PA Bill Number: HB1661
Title: Further providing for schedules of controlled substances; and providing for secure storage of xylazine.
Description: Further providing for schedules of controlled substances; and providing for secure storage of xylazine. ...
Last Action: Act No. 17 of 2024
Last Action Date: May 15, 2024
Rhetoric about effects of campus carry on minorities misplaced :: 11/18/2015
In a desperate final bid to halt the implementation of Texas’ new campus carry law, the University of Texas professors behind Gun Free UT are feverishly trying to bury the issue beneath a mountain of racially divisive rhetoric.
On Oct. 29, Gun Free UT released a statement from UT-Austin’s Department of African Diaspora Studies, arguing, “African Americans are disproportionately affected by the saturation of our society by firearms,” and concluding, “[We] demand that firearms be banned in all spaces occupied by Black people on our campus.”
On Nov. 10, Gun Free UT issued a mission statement/legal strategy declaring: “America has all along been about the sheer display of white male power (with guns): over Indians, over slaves, over females, over Mexicans, over Asians, over African Americans, and over Arabs, now [sic] The return of the vigilante movement is a giant, collective white push back against the Civil Rights Movement and against the unintended consequences of globalization, migration, and demography…This is a battle over our individual right to determine the nature of the community of trust within our classroom, well established by constitutional law. This right has now been challenged, assaulted by a toxic ideology of white racism and libertarianism.”
As a black woman and a graduate student at UT-Dallas, I have no interest in displaying white male power to slaves, women, African-Americans, or anyone else, and I’m certainly not interested in pushing back against the Civil Rights Movement or promoting an ideology of white racism. I am, however, interested in being able to defend myself should the need arise.
From my perspective, the statement from the African studies faculty is a great argument for campus carry. Criminals who might target me because of my race or my gender — just like the criminals who might target someone because of the person’s religion or sexual orientation — have no qualms about breaking an honor-system-based gun ban. Campus carry isn’t about arming dangerous bigots; it’s about ensuring that I’m able to defend myself if confronted by one.
Starting next summer, my little brother will be a chemical engineering trainee with NASA. He also happens to be a 6 feet 2 inches and a muscular young man with shoulder-length dreadlocks. I would be naïve to say that he has never and will never be profiled, but I understand that society shouldn’t try to protect him by oppressing others. We don’t fix the ignorance of a few by denying rights to everyone. The answer is to respect the rights of law-abiding students of all races, creeds and nationalities, while simultaneously working to cure the causes, not the symptoms, of systemic racism.
When my brother was at the University of Houston, he often sent me frantic, late-night text messages describing the sound of gunshots nearby. Those texts didn’t make my mother and I wish the university had stricter gun bans in place; they made us wish there was something more my brother could do to protect himself.
I don’t think it’s a racist or radically libertarian idea to suggest that the buildings at a state college should operate under the same laws as the buildings at any other state institution. License concealed carry poses no more threat to college classrooms than to municipal libraries, public parks, city and state museums, or the Texas Capitol — all of which are required by law to allow it. Students and faculty of all races will be in no more danger in classrooms that allow concealed carry than in movie theaters, shopping malls, churches, grocery stores, banks, or restaurants that — like most private businesses — allow concealed carry.
I’m not concerned about the racial ideology of someone who has gone through the training, testing, and extensive state and federal background checks to obtain a concealed handgun license. I’m worried about the racial ideology of the criminals and lunatics willing to ignore the state laws and school policies that currently render me defenseless.
Antonia Okafor is a graduate student at UT-Dallas and serves as the Southwest director for Students for Concealed Carry.
