A Response to Continued Attempts to Tie “The Eyes of Texas” to Racism

Last summer, I wrote a post about the problems with using tenuous connections to try to make the Texas Longhorn school song, “The Eyes of Texas” (TEOT), into a racist song, and I further elaborated on what is at stake recently: Basically, it’s not simply about a song but about having high standards of evidence before we call something “racist” and resisting the phenomenon of rabid ideology taking over good scholarship and journalism. The vast majority of people who still argued that TEOT is racist hadn’t even bothered to read the report released by the university about the song, much less take the time to build any sort of thorough counterpoint.

I was made aware of one notable exception: A history professor at UT, Dr. Martinez, has written a lengthy response to the report. Martinez’s article is interesting, but I think he makes several critical errors in how he argues his conclusion or weighs in on the debate. Now, I am not a historian like he is and I will not pretend to be; however, my area of study is philosophy and logic, and at the end of the day, what matters is how good an argument is and not what credentials someone can line up. In fact, I do not really dispute much of the history he presents but instead the reasoning he deploys when reaching his conclusions.

Since I do not want this post to be ridiculously long, I will not respond to every single point that Martinez makes but will focus on broad matters as well as a few notable specifics. I think Martinez’s major mistakes are these:

-He fails to consider or understand the dialectic that was already going on, which leads him to mischaracterize the report’s conclusions.
-He continues the error of concluding racist intent not by presenting clear evidence of intent but by tenuous connections, trying to make TEOT racist by association.

Reflections on the Recent Violence Against Asians

I have quietly observed a few of the past incidences of violence against Asians, with some of them caught on video. Violence against Asians (or against anyone, really), is not a new thing, but there does seem to be an uptick of it over the past year. Blame for the COVID pandemic is one plausible reason why; Jeremy Lin, after all, reported that he got called “coronavirus” on the court recently. It is, of course, not the only reason why, and it can be difficult to extrapolate common motives over multiple, unrelated crimes, but the increased violence has certainly put many Asians on edge. As an Asian myself who doesn’t want to see his senior citizen parents attacked on a street corner for no reason, I can relate.

The most recent incident has set emotions aflame: A 21 year old, Aaron Long (edit: Now being called Robert Aaron Long in the news), walked into an Asian spa in Atlanta and open fired with a pistol, killing eight people (six Asian, two white). Like any mass shooting, such an action is so irrational and disgusting that it is difficult to imagine what was going on in the shooter’s head. The religious reasons he gave, which I will discuss more below, are insipid and insane, and it certainly didn’t lend any sense to the great evil he caused.

As I’ve written before, the unfortunate product of tragedies like this is the immediate need some people feel to spin narratives and attack political or religious opponents, and this incident is no different. This might feel good in the short run and garner likes on social media from people who are similarly reactionary, but it actually doesn’t help long-term: As sad as events like this are, we have to wait for evidence, think rationally, and then figure out a complex set of factors that lead people to do things like this. It’s not quite as simple as “It’s X’s fault!”, X being someone you already didn’t like, of course. I am puzzled how people think this brings any healing or unity. Christians should set a better example of how to grieve with people who grieve without lashing out.

Here are a few things I suggest for Christians as they interact with people regarding the anti-Asian violence.

Ideological Activism: The Enemy of Good Scholarship, Journalism, and Thinking

A few months ago, I wrote about the controversy surrounding the school song of the University of Texas, “The Eyes of Texas.” Several student-athletes, influenced by a few professors, pronounced that the song was racist and should be removed, and that started a trend on campus that many other students jumped on. I pointed out, however, that there were serious problems with their alleged “facts” as well as their reasoning, and these so-called “facts” were also dismantled by the report from the committee the university commissioned to review the song. I’d recommend any UT alum to read the document and watch the videos, and if anything, the committee seemed to bend over backwards to avoid embarrassing the “song is racist” crowd by giving all sorts of caveats. Predictably, the report did not satisfy those who desperately wanted validation for their claims that the song is racist, so the student government even put out a statement that they still believed the song was created with “racist intent,” evidence be damned, while several student-athletes who helped start the mess admitted that they hadn’t yet bothered to read the report. Narrative over truth, as always with immature people.