The first year of college is a unique learning experience for an Aggie freshman, and nothing sets Texas A&M apart like our traditions. New students will likely learn of the 12th Man for the first time and of Bonfire's tragic past, yet critical future. Sadly, many new Aggies will also learn of A&M's latest "tradition" that administrators surprisingly refuse to give up despite not being "forever safe." A&M's tradition of focusing on race is a terrible mentality to teach a new generation. Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's book White Supremacy & Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era is the latest evolution in this ritual that should have collapsed with the 1960s.
Dr. Bonilla-Silva is a professor in the sociology department at A&M. He teaches Sociology 317, a course which requires students to read his book. Most of Dr. Bonilla-Silva's book is devoted to selling his idea that there is an "elusive phenomenon," a white conspiracy that works in the shadows to "keep blacks in their place."
Bonilla-Silva's book says whites "develop a set of social practices and an ideology to maintain the advantages that they receive based on their racial classification, that is, they develop a structure to reproduce their systematic advantages."
From this, Bonilla-Silva derives an aberration called "colorblind racism." He is attacking Dr. Martin Luther King's philosophy of judging people based on the content of their character rather than on the color of their skin. Bonilla-Silva further harms racial harmony with his characterization of whites as "the enemy" because they oppose giving up their "wages of whiteness." This outlook is indicative of the mindset white students face at A&M.
Any student who has heard an administrator speak or has read the school newspaper knows that those in charge of A&M worship at a pagan altar called "diversity." Since administrators will go to the trouble of making the disclaimer that diversity is not a race issue, let us review how the administration has proposed to "increase diversity" in its Vision 2020 report.
The full report calls for the use of the League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in recruitment, while at the same time insisting on "enhanced" recruitment activities for students and high schools "representative" of the state's demographics (page 76). This is followed by "Sponsor high school (with large minority enrollments) visits to university activities" and "Establish Texas A&M University 'university relations' centers at selected high schools and community colleges with large percentages of minority students" (page 89). Prospective student centers in the lower Rio Grande Valley and South Oak Cliff are under development for this objective.
Prescribed on page 85 is the need for "...specialized student groups-such as ethnic residential theme houses, support centers, and academic departments." In this theme, implied segregation is the operating mode for University-sponsored groups such as the African American Student Coalition, the Hispanic Business Student Association, MEDALS, ExCel, and the minority open house known as Nu House.
Even more recent examples of Texas A&M race talk have been diversity training initiatives in the Student Senate and at The Battalion.
If placing value on a person's skin color is academically irrelevant and is racist by definition, where does the administration's brand of "diversity" fit into higher education? I am sure that I am not the only white student to question his own worth in the eyes of administrators when one criticizes A&M for not being "diverse." By stating in Vision 2020 that we cannot be a top university without a change in the "diversity" of the students attending here, administrators reduce the value of each student to their appearance.
Bonilla-Silva's book goes even further with, "Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity." This is taken directly from the rhetoric of infamous Harvard professor Noel Ignatiev who recently published in his magazine Race Traitor that he plans to "keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females, too, until the social construct known as 'the white race' is destroyed." One can't help but wonder if these two instructors have found the game plan of the A&M administration.
The closing chapter of Bonilla-Silva's book revolves around the message that the next generation, not yet exposed to racism, must be recruited to fight on Dr. Bonilla-Silva's side. Perhaps I am just what University of Virginia professor Eric Lott spoke of at a 2002 race forum here on campus when he said, "When you're white, you don't have to think too much about race ... that is the diseased white mind."
However, it is an evil idea that innocent generations, born far after slavery, Jim Crow, and the riots of the 1960s, be used as fuel for fire of social destruction. Racism will continue as long as new generations of all colors are chained to the institutionalized forms of racism and racial propaganda from charlatans such as Bonilla-Silva. A&M must act now to end this tradition for all future Aggies.
