COLLEGE STATION—Even the haters would agree that it is certainly a feat to be famous for being racist. White nationalist leader of the “alt-right” movement, Richard Spencer, delivered a discourse at the Memorial Student Center on Dec 6, 2016, but not without greetings by hundreds of protesters shouting phrases such as, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Richard Spencer has to go” and “No Spencer. No Nazis. No Fascist KKK.”
The conference room where Spencer was to speak was filled with a diverse group of people—ironic considering the homogenous ideologies that Spencer is attempting to instill within America. Sitting in the second row, senior Ja’Mes Atkins felt she was making history by attending the event.
“It’s important to listen and learn what [Spencer] has to say so that I have the opportunity to speak firsthand knowing what he said to my face,” Atkins said. “These are the people I interact with on a daily basis, and I need to know, what do they think? What am I fighting against? As an African American, it’s very personal. It’s an attack on my people.”
Sitting only a row behind Atkins was elderly couple William West, 64, and Dayla Pell West, 67.
“I’m a North Texas farmer,” Mr. West responded when he was asked if he identifies as conservative. “I was raised on [a] cotton farm and one of the things our father made sure to teach us—since we hadn’t gotten to harvesting cotton by mechanical means—in August, we chopped cotton with our help, which means there was a black man on one side and a Mexican man on the other side. Women also helped us. So we learned how to work with all people. That was the point of working like that.”
It would be appropriate to note that Mr. West was sporting a jacket emblazoned with the Confederate Flag.
“I love everybody,” Mrs. West said. “I have friends of all races. I don’t have a problem with people. You come here … through the legal way and you want to love this country, you can be my neighbor.”
Not everyone is so generous.
“I would certainly prefer [the utopia of an all white community] … as an ideology. Something to strive for,” University of Houston student Norman Handslee said. He had traveled to TAMU and proudly donned his “Make America Great Again” cap as he awaited the arrival of Spencer. “[America] was ultimately a white nation [and] defined as a white nation. Mixing it with other races, in a way, dilute[s] that.”
Spencer’s discriminatory message calls into question his ethics and judgement of coexisting races in the melting pot that the United States of America boasts.
“[America] was an open country for Europeans who confronted people who were radically different,” Spencer said. “And I’ll be honest—that confrontation was terrible, bloody, and violent. It was terrible, bloody and violent, but we conquered this continent. Whether it’s nice to say that or not, we won, and we got to define what America means. America, at the end of the day, belongs to white men.”
Clearly ignoring the blood, bones and billions of people of color that went into cultivating a prospering America, Spencer argued that it was the genius of Europeans that built the foundation of the America we are fortunate to live in today. He kept it brief in his theory that “white people did it.”
“I am never going to claim there wasn’t a lot of brutality that went along with it,” Spencer said. “America does belong to white people: culturally, socially [and] politically.”
The question then arises: If Spencer idealizes European values, why does he not simply move to Europe? He just might be able to if he was not banned from 26 European countries.
“I can’t love Europe because some governments in Europe banned me from entering? It just doesn’t make sense,” Spencer countered. “I don’t love the current governments of Europe. Of course they should ban me. I would be worried if they didn’t ban me, to be honest.”
Not only are his arguments contradictory, but also openly hateful. From commenting on weight to mental illness to Aggie traditions, Spencer never ceased to take low blows.
When explaining a jab he directed at an audience member, telling her to “cool down the autism,” Spencer defended himself by claiming “there needs to be more trolling. I think there needs to be more humor in this world. When we’ve reached some point where we’re afraid to use words because it might conceivably offend someone, we’ve lost some of the basic aspects of our civilization.”
Bigotry at the expense of others, specifically in the case of racism, was actually the topic of Aggie Agora conference happening concurrently with the Richard Spencer talk. In the College of Liberal Arts, sociology professor Wendy Moore spoke on the topic of “challenging the right to be racist on campus.” She argued against the right to freedom of speech when applied to racial prejudice on college campuses.
Moore explained the political responses of TAMU administration when addressing racism on campus, highlighting one particular example of the administrative acknowledgement of a “white paper” presenting points similar to that of Spencer’s speech.
“Based upon my research in this area, I found the document to be quite typical of administrative responses to racist expressions in college and university communities,” Moore explained. “The document was framed around the value of the first amendment to the constitution guaranteeing the right to freedom of speech and expression. It noted that this right extends to even some speech that we might find “offensive.”
Communications professor and attendee of Moore’s talk Brian Altenhofen was open-minded towards Moore’s views on how racism should be handled in university settings.
“Instead of allowing racist rhetoric to stay alive on a college campus through the first amendment, maybe we should consider not allowing racist rhetoric on college campuses by centering the response on the reaction of people of color,” Altenhofen reflected the day after attending Moore’s talk. “I found it compelling. I think it is something that Texas A&M should consider doing.”
What concerned many students and faculty at TAMU was the fact that Spencer felt safe speaking at the school. Though not identifying as a conservative himself, Spencer felt most comfortable in a conservative environment. While he did have many supporters listening to his talk, however, his preachings go directly against many Aggie core values, only excluding free speech.
“I find the views of the organizer—and the speaker he is apparently sponsoring—abhorrent and profoundly antithetical to anything I believe,” TAMU President Michael Young said in a statement a week before the event.
Young attended Aggies United, an event held at the same time as the Richard Spencer talk that celebrated diversity and featured many celebrity guests such as award-winning actor Hill Harper and television host Roland Martin.
Still, students feel the effects of Spencer’s influence on campus.
“We need to take into account what time we’re living in.” senior Kakhi Maxwell said. “We need to take into account the powerful perspective of the media. We also should take into account [that] we are for one another—we are for each other. That’s part of the Aggie family.”