Plucking Out The Eyes Of Texas
People have lost their damn minds. From the Texas Tribune:
Dozens of students at the University of Texas at Austin who give campus tours to prospective Longhorns are refusing to work this week over a dispute about a plaque with “The Eyes of Texas” lyrics hanging in the Admissions Welcome Center.
The dustup over the plaque is the latest example of UT-Austin officials standing by “The Eyes” over pleas that the university distance itself from the alma mater song because it originated at a minstrel show where students likely wore Blackface.
It’s also the latest in a series of clashes over the song in a nearly yearlong controversy that has frequently pit administrators and alumni against students and divided members of the Longhorn community.
More:
Students say protests over the song are not going away. Kendall Walker, a UT-Austin senior who is part of the student strike in the admissions office, said she thinks administrators wrongly assumed the issue would die down after the school formed a committee this past year to study the song’s origins. UT-Austin President Jay Hartzell has repeatedly affirmed that the university will keep the song.
“I think this is the tip of the iceberg honestly,” Walker said. “This is the beginning of it and people resisting that decision and not accepting a committee of people deem[ing] the song isn’t racist. There’s a whole generation of students and minority students that are equally and more mad than we are and don’t want to enter a space that predetermined their opinions don’t matter.”
Members of the Texas Tour Guides said the song has created a divisive environment on campus and wanted the plaque to be removed to ensure all student employees and prospective students feel comfortable in the Welcome Center, according to more than six students who work or volunteer as tour guides and spoke to The Texas Tribune.
Here is background on the song and the controversy: a university-commissioned report. The song was written to poke gentle fun of an early twentieth century president of the university, who used to say all the time, “The eyes of Texas are upon you.” It was debuted at a minstrel show in 1903 — a fact the report rightly says is regrettable, while noting that minstrel shows were a popular form of entertainment at the time. Here are the full lyrics:
I once did know a President,
Away down South, in Texas.
And, always, everywhere he went,
He saw the eyes of Texas.
The Eyes of Texas are upon you,
All the live long day.
The Eyes of Texas are upon you,
You can not get away.
Do not think you can escape them
At night or early in the morn
The Eyes of Texas are upon you
‘Till Gabriel blows his horn.
Sing me a song of Prexy,
Of days long since gone by.
Again I seem to great him
And hear his kind reply.
Smiles of gracious welcome
Before my memory rise,
Again I hear him say to me,
“Remember Texas’ Eyes.”
The part of the song I know (because my wife is an alumna of UT, and she and the kids would sing the song every time we would drive back to Texas from Louisiana, and cross the border) is:
The Eyes of Texas are upon you,
You can not get away.
Do not think you can escape them
At night or early in the morn
The Eyes of Texas are upon you
‘Till Gabriel blows his horn.
I didn’t know the complete lyrics till just now. This song is totally innocent! The earlier claim that the song has some sort of connection to Robert E. Lee has been debunked. The entire controversy is because its first performance was in a minstrel show. The students, alumni, and backers of the University of Texas have been singing this song for over a century, and nobody noticed that it was problematic until recently?! This is a manufactured controversy if ever there was one. More from the Texas Tribune story:
Walker, who is Black, said she is often asked on tours by Black families about her experience on campus.
“I [used to] stand up there and say, ‘I feel welcomed. I feel heard’ … The way that I feel has completely flipped in the past 12 months,” she said. “We bring in students into this university and showcase this university in a way other students cannot. They reap so many benefits of having our presence there but can’t honor something that makes us overtly uncomfortable. It’s just super hurtful.”
Multiple students who spoke to the Tribune said they’ve had uncomfortable conversations with prospective parents and students about the controversy over the past year, yet they have not received any guidance for how to deal with questions about the song while giving tours. In some instances, students said questioning has gotten aggressive.
“It definitely has been an added, like, burden on my mental health to go get dressed and put on my tour guide Polo and go out and talk to families that are oftentimes like predominantly white, about like things like racial justice here on campus,” said Jeremiah Baldwin, a tour guide and sophomore at UT-Austin. “I’m always like having this game of mental gymnastics that I’m playing, like, ‘how should I describe this?’ Or, ‘should I be as open and honest?’”
What kind of enfragilated souls find themselves traumatized by a song whose lyrics refer not to slavery or anything offensive, but which was first performed by students in a minstrel show during Theodore Roosevelt administration? Ridiculous and psychotic — a form of religious fanaticism. This therapeutic totalitarianism, under which we are commanded to cast all our history into the dustbin, including beloved cultural artifacts like a university fight song, if it strikes a privileged victim group as offensive, has to end.
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