500 signatures reached
To: President Michael K. Young
Texas A&M University needs to institutionalize anti-racism. If not, we will be here again.
Dear Dr. Young,
I hope this message finds you well. I can imagine that the last few weeks have been difficult for you and your leadership team. In the midst of trying to pivot the university to a safe return for the Fall 2020 semester, you are now trying to address the racism in our university’s past and present. I can imagine that you are not getting much sleep and that this is a highly stressful time. I implore you to breathe and try to get some rest because there is much more work to do.
My name is Maco L. Faniel. I am a member of the class of 2002 and a fierce and sometimes remorseful advocate of Texas A&M University. I often regret my love for and advocacy for TAMU, because as an institution it has refused to reckon with its history of racism. This history of racism is not something that merely remains in the past, it informs the present and it is what the university and system is trying to defend.
This is what the chancellor tried to defend in his 2018 statement to The Battalion refuting their reporting on Sul Ross by saying “literally, Prairie View A&M and Texas A&M would not exist but for Lawrence Sullivan Ross.” He also obstinately said that “Lawrence Sullivan Ross will have his statue at Texas A&M forever.”
This is what the counter-protesters were trying to defend in singing the Aggie War Hymn in an attempt to drown out those calling out the racist violence and symbolism of Sul Ross.
This is what Aggies are defending on various message boards and social media groups.
This is what you are defending in your Actions And Next Steps: Campus Climate statement because the next steps do not require the university to reckon with the past or move towards anti-racism. Diversity and Inclusion is not anti-racism.
Black Aggies past and present, faculty from the history department, and even the Texas A&M chapter of the College Republicans have been begging for recognition of Senator Matthew Gaines for over 25 years. Each administration has promised action but offered few results. It seems that you are listening now, but there is much more that should be done. TAMU knows how to raise money, I beg of you to use your office and the superb fundraising acumen of the university to raise this money quickly to bring about results quickly. I also urge you and the chancellor to unequivocally and immediately say that without the efforts of Senator Matthew Gaines and the interracial 12th legislature of Texas, that there would not be a Texas A&M University. The efforts of Black folks to free themselves turned the Civil War from a war to reunite the union to a war to end slavery. Once formerly enslaved Black men received the right to vote, many of them took on political leadership. Throughout the south, interracial governments led by Black men established publicly funded higher education. Simply stated, without Black folks, there is no Texas A&M University.
Why is this important?
This is important because as James Baldwin wrote in 1965 “people who imagine that history flatters them (as it does, indeed, since they wrote it) are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin and become incapable of seeing or changing themselves, or the world.” There is a history that TAMU tells that flatters white Aggies, confirms the greatness of whiteness and informs the identity of TAMU. But the story that we tell about TAMU also causes injury. Black Aggies and other Aggies of color, past and present, know how TAMU’s racist past informs its racist present and that the university is the master of lip service and gradualism when it comes to dealing with that past and present. TAMU needs to confront this history and tell the truth so that Old Ags will know their history and future Ags won't be trapped in historical distortions that bend toward and confirm white supremacy. Again, I beg of you to say that without the valor and political will of formerly enslaved Black folks, Texas A&M University would not exist.
Five years ago a PVAMU alum by the name of Sandra Bland died while jailed at the Waller County Jail. The cause of her death remains unclear, but what is clear is that she would not be dead if not for an encounter with Brian Encinia. As you probably know, Encina is a member of the TAMU class of 2008. By 2008, TAMU already had many diversity programs in place and a well established Department of Multicultural Services. In fact, I have argued multiple times that TAMU has long been a model for diversity efforts in higher education. However, these diversity efforts could not make Encina see Bland, a black woman, as a fellow citizen or a person whose rights should be protected. Instead, Encina criminalized her and escalated a minor traffic stop. Encina did not learn how to be anti-racist at TAMU. Sandra Bland is dead because of this. This is why I say that diversity is not enough, because it does not move us toward anti-racism.
Students are protesting the university’s history and present racism. This racism is systematic and institutional. This is why any statement or redress must be systematic and institutional. Put more simply, Texas A&M University needs to institutionalize anti-racism. If not, we will be here again.
Your peer at PVAMU, Dr. Ruth Simmons, is an example of leadership and forcing a university to reckon with its history. As you probably know, under her leadership at Brown University, she launched an inquiry of the university’s ties to the slave trade and slavery, which resulted in a lengthy report and creation of the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown Univesity. These efforts not only helped the university begin to reckon with its history but also the broader Rhode Island community. Students leave Brown University knowing this part of the history and while enrolled get an opportunity to grapple with this history.
Texas A&M University likes to characterize itself as a world-class university. We now have an opportunity to go further and impact the broader Texas community and higher education world by taking a stand on racism by moving towards anti-racism. This requires a reckoning. I beg of you to lead the university in doing so.
Gig’em,
Maco L. Faniel
Texts Referenced and others you should read:
Baldwin, James. “White Man’s Guilt” in Baldwin - Collected Essays / Notes of A Native Son / Nobody Knows My Name / The Fire Next Time / No Name in the Street / The Devil Finds Work. The Library of America: New York, NY, 1998, 722-727.
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. 2018.
Dubois, William Edward B. Black Reconstruction. New York: Russell & Russell, 1962.
Kendi, Ibram X. How to Be an Antiracist. 2019.
Perry, Imani. More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States. New York: New York University Press, 2011.
Wilder, Craig Steven. Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities. 2014.