Chronosynclastic Infundibulum » aggies http://www.semanticoverload.com The world through my prisms Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:36:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5 U.S. may embrace Obama, Aggie racism marches on, yet http://www.semanticoverload.com/2008/11/13/us-may-embrace-obama/ http://www.semanticoverload.com/2008/11/13/us-may-embrace-obama/#comments Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:02:24 +0000 Semantic Overload http://www.semanticoverload.com/?p=260 This happened on the evening of Nov. 4th. After Obama was pronounced as the new president of USA, a bunch of us decided to hit a near by bar for a few drinks. When we got there, we saw a bunch of Aggies with T-shirts that said “Beat the hell outta Obama”. Before I go any further, the message on the T-shirt is not to be taken literally, or as a racist comment. It’s an old Ag tradition that started with “Beat the hell outta (University of) Texas”, and now they just change the last word to anything they want. So don’t associate this with the lynching to black men in the southern slave states.

So yeah, when I saw those T-shirts, I knew they were Aggies and they were Republicans. As Obama was giving his acceptence speech we started hearing comments that went something like this:

He made it because the pussy liberals wanted to vote for a Muslim…

Looks like gold teeth and fried chicken will now be tax exempt…

We now have an Arab for a president. Looks like the terrorists won…

And I am not making any of this up! The Aggies are notorious for their racist views, hate, and bias anyway. Patrix’s post on Egg tossing at Obama (an incident which made it to the national news) should give you an idea of how antiquated (almost pre-integration) the Aggies’ ideology is. In fact, my earlier post about Aggie racism suggests an institutional investment in fostering such an environment.

In other news: Here’s what a (University of) Texas football player Buck Brunette had to say about Obama’s election “All the hunters gather up, we have a [nigger] in the White House.” That’s what he said on his Facebook page and was promptly kicked off the team.

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Aggie Racism marches on http://www.semanticoverload.com/2008/09/02/aggie-racism-marches-on/ http://www.semanticoverload.com/2008/09/02/aggie-racism-marches-on/#comments Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:02:34 +0000 Semantic Overload http://www.semanticoverload.com/?p=178 The Aggies are all about traditions. It ranges from the inexplicable (now defunct) burning of a huge pile of wood (fatal accidents notwithstanding), to the nascent excitement of yelling on the midnight before football games, to the poignant homage to the dead through Muster and Silver Taps.

Last month, we lost 6 Aggies. The second Tuesday of this month, they will be honored in the ceremony of the Silver Taps (a solemn ritual that is to be experienced, not explained). This is the first Silver Taps of the year.

The Aggie college newspaper, The Battalion, decided to run an article paying their tribute to the six deceased Aggies. They talked to the students’ friends, family, and compiled a eulogy of all the six students; or did they? The oddest thing was that each student’s eulogy ran from anywhere between 25 lines to 50 lines, except one. Olanrewaju (Lanre) Olusola Sanu’s eulogy was 2 lines long and it read [link]:

The senior chemical engineering major from Houston died on Aug. 2. The Battalion was unable to reach his family for information to compile a story.

Really?!? You couldn’t find out anything about Lanre. Nothing from friends, nothing from Facebook, nothing from his lecturers and professors? Nothing at all? Not even a photograph! Everyone else had their photographs in the article, except Lanre.

This enraged quite a few Aggies. Some of them complained about this on the comments section of the article on the Battalion website. In response to that, the Editors simple disabled comments on the post. Check it out for yourselves, all other articles on www.thebatt.com have comments enabled except for this one!

I wonder why? Does it have anything to do with the fact that he happens to be the only person of color among the six and has an African sounding name? Maybe its ok not to try too hard to find out more about Lanre, and simply ignore when people protest. Maybe this is what politically-correct racism looks like.

For all of you who think I may be over-reacting to the whole thing, Texas A&M (and the surrounding areas) have history of racism. In the past people have attacked international students, charged higher cover charge for non-whites in bars, and made racist videos and posted them online. In fact, multiple assessments have concluded that Texas A&M practices institutional racism [link1, link2].

The world may be changing, but Aggie Racism marches on!

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