the photo, wearing a burnt orange T-shirt with his right arm extended into a “Hook ’em Horns” hand sign. He said he’s accustomed to seeing racist comments online, but it was “insane” to see a Republican candidate say derogatory things about him and his friends.

“When I look at that picture, I don’t see a problem,” Gupta said in an interview Monday with The Texas Tribune.

RELATED STORY
Karl Rove said he’ll break 30 years of only supporting Republicans to vote against “bigot” Bo French Sept. 14, 2026

The controversy is the latest in a long line of incendiary comments made by French that have been condemned by his fellow Republicans, many of whom have endorsed him.

The comments also follow years of conservative lawmakers attacking diversity, equity and inclusion policies at public universities like UT.

French — who did not immediately respond to a request for comment — referred to the students’ picture as “foreigners” who displaced Americans, without having any information about their status. The citizenship status of all the students in the photo are unknown, although Gupta told The Dallas Morning News he is a naturalized citizen.

Approximately 26% of degree-seeking undergraduate students at UT are Asian, up from 20% a decade ago. About 29% of students are white, which is down from 44% in the same time period. UT has been prohibited from considering race in its admissions process since a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2023.

Students said the cohort of South Asian students at the football game happened partially by happenstance. Like everyone else, they and their friends waited many hours in line in the heat before the highly anticipated game against Ohio State and ran to the closest seats to the field when UT let them into the student section of the stadium.

“If you were at the game, you know that picture is taken extremely out of context,” said Arsheeya Moyeen, a UT sophomore. “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.”

Kevin Eltife, chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, shared a statement online Monday evening — about a day after French’s post — thanking students at the game for “making us proud.”

“When I stood on the sidelines at DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium Saturday night and looked up at the seats filled with incredible fans, I saw Longhorns,” Eltife said. “It’s the same remarkable view I have at graduation ceremonies and anytime I’m on campus. I’m proud to celebrate all our Longhorn students today and every day.”

UT President Jim Davis said in a follow-up social media post that the university’s students were exceptional and “all of them are Longhorns.” UT did not respond to a request for further comment.

The photo French shared is a screenshot from a video that the official social media accounts of Texas Athletics posted Saturday evening. The 17-second vertical video shows a group of students in one part of the student section celebrating after the Longhorns scored a touchdown in the final minute of the game.

UT sophomore Lisa Varghese, who was sitting in the same section as Gupta and Moyeen, said she was shocked at the ignorance she saw on social media in response to the video and French’s post. She said French was using skin color and “blatant racism” as a divisive factor to tear people apart.

“To complain about skin color and to complain about other people ‘taking over’ UT Austin and how disappointing that is is just disgusting,” Varghese said. “It really is because I feel like football and sports (are) something that should be uniting. It should be a uniting factor. It should be something that we all come together to celebrate.”

Moyeen said racist posts on social media toward certain groups are disappointing, but she believes they have become normalized. She said she initially ignored the “horrible racist generalizations” under UT’s initial video on social media — until French made his tweet.

“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,” Moyeen said.

French said UT was “filled with foreign nationals” and argued that the school has prioritized foreign students and workers. However, under state law, 90% of UT freshmen must be in-state residents, while the remaining 10% are international students or out-of-state students. International students comprised about 4% of undergraduates in the 2025-26 school year.

UT offers automatic admission to all in-state residents in the top 5% of their high school graduating class. Under state law, 75% of UT’s freshman class must be admitted under this policy. The remaining students are admitted through a holistic process that considers factors such as grade point average, extracurriculars and personal essays.

Gupta said he’s concerned about the broad sentiment of French’s post and how many people publicly agreed with him. He said, though, it brought a smile to his face seeing the Longhorns who were vocally defending him, his friends and the other pictured UT students on social media.

“It seemed like the actual Texas alumni seemed to be very passionate about the fact that these are also students at the university, and this is the university,” Gupta said. “It’s not defined by the demographic(s) of the university itself, but by the culture of the university.”

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin has been a major financial supporter of The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in our journalism. Find a complete list of them and more information about our financial and disclosure policies here.

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'Deport yourself': Humble ISD candidate reports alleged home vandalism—"Latinos have to unite, because our students are our priority right now"

Friends:

This vandalism and harassment is so despicable on so many levels. The concept of "racialized voter suppression" and associated candidate intimidation should no longer be abstractions if they were to begin with. And please, telling a U.S. citizen to “deport yourself” based on her ethnicity and culture is racist to the core. 

It's also misogynistic, designed to push Latinas and women, generally, out of their pursuit of public office. This aligns with the regular defaming and misrepresenting of AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, and others is a way to discredit their policy positions and to manufacture disfavor with those they represent.

Castillo’s past advocacy for bilingual, community-engaged students earning graduation sashes should be uplifted rather than put down, considering her wonderful sense of civic duty and helping marginalized students. At the base of this civic harm to where she feels unsafe in her own home is trying to impact broader publics from ever considering running for office. I hope she wins her school board race in Humble ISD.

Great quote by Castillo. 

"This is the time where we Latinos have to unite, because our students are our priority right now. Our students deserve to have an equal education like anyone else."

I hope they have a LULAC Chapter in Humble or that they form one. I hear that Houston LULAC is on top of this. 

-Angela Valenzuela

'Deport yourself': Humble ISD candidate reports alleged home vandalism

"They're mocking my incident as if I'm doing this to get more votes instead of actually seeing it as a threat to a candidate."

By Brammhi Balarajan,Trending News ReporterMay 1, 2025

"Deport yourself" was written on a Humble ISD school board candidate's home. (Judy Castillo) 

By Brammhi Balarajan,Trending News ReporterMay 1, 2025

The Harris County Sheriff's Office is investigating an alleged incident of vandalism at the home of a candidate for the Humble ISD school board, where the words "deport yourself" were found on her door on Friday. 

Judith Castillo, who is running for a trustee position in Humble, said she's been targeted and harassed since her campaign began. In addition to the messages telling her to "deport herself," she said she's received harassing messages with name-calling and sexual content. She also said she's been followed to work and her social media accounts have been hacked.  

Although Castillo’s campaign centers on anti-bullying, she says she has been the target of similar hostility throughout the election. Much of the backlash, she says, has focused on her race—driven by the false belief that her platform only supports Hispanic students.  

"It's been an ongoing issue where people are saying I'm just running to represent Hispanic students. I'm not running just to represent Hispanic students, I'm running to represent all students," Castillo told Chron.  "I am running to have a voice for my community." 

Humble, Texas is 56.2 percent Hispanic or Latino, according to data from the U.S. Census. 

Some parents have criticized Castillo over an incident a few years ago, when Castillo, then a teacher, stood up for her students after the superintendent removed their graduation sashes. The sashes had previously been approved by the administration to commend the students for their volunteer work every week through mentorship programs aimed at improving bilingual literacy at the local elementary school. 

"A lot of parents thought I was trying to promote only my race and help only my people," Castillo said. 

Following the incident, Castillo raised the issue with the school board. But some parents have continued to lambaste her for her advocacy at the time, sending her messages saying "the clown wants to continue her show."

"People are stating, 'well, English is the official language now, you shouldn't worry about any Spanish students now," Castillo said. 

Since she reported the alleged act of vandalism, the hate hasn't let up. 

"They're mocking my incident as if I'm doing this to get more votes instead of actually seeing it as a threat to a candidate, actually seeing it as violence," Castillo said. 

The hateful messages have come at the expense of her mental health, Castillo said. 

She has begun having anxiety attacks. She can't sleep at night. 

"I wake up and I'm just shaking," Castillo said. 

Her family feels unsafe to the point where they might consider moving if she doesn't win the election, Castillo said.

"It just reminds me of the little girl riding on the bus. Little Judy riding on the bus, eight years old, and being called a wetback," Castillo said. The term "wetback" is a derogatory term used for a Mexican citizen living in the U.S. 

"This is the time where we Latinos have to unite, because our students are our priority right now. Our students deserve to have an equal education like anyone else," Castillo added. 

For now, Castillo said she's showing up and talking to the community as election day approaches on May 3. 

"I'm just eagerly waiting for election day. I'm still going to go out to the polling places. I'm still going to greet people." 

"Corruption of My Mexican Identity," by Dan Acosta, Ph.D.

There is a lot to appreciate from this story by a former member of the University of Texas at Austin faculty, Dr. Dan Acosta, who also previously served as Dean Emeritus of Pharmacy at the University of Cincinnati. He offers a powerful narrative that resonates deeply with struggles faced by Mexican Americans. In my own research, I describe the systemic erasure of our identities as "subtractive schooling," a deliberate process that undermines our cultural heritage, as well as individual and community power.

Dan Acosta, Ph.D.

In Dr. Acosta’s story, I sense profound pain and frustration rooted in a long history of prejudice and discrimination. The inability to speak Spanish, or not speaking it “correctly,” reflects the success of assimilationist policies designed to strip away cultural ties. The stakes are high for those in power—especially as manifest throughout ongoing battles within the State Board of Education over culturally relevant curriculum and Ethnic Studies programs.

The irony here is striking. Current anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies seek to suppress initiatives that promote these very principles. Albeit with a few exceptions, the tragedy here is that DEI efforts have rarely been abundant in any meaningful way, as Dr. Acosta’s experiences illustrate. On the contrary, his story reveals a history of exclusion to which I can relate as one who has fought for her own place in higher education despite my Stanford Ph.D. and credentials.

Anti-affirmative action and DEI opposition appear to be preemptive strikes in an environment where people of color might otherwise gain access to higher education and subsequently assume their rightful places at the table in culture and society. These policies send a clear message: These opportunities are reserved primarily for white people. So wrong-headed. So sad.

So much talent has been wasted. It is truly a shame. Thanks, Dr. Acosta, for your story. We need more of these so folks out there don't believe the lies about the academy getting overtaken by "woke" students and faculty of color. Rather a more sinister agenda is at play.

—Angela Valenzuela

Corruption of My Mexican Identity

By Dan Acosta | Summer/Autumn 2024 | Rise Up Review, Resistance is Fertile

Now that I am retired one of my weekly tasks is to read what is happening at the Society of Toxicology, the largest professional group for toxicologists of all types--academic, government, and industrial- in the world. As the first elected Hispanic president of the organization, I like to keep up to date with issues facing the society. One current topic is to increase membership and to bring in more diverse scientists into the discipline, especially non-toxicologists who want to learn more about toxicology. Without getting too much into the weeds about the issue, I was struck by a comment made by a past president who strongly objected to the possibility that standards would be lowered to allow more people of diversity (i.e. people of color) become members of SOT. He did not want a "dumbing down of the society with unqualified individuals". He was alluding to affirmative action and "DEI" issues that have become hot political topics in America. It got me thinking about my life and qualifications as one of those people of diversity that SOT wants to have as some of its members.

As a first-generation Mexican American, my mother and grandparents emigrated to El Paso from Mexico; her parents wanted to create a new life for themselves by escaping the discord and troubled times in Mexico during its revolution in the early 1900s. Nana Cuca often told me stories of what it was like to live in Mexico and recounted her vivid memories of some of the revolutionaries like Pancho Villa. My paternal grandfather also came from Mexico; he later married his wife who was born in Presidio, Texas. My father was born in Valentine, Texas. He stopped going to school after the sixth grade so he could work with his father who was a hired hand on a ranch near Marfa. My parents never completed high school.   

When I was very young especially before I started grade school in 1951, my mother was often asked about my heritage. I later learned that they really wanted to know if I was white and not a Mexican. Nana Cuca used to brag that our family tree had strong Portuguese ties and that the lighter skin colors of her ancestors were passed on to her daughters--my mother and her sister, Babe. Although as a young boy I looked like a chubby white kid with fat cheeks, my Mexican heritage became more apparent as I grew older. My light brown hair started to become darker and by the time I began high school my hair had turned black, and my facial features were more Mexican-like.

I refused to speak Spanish at home and at school; my parents and family spoke to me in Spanish and did not force me to respond in Spanish. Many of my teachers wanted to help me because of my eagerness to learn and my desire to become the best student in their classes. I wanted to acquire at all costs those American traits or characteristics of my white classmates who were most successful in the classroom. Because of my skin tone and hair color when I started grade school, I did not experience the discrimination and hatred that my brown-colored friends and classmates often encountered. This Americanization process corrupted my Mexican identity at a very young age, and it has taken me a lifetime to confront my mistake. As I progressed through college, the army, graduate school, and my academic career, I was no longer that smart little Mexican boy. I now faced subtle discriminations and at times overt racist remarks from highly educated individuals.

I eventually graduated as one of the top students in my high school class, and later on I graduated top of my pharmacy class at the University of Texas in 1968. I received one of the few highly competitive national fellowships awarded to graduate students to attend a school of their own choosing. I earned a doctorate in toxicology at the University of Kansas and accepted a position as an assistant professor at the University of Texas in 1974.

However, I was rudely introduced to the role of DEI and affirmative action in hiring more people of color at Texas. Pointedly, I was told several times by my supervisors that the only reason I was hired was because the college needed to hire more Hispanics and Blacks. During my 22 years at Texas, I helped develop one of the first graduate programs in toxicology in the state and mentored over 50 undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral fellows in my research program. I later became dean of pharmacy at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where I established one of the first councils on diversity at the university. In the final phase of my career, I accepted a position as Deputy Director for Research at FDA's major research center--The National Center for Toxicological Research. Although I had what many called "a successful career", I paid the price of never becoming fluent in Spanish and having to live with the shame and embarrassment of not being able to converse in Spanish with my family and many of my former classmates and friends.

I also experienced many times during my career what are now known as "microaggressions" or thinly veiled putdowns of my accomplishments and successes. For example, when I was elected president of the Society of Toxicology, some of my colleagues suggested that I won the election because I was a person of diversity. I grew up in Texas where this attitude was quite common; it did not really bother me. I just laughed it off.  

In the past, it was all right to ask where you were born or what was your family ancestry. It was out of curiosity because many Americans have relatives who were not born in the US. People were interested in knowing more about you, especially if you recently moved into the neighborhood, were a new employee, or a new customer in a local store. But in today's America asking that question is fraught with anxiety and possibly danger for a person of color who is asked that question. As a Mexican American who has lived in one of those states that border Mexico, I have observed the tension when one is accused of being an undocumented immigrant and not an American citizen. And as America has become more polarized, there are many reports of violence against people of color because it is thought that they are not truly American or to be more blunt-not white enough.   

Today, affirmative action and DEI policies that were supposedly lauded and supported by institutions of higher education, corporate America, and local, state, and federal agencies and departments have come under attack by many white Americans who believe that they are the ones who have suffered from discrimination. State legislators, especially in red states like Texas, Florida, and several others, have passed laws to abolish or limit the use of offices that help students and employees of diversity navigate organizational obstacles. White students and employees are not denied assistance as some of them like to suggest. 

Where are those colleges that thought that it was right to limit the admission of students of color to keep their classes filled with mostly white students? Where are those corporations and institutions that thought it was right to employ mostly white men and restrict the hiring of women and people of color in the workplace? The answer is that they never left and are ready to go back to the pre-affirmative action era. 

When I left the UT College of Pharmacy in 1996, there were two Mexican American Ph.D. professors on the faculty. When I returned to Austin for my retirement years, there was only one full-time professor; no progress has been made in the 50 years since I joined the faculty as one of those two Mexican American professors in 1974. There has been some improvement for people of color and women in the classroom and workplace, but the Supreme Court has now declared that it has seen enough of this intrusion into the lives of white men. American universities must turn a blind eye to matters of race and gender in student admissions. It will happen very soon in the workplace, but that does not mean that we should stop trying to admit more students of color and to hire more faculty of diversity. My biggest regret was that I did not speak up sooner about what I faced as a student and professor during my career in Texas and elsewhere. 

It took me a lifetime to realize that my generation has failed in maintaining America's faith in our inalienable rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. I write this story to reach out to the young people of the country with the hope that they will restore and secure those rights for all. If they don't, who will?

***

Dan Acosta is a first-generation Mexican American, whose mother and grandparents emigrated from Mexico. He is a former professor, research scientist, and administrator, who retired in 2019 at age 74. He writes about his experiences as a Mexican boy trying to succeed in white America. His stories have appeared in The Acentos Review, Sky Island Journal, Somos en Escrito, The Rush, Toasted Cheese, Latin@Literatures, Midway Journal, and The Manifest Station.

I like this piece by Umair Haque as it works well with my earlier post on the Allure of Fascism. Of course fascists never think they are what they actually are. Haque is an economist and not a psychologist, but he takes a good stab at at least some of the dynamics that undergird fascism.

To this, I would add the work of T. W. Adorno (2019) of the Frankfurt School. He wrote a widely-read book in the wake of Nazi Germany titled, The Authoritarian Personality. In that text, he writes of individuals who are uniquely predisposed toward fascist ideologies in that they are rule-governed, conformist, and aggressive. Gordon Allport's classic book on The Nature of Prejudice, also comes to mind.

The short of it is that they have authoritarian personalities that make them vulnerable to leaders that are themselves authoritarian. While still touching the surface here, my friends, I think we all know people like this, right? Plus, the alignment across these two posts caught my attention.

-Angela Valenzuela

References

Adorno, T. (2019). The authoritarian personality. Verso Books.

Allport, G. (1954). The nature of prejudice. New York: Addison-Wesley. 

Why Fascists Never Think They’re Fascists — But Victims and Heroes

The Psychology of the New Global Wave of Fascism

umair haque

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“I’m not a fascist! They’re the real fascists!! The students, the leftists, the woke mob, the anti-fascists, the teachers, the LGBTQ! They’re putting me in danger! They’re taking away my rights! My rights matter most of all! I’m being persecuted, violently and viciously!! I have a right to be heard — and what I have to say is that I’m superior, and they’re inferior! And if you don’t allow me this view — then you’re the real fascist!!”

LOL — do you see how funny and warped all this is the moment you think about it?

Needless to say, what makes a person a “fascist,” at least in terms of beliefs, is pretty straightforward. That some people are biologically inferior, inherently less valuable, hence need to be dehumanized, and cleansed away from society, their personhood, livelihoods, socio-cultural existences, and possibly even lives, removed. Nobody on the left is saying any of that to the kind of person I’m describing — and so quite obviously, the “real fascist” is the one who believes these crackpot theories of inherent supremacy, and then desires political “solutions” to the “problems” of people who are not human. The question we are answering today is: why would anyone believe in such obviously false notions, to begin with? Why would they need so desperately to?

Let’s start at the beginning — I’ll try to really explain the psychology of the new wave of fascism. You can judge for yourself whether it carries any water — I’ll only say this much: if you see these traits in yourself, you should stop and yourself: “Wait, am I what he’s describing?”

Fascists never think they are fascists. A fascist never thinks of himself or herself as a “fascist”, anything at all carrying a negative or malicious connotation. They think of themselves, first, as victims. Victims of great and grand conspiracies — the Great Replacement, the LGBTQ+ destroying them, women murdering babies as birth control, woke teachers indoctrinating their kids, immigrants out to destroy their culture, the liberals want to drink the blood of kids, the Jews are doing this, the Muslims are doing that, blah blah, and on and on the insanity goes.

To the fascist, those behind these conspiracies are not regular people — they are especially cunning and vicious especially greedy and unscrupulous, especially seditious and slothful, especially bad. They are especially powerful, in other words. They have the power to completely destroy the way of the life, the whole existence, of the person being victimized.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has a Powerful Message for Those Who Have Gone Down a Path of Hate [Youtube Video]

This statement by Arnold Schwarzenegger is so incredibly powerful and moving. I encourage all to see it. It speaks directly to those that have chosen, or are choosing, the path of hate. He speaks personally, drawing on his own father's experience as a Nazi during the time of Nazi Germany, and how his father was himself hurt by getting deceived by a false, anti-Semitic and white supremacist ideology. However, he implores, change and personal transformation are within reach.

His sage advice aligns to research which shows that racially hostile environments where people live and work, is bad for not just blacks and other minorities, but for whites, as well. For a recent example of this from research, look at this study out of UC Berkeley by Jordan Leitner and colleagues whose study is published in the 2016 online edition of Psychological Science. 

Schwarzenegger's eloquent words align with research which shows that prejudice reduction means addressing extreme ethnocentrism through deep introspection together with educating oneself on histories like the Holocaust, instead of believing, or getting mis-led, as it were, to conspiracy theories. To this, we should add the importance of increasing levels of meaningful contact with people different from yourselves—be it racial, religious, sexual orientation—or simply folks whose perspectives vary from your own.

At our best, and drawing on Gordon Allport's treatise, The Nature of Prejudice, all of humanity is spiritually interconnected, and manifests healthy psychological functioning, as a consequence. We are not born pre-judging people different from ourselves; rather, this is learned from family, media, social media, television, and the like. We can therefore un-learn this.

Change is never easy and it takes time. And a good education like the kind that I believe we all teach at the university is precisely about providing us with not just one lens, but a multiplicity of lenses through which to understand our complex world.

Truly, there is redemption to be had and abundant lives to be lived for us all if we work to increase our consciousness in the ways that Schwarzenegger suggests. 

Please consider attending tomorrow's Virtual Town Hall on DEI and Ethnic Studies - Saturday, March 11, 2023 at 10AM-4:30PM CST

Peace/paz,

-Angela Valenzuela

Reference

Allport, G. W. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Leitner, J. B., Hehman, E., Ayduk, O., & Mendoza-Denton, R. (2016). Blacks’ Death Rate Due to Circulatory Diseases Is Positively Related to Whites’ Explicit Racial Bias: A Nationwide Investigation Using Project Implicit. Psychological Science, 27(10), 1299–1311. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616658450

West Texas Parent are Suing Their Schools Over Racism as Others Demand Action Over Antisemitic Bullying

This piece provides evidence on how racism and anti-semitism are on the rise in Texas schools. It's interesting, if not predictable, to note that this is happening at the same time that books and materials, including those designed to challenge racial, sexist, and homophobic hatred are limiting what can get taught in the schools. This creates a vacuum in knowledge and information that risks getting filled by other readily accessible online communities that promote hatred and violence. 

This vitriol then manifests at school board meetings where parents refer to race and gender justice texts as "porn," when what is really obscene is the racial hatred that plays out in school environments as youth take cues from adults, including from government leaders and members of the legislature who are happy to perpetuate fallacies, most especially, an ethnically-cleansed curriculum that's non-inclusive and thusly, narrow and harmful.

I think that most Texas students, their parents, and Texans, generally, find this to be both reprehensible and unacceptable, but those perpetrating these harms are often the loudest voices. I'm glad to see the federal government stepping in on behalf of these aggrieved students. Read for yourselves the IDRA statement here that expresses the following:

"The complaints list a number of demands for resolution, including revised district anti-harassment, anti-discrimination and anti-bullying policies; training of school and district staff on Title VI and appropriate school discipline practices; effective and age-appropriate prevention programs for students; systems for student and family input; alternatives to exclusionary discipline placement, such as restorative practices; an external evaluator to regularly assess the educational climate and effectiveness of policies; and annual reports posted online summarizing the reports of racial bullying and harassment."

These corrosive and toxic dynamics have to change if we are to prevent racial, religious, and other forms of harassment and violence in our schools. Anti-racist curriculum and pedagogy together with policies like Ethnic Studies that support their teaching, are also steps in the right direction. There is a bill this session, House Bill 45, an Ethnic Studies bill authored by Rep. Christina Morales, is what merits specific support. And now is the time to rally for it as a way to move positively forward.

-Angela Valenzuela

 West Texas Parent are Suing Their Schools Over Racism as Others Demand Action Over Antisemitic Bullying

LUBBOCK — Parents, full of anger and disbelief, have confronted school leaders in the Lubbock area over a series of racist and antisemitic incidents in several schools.

In total, four separate incidents have come to light in recent weeks.

Two episodes — both involving Black students targeted in constant bullying by their peers and inaction by school officials, parents say — have led to separate federal civil rights lawsuits.

At the heart of the two lawsuits is the pain parents say their children have endured as a result of months of constant and violent bullying — including an Instagram account that posted photos of Black students from a Lubbock middle school with racist captions, and racial discrimination by school officials against students at the high school in Slaton, about 17 miles south of Lubbock.

A third South Plains school district — Roosevelt ISD — had a parent file a federal complaint against them for racial discrimination by school officials. There, a mother took her daughter out of school after she claims school officials targeted her child for undue disciplinary actions.

Meanwhile, a threatening antisemitic petition was passed around by a student at another Lubbock middle school. Parents say they are disappointed the school hasn’t had a strong response.

On their own, these might seem like isolated incidents of school-age angst. However, racially driven and antisemitic incidents are on the rise in Texas. And now four different school districts in the South Plains are facing tensions emblematic of the widespread problem. Instead of addressing it directly, parents say school officials try to sweep the issues under the rug.

Lubbock-Cooper ISD — which includes Laura Bush Middle School, where the Instagram account was based — declined to comment on the federal lawsuit.

“Racism has no place at any school within Lubbock-Cooper ISD,” the district added in a statement. “It is not a reflection of our beliefs as a school and it completely contradicts the virtues we wish to instill in our students.”

Black students at the Laura Bush Middle School in Lubbock-Cooper ISD were allegedly bullied over months, including with an Instagram account that posted photos of them with racist captions. Credit: Mark Rogers for The Texas Tribune