Break With the Past: Changing a dorm name makes a good step....

Break with the Past: Changing a dorm name makes a good Step towards healing UT's troubled racial history

After several months of discussion within the University of Texas community in Austin, UT President William Powers Jr. will ask the school's board of regents today to consider renaming a dorm that now honors a former law professor, William Stewart Simkins, along with a neighboring park dedicated to his brother Eldred, a judge and UT regent.

The reason? Simkins was not only a legal educator at UT from 1899-1929. He and his brother were members of the Ku Klux Klan during a period in which it terrorized black communities through lynchings and shootings and dozens of murders.

In a 1916 article in the UT alumni magazine, The Alcalde, professor Simkins boasted of participating in the Klan's infamous night rides: "The immediate effect upon the Negro was wonderful," he wrote, "the flitting to and fro of masked horses and faces struck terror to the race."

A former UT law professor, Tom Russell, helped ignite the campus controversy over 55-year-old Simkins Residence Hall with a paper detailing the professor's dark past. The paper also explores the UT leadership's last-ditch efforts to resist integration following the U.S. Supreme Court's historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 that struck down separate but equal education systems. UT responded by instituting admission tests designed to exclude a disproportionate number of African-American applicants.

R9, I think the thing that truly galls most of us is the selective outrage and subsequent selective action of the left.

The examples are pretty staggering, really. The recently reposed Senator Byrd is but one example. I mean how many buildings and bridges and what-have-you-else is named after Robert K. Byrd, former Klan recruitment officer? But he voted for healthcare, so it’s okay.

Or what about Lyndon Baines “We’ll have these n*****s voting Democrat for the next 300 years” Johnson? Perhaps the most morally bankrupt and depraved individual to EVER hold the office of President? I mean, there’s a stretch of highway in Dallas named after him. But he passed the Great Society, so it’s okay.

Have you ever read some of the quotes from Lincoln, The Great Emancipator? He was a neanderthal ethnic bigot by modern standards. But he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, so it’s okay.

I don’t want to pile on there or belabor the point, but there are a lot of examples like this. At the end of the day, the only point really I’m trying to make is that, maybe - just maybe, the best way to “break with the past” is to simply, actually, humbly, and quietly teach our children how to behave toward others, rather than take the cosmetic step of renaming buildings so we can take bows for our own self-righteousness to loud public ovation.

My man, I grew up in Mississippi in the 1970s. Came of age in the 1980s. My dad was a uniform patrol officer for the Jackson Police Department in the Civil Rights Era (and later a detective). I have heard some stories, let me assure you. My family has lived in Mississippi for generations. I left a dozen years ago to pursue my career and the advancement of my family.

I’ve lived in places where ethnic tension still seethes, and where it does not. In the places where it does not, there are two broad categories - those who have genuinely grown past it after having dealt with it, and those that have never had to deal with it at all. Speaking personally, I’ve found the latter are, generally, much more self-righteous about it (for really no discernable good reason, in my opinion - they just think they know better and everybody should listen to them - after all, look how great their lives are).

I realize that this has become verbose, but I’d like to share a story that really made me proud. It also made me really think.

The other day we were in the car and XM Radio was on. Andrew Wilkow’s show was on and he was undertaking a discussion of the NAACP making a public statement about the Tea Party movement.

My 12-year-old son asked me, “Dad, why are black people so mad all the time?”

Floored. FLOORED.

I said, “Son, I don’t really guess that all black people are mad all the time. What you need to understand is that black folks had it particularly rough in our country for a really long time. It’s not really that way anymore. The vast majority of people have moved past it and most people don’t really care what color anybody is. But there are some high-profile people who stay famous by keeping tension between white people and black people high - and I think really if they’d stop, tension between people of different races would just go away.”

He said, “What do you mean?”

My 10-year-old daughter was in the car also, and I looked up at them in the rearview mirror. I said, “Well, let me ask you guys a question. When you meet somebody brand new and you’re forming your first impression of them - of, say, the first ten things that cross your mind as you size them up - is one of those first ten things what color they are?”

They both said no. Immediately, no hesitation, no equivocation. I nearly choked up.

I’ve done a lot of things wrong in my life. My own sins are far too great for me to stand in judgement of anyone.

But maybe, just maybe, I got this one right with my kids.

I don’t know, man. It could be more about self-righteous liberals in ivory towers who talk the talk but never walked the walk. Those people really bother me, too.

But I have a family to raise and support. I don’t spend a lot of time diving into discussions here unless I REALLY have something to say. Two years ago I was flush and about to really start socking away savings for retirement.

Then came 14 months of unemployment, a BIG hole to dig out of, and a Draconian Federal Bureaucracy that wants to take away more and more of my ability to dig out of that hole.

Partially to insure that people get to keep homes they had no business trying to buy in the first place...for the sake of fairness.

Partially to insure that GM and Chrysler Union Employees keep their pensions (for which they also partially just STOLE money from bondholders - and they talk about integrity in financial markets? Lord, have mercy. What about the integrity that the actions of the Federal Government itself eroded through direct action?). Again, for the sake of FAIRNESS. What-EVERRRRR...

Oh, well. Back to pushing the rock up the hill. Let it be known that I have taken from the public treasury far less than I have paid in...

Regards...

Your idealistic view is about where I was when I grew up in and was raised to be a civil rights moderate in the heyday...a few years before you as you know....I confess to being more jaded now.

I teach my kids to be respectful but they do view history in context. My 10 year old has always known....3-4 trips per year to Jackson Mississippi today has a way of opening anyone’s eyes to reality. My formerly idealistic oldest daughter sure got her eyes opened seeing all morass and hearing the hair raising tales from her cousins.

None of this is what anyone wished for..not whites like me nor the old blacks still alive.

None of this is about redress. It’s about pure political power.

If having been in the Klan is grounds then so is slavery and hence get ready for over half the white men who founded this nation to be purged down the road.

And this time it won’t be just black anger coupled with PC whites, it will be brown too.

All of this stuff is simply resentment towards what is seen as white majority power no matter how nebulous that may seem to whites like us who never knew..lol

Worrying about history out of context with all collapsing around you says plenty about the priorities of some.

In all fairness, he brought up some good points on that thread. Careful, now, because there is me, Smokin' Joe, and another poster SmokingJoe, with whom r9etb had the exchange in April.

While we often agree in principle in his posts I have read, we are not the same person. SmokingJoe signed up on Nov. 7, 2008 and the nonexistent profile page is here: SmokingJoe

If you click on my name at the bottom of this post you'll see I've been around a mite longer, which means I have just inconvenienced a few more electrons over the years. r9etb has raised some valid points and did so on the thread you linked. I'll point them out. First, in the event TEA partiers do not get their own image out there in the public eye, the movement will be painted as the press darned well pleases. (Whether that is a valid image or not).

link to post

I'd say that is true, as experience has shown us, whether we like the fact or not.

Previous efforts to paint the movement as racist remain unsubstantiated by evidence, despite the $100,000 reward, but as always, the canards of the MSM need not have any basis in fact--it is all about image.

While FOX has shown images of Malik Shabazz and other 'New Black Panther Party' members standing together and the active call for violence against "Crackers" and their infant offspring ("Cracker" being the equivalent of "Ni**er", only for white people), I think it is no accident that the MSM networks are claiming racism on the part of the TEA partiers, as if their previously unconfirmed accounts of someone being racist out of millions of people attending the gathering is the equivalent of the New Black Panther Party leadership calling for the murder of white infants.

As usual, the Left is not against using 'plants' to create 'evidence' where none exists. Just like the 'Fake but true' National Guard Memos.

Experience tells us they don't play fair, and this is a war to them, where nothing matters but the subjugation of America and Americans under totalitarian rule, with them doing the ruling, of course.

Partly this image is being created in an attempt to Alinsky the TEA party movement, to try to cow it into ineffectiveness through baseless allegations of racism. Partly, it is being done to discourage decent Black people from joinint the ranks of TEA partiers by making it appear Blacks would be unwelcome.

While r9etb writes in that post that the answer to being marginalized and treated as loons is a having a central structure in the TEA party movement, it remains difficult to have a single spokesperson, especially in a grass-roots movement.

The other advantage of a broad movement is that if one local spokesperson is somehow discredited, it dies not mean that that can be used against the entire movement.

The liberals are scared, and I do not think it is any accident that the neonazis were all over the History Channel this morning, either, because that is another baseless Alinsky-type affiliation the MSM and others are trying to stick to the TEA party as well.

There is no disagreement among us, in that the Administration and the Liberal Socialists are trying to discredit the movement as being: racist, anti-semitic, crackpot, fringe, and even dangerous. They are doing the typical smear spin campaign, and are desperately projecting their behaviours on their opposition--something we have all seen before.

Another point r9etb made on that thread, which I consider to be valid: "Your public image is already being created by your enemies. And you're gonna refute them right here at FR. Are Tea Partiers really that ignorant of what it takes to mount a serious political movement?

Is a good point, as much as we might not like to hear it either.

This is a great website to discuss, refute, confirm, and transfer information, especially with the wealth we have of posters who are geographically distributed and who have expertise in a wide variety of fields. However, in order to get the message out, we have to be spreading it in our communities, on the air, at Townhall meetings, letters to the Editor, political venues, streetcorner 'FReeps", wherever possible, whenever possible, and not relying on the world to come here and read what we have to say. In e-media, that means Facebook, Twitter, e-mails, postcards, You Tube, whatever we can use to keep our values and demands active in the political arena. The TEA party movement has been born of that desire to make our voices heard, because it just wasn't getting through in phone calls to Congressional offices, and was not being reported on the six-o-clock news. We can make that happen, and that takes organization. We do not need to be led from the top down, necessarily, but coordination of the people involved is essential to get the turnout we need, to keep people vigillant of poseurs and infiltrators, and to get the word out on key local issues as well. To be effective, local groups should compose press releases, carefully worded to avoid baseless accusations of misdeeds, and relying on the inherent laziness of reporters to use that material if well crafted, rather than spin their own (works well with most local papers). Then those media articles can be posted here (and on other sites) for broader exposure. If we are to be effective at anything but being a target for flogging by the MSM, we need to create our own image, get the word out that we have been Taxed Enough Already, and get people to realize we are for America, the Constitution, and the rule of law, not against any racial group of Americans.

I do not see r9etb's posts in that thread to be anti-TEA party, but rather warnings of what might happen unless steps are taken to prevent it.

Believe it or not, gentlemen, despite our miscommunications and disagreements, I believe we are basically on the same side here.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.