You missed the point as usual. Bottom line is if the kids have a problem with the song then they shouldn't attend the school. You're making a mountain out of a molehill and this is going nowhere fast. The Cancel Culture has lost this war and it seems to not be a big deal to the kids seeing Sark's future recruiting class. So it's time to move on.
We dont talk about those things when we're together. We enjoy each others company and they're happy for me just as I'm happy for them. I'm glad my dad was able to help put my little brother through school. That is all. BTW, family money went there, so yes there's a connection.
I'm making a mountain out of a molehill? You want to turn the UT program into a Abilene Christian over a freakin song sung after the game. And the hilarious part is you can still play the song but for some reason you want to make actual people sing along with it.
LOL Not at all, No singing, for some people it's not best to sing. BTW, looking at Sark's recruiting class I'm pretty sure that UT isn't going to turn into Abeliene Christian if they keep the tradition, song.
I have a feeling that BMD emails to the university president that complain about "the blacks" go hand-in-hand with how potential players perceive being forced to sing a song. Nothing says school spirit like forcing black players to sing a song for the benefit of older, white donors who call them "the blacks" behind their backs. I've left what I thought were pretty nuanced takes on this. But, at the end of the day, UT is not stupid enough to jeopardize $200M in annual revenue over this song. Jimbo is licking his chops right now to swoop in and tell recruits that the BMDs at Texas only want the players to smile and nod while thinking of them as less than. Cutting off the nose to spite the face isn't going to happen.
UT has a lot of alumni. Just name and shame these donors and ban them. People don't go to UT because of the fancy buildings. They go there because it is the best school in the state.
It's becoming increasingly clear you really don't know how things work in the real world. Sark's recruiting class? Have anybody in that class actually signed? Have you never heard of a decommit? Just wait until the other in state and other schools have a chance to get in their ear after alumni calling them "The Blacks" and threatening jobs after graduation gets circulated around. Just wait until they get clowned on in social media about having to sing that fight song.
On Tuesday morning, the university will release the work of “The Eyes of Texas” commission. The report will be nearly one hundred pages long and will feature videos and extensive footnotes. Texas Monthly has learned of the report’s major findings. Most notably: the panel failed to uncover any “racist intent” in the lyrics, nor could it find any historical connection between the lyrics and anything said or written by Lee, as had previously been believed (though it did find connections to a different Confederate general). But when the committee members studied Washington and Lee’s collection of Lee’s orations and writings, they could not find any primary source showing Lee had ever used the phrase. The earliest reference to Lee using the phrase came in a 1938 memoir written by T.U. Taylor, the first dean of the College of Engineering at UT, 35 years after the song’s debut. (The commission could find no sourcing for the account in Taylor’s memoir.) Instead, the report suggests that Prather was inspired by Confederate brigadier general John Gregg of Texas, who reportedly once told his soldiers, “The eyes of General Lee are upon you!” The report adds that similar phrases predated the Civil War, including uses from the book of Job (“For His eyes are on the ways of a man”), George Washington (“The eyes of all our countrymen are now upon us”), and William Henry Harrison in the War of 1812 (“The eyes of our country are upon you”). According to the commission, that the song was performed at a minstrel show doesn’t necessarily mean that it was written with racist intent. The study explains that at the turn of the twentieth century, minstrelsy was a popular form of entertainment among white audiences. The report contends that the song’s initial performance likely followed musicians’ singing and playing of several other, more racially charged songs and skits, and so performers would have already been in blackface by the time they sung “The Eyes.” Additionally, it notes that the lyricist, Sinclair, did not write in Black dialect, a common form of stereotyping in that era.
I'm reading the report now, so I'll have more complete thoughts later on. However, this quote from the introduction stands out in light of certain posts in this thread and allegations about big money donors: Nobody would want to sing any song if participation were coerced through threats and racist undertones (see: the emails). That certain people can't see that is baffling.
For the record I don't think the song is particularly racist but I still don't think you make anybody sing a song they don't want to and the crazy part is the same people who think the players should be made to sing this song are the same people who have an issue with the mask mandate. What I don't get is if this song was song at a minstrel show along side other "more racially charged songs" how is this song not also sung in a racist vein? It seems this report is trying to excuse this particular song. It's also telling that it singles out the fact it was not written in black dialect but how was it sung? The bottom line is UT knew that forcing students and athletes to sing this song was gonna have huge blowback on the school.
I took a course at UT called "Black Music and the Media." One section of the curriculum dealt with minstrelsy and how downright popular it was in that era. Per the wikipedia page, "By 1848, blackface minstrel shows were the national artform, translating formal art such as opera into popular terms for a general audience... Blackface minstrelsy was the first theatrical form that was distinctly American. During the 1830s and 1840s at the height of its popularity, it was at the epicenter of the American music industry. For several decades, it provided the means through which American whites viewed black people." That's really bad and it's easy to see how it reinforced racist caricatures like Sambo, Mammy, etc. to the detriment of African Americans. It was barnstorming, traveling racism for the rabble. However, and this is where I feel I sit in an uncomfortable position, I believe that the intent and meaning of art can change by those who consume and/or produce it over time. We like to say certain pieces of art have "aged poorly." Have you rewatched Woody Allen's Manhattan in the last few years? That movie does not hold up in light of his behavior and prevailing, modern views about old men pursuing teenagers. On the flip side of that, The Eyes of Texas began in an environment that we rightly condemn today. Yet I would argue that, up until recently, it has aged well because its meaning and context have changed from racist, vaudevillian performances to proud exhibitions of school and state pride. Like all art, it is not preserved in amber at its inception and should be allowed to evolve, grow and adapt. If part of that adaption is an ebb in its popularity among current students, I am fine with that. But, as this report seeks to clarify, that ebbing should be done with the full facts and history behind it instead of memes, tweets and disingenuous intersectional theory. People should not be forced to perform something they're uncomfortable with, full stop. But those who learned the song nearly a century after its inception should not be alleged to perceive it in the same way that audiences did in the early 1900s.
I agree totally. IMO this never should have been a thing to begin with, somebody was looking for something to be outraged at and some people overreacted to the outrage and here we are.
If the origins don't matter then let's film a re-enactment of the debut with actors in blackface and play it on the video screen as everyone sings along in the stadium.
The origins certainly matter and if they matter enough to current students to stop performing it, that's a-ok. At the end of the day it's a song that delivers a momentary boost of serotonin to people who enjoyed their four years on campus. But the argument that the only thing that matters is the original context of the song - and not the subsequent iterations over the next century - and that that original context unconsciously pervades its entire history is a pretty postmodern interpretation of performance that, like all other schools of thought, deserves to be debated. I don't think I'll sing the song again at a UT event. The loudest voices in the room have sapped any happiness I once got from it and as long as a collective group of people are telling me that the song makes them uncomfortable as human beings then I owe it to them to consider why that is. But, for the time being, I also disagree with postmodern interpretations of performance being inextricably imbued with "original sin," incapable of being perceived differently over the course of time.
