But before I unpack and deconstruct let’s examine the specifics. During the Texas House of Representatives budget debate Republican Texas Representative Wayne Christian added an amendment to the Texas House Budget that would require state universities that fund GLBT resources centers to fund centers promoting "family and traditional values.” According to the American Independent, Christian released a statement saying that “if the universities are intent on using taxpayer funds to operate these centers, they should at the very least provide balance in their message by funding centers that promote traditional and family values.” Christian went on to say that “these gender centers are not about providing health services or counseling services, they are about promoting a certain life style and culture.”
The American Independent reports that Tony McDonald, senior vice chairman of the Young Conservatives of Texas, credits his organization with helping craft the language of the amendment. McDonald told the American Independent that it was in fact not just about creating the so-called traditional family values centers, but is a “clever way” to work around directly defunding taxpayer-supported gender and sexuality centers that are accepting of homosexuality. He went on to say that “traditional family values, nuclear families are what is normal and what is right. Homosexuality is outside what is normal and what is right. I don’t think student organizations for gay rights need taxpayer money to promote their message. They are doing just fine promoting their social and political agendas as is.”
Then last week the student senate passed a SB63-106 supporting the amendment, with a vote of 21 for and 21 against, with the speaker of the senate breaking the tie and voting for the passage of this bill. The bill was introduced by ten members of the Senate, including Christopher Russo and Scott Bowen who are members of the Texas Aggie Conservatives (formerly known as the Young Conservatives of Texas at Texas A&M). According to an article in the American Independent, the advocates of a family center say they want to see a quality resource center that will support traditional couples and their everyday struggles and do not want to see their student fees go to the promotion of values they oppose. Today the Texas A&M Student Body President Jacob Robinson vetoed student bill, which can be overturned with a two-thirds vote majority by the Senate next week.
At the Texas Aggie Conservatives’ blog at Campus Reform, the Chairman of the TAC Justin Pulliam wrote that “Texas A&M has had a Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Resource Center since 2007 and GLBT student groups for decades. The GLBT Resource Center, funded primarily through mandatory student fees and state funding, has a yearly budget of over $100,000. However, there is no resource center at A&M promoting traditional and family values such as the benefits of marriage and abstinence. The Student Senate bill seeks to end this outrageous disparity by requesting the university to "provide equal funding for family and traditional values education." It is interesting that Pulliam would support this bill. When a bill that would add sexual orientation to the Texas A&M University Anti-Discrimination Policy was debated last year by the Senate, Pulliam held the position that bill was political in nature and should not be debated by the Senate. Somehow a bill that endorses a piece of legislation in the Texas Legislature is not political, but a bill that deals specifically with university policy is?
Without question, this has nothing to do with “education equality,” and everything to do with preservation of the dominance of those that want to maintain the status quo. In other words, this is about taking away equality from others. One speaker said that they do not “believe that one set of values should be promoted over another,” as if “traditional family values” are not promoted far more than any other set of values. For example, the myriad of ways in which so-called tradition family values are promoted by many different university institutions, organizations, and traditions. From the Texas A&M Christian Fellowship, to the multiple Christian student organizations, to mug down at Midnight Yell, to the Breakaway Bible study that has been held at Reed Arena and Kyle Field. Texas A&M’s signature organization, the Corps of Cadets, is steeped in a long tradition of promoting traditional values. The point is that the reason that Texas A&M does not need a center dedicated to promoting “traditional family values,” is because the university itself serves that roll. This is where privilege comes in.
The supporters of so-called “education equality” don’t seem to notice all the ways in which what they perceive cultural norm, the white heterosexual Christian conservative, is reinforced on a daily basis at the university. That is because they don’t have to notice, because they have the privilege of being oblivious. When you are privileged, you have the luxury of not knowing the experience of other people, which in this case means not knowing the truth that members of the GLBT community know.
This privilege allows you to experience life on campus, without given a second thought to how you might be perceived by your fellow students. Being privileged means that when you walk through Northgate, you do not have to worry about the reactions you may get when you hold your partner’s hand. Being privileged means that when you take the required KINE 198 examples that are given when discussing romantic or sexual interactions and the health guidelines related to them will all be heterosexual. Being privileged means that when the Aggie football team scores a touchdown, you do not have to think about what people around you think when you kiss your significant other in Kyle Field. Being privileged means that you do not have to go far from campus to find a church that reflects your particular religious views. Being privileged means that you can be completely oblivious to fellow students who must struggle with the everyday realities of being different in Aggieland, and not having to know about a relatively small refuge they have in Cain Hall.
Read about what it is like to be Gay in Aggieland.
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1 comments:
The principle argument of your post is that people are ignorant of things that don't directly affect them.
While this is true, the problem isn't privilege itself, but rather how it is used or isn't. Bill and Melinda Gates are shining examples of what privileged individuals ought to do. Try to improve the world with the wealth you've amassed for the greater good.
I think that there is also an inverse relationship at play here; the further distant you become from a particular income-level, the less aware of its hardships you become. The very rich and the very poor know next to nothing about each other.
I think low-income neighborhoods also frighten higher income folks— since people tend to associate low-income neighborhoods with high crime (there is truth to this since studies have shown people steal where they are the most comfortable, but I digress)—so the rich avoid low S.E.S. areas making them even more ignorant of the plight of the poor. I don't consider myself to be affluent, but I was amazed at how impoverished parts of Bryan were not that long ago. Those areas were there the whole time. I just wasn't seeing them. It was like my mind edited them out.
Privileged people who are dismissive toward the underprivileged seem to think that they are disenfranchised because they are lazy, rather than as a condition of birth. It is easy to think this way when you are born into money. Yes, people can escape the ghetto with talent and hard work, but we should emphasize that this is the exception rather than the rule.
The problem here is when no one in your family (immediate or extended) has graduated high-school let alone gone to college it is easy to feel that higher education is out of reach. Another part of the problem is that the privileged have been off-shoring a lot of the work that could have been done by less-educated folks in the past. This is done to increase the wealth of the already privileged without regard to the ripple effects to society. I think this has come to a crisis point with the downturn in the economy. There were warnings about this back in the 80s and since, but they weren't heeded.
I personally believe in a meritocracy, although there are limits to everything. It absolutely beguiles me how people who play games for a living or entertainers can make a thousand times what I do per year.
The only way this problem can be tackled peacefully is through education.
The only way for one person lose their ignorance about another person's plight is through education be it formal or not.So, in order for things to change, a rapper or movie star from "the block" has to talk to their new rich buddies about how the bottom of the pile are suffering and what they can do to help.
The simple truth of the matter is that the poor need the help of the rich to improve their place in society. Money dictates access to all types of things including education. Whether the poor have a "right" to help from the affluent seems irrelevant. If you consider yourself to be a good human being, you ought to help out where you can when you can even if it means making your pile of money slightly or significantly smaller.
It seems like a lot more dialog (not to mention fence-mending) and a lot less divisiveness is desperately needed in this country.
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