This month, the Texas Longhorns beat the Ohio State Buckeyes in a thrilling game that ended with a stunning victory. The student section was pumped with school spirit, on the edge of their seats for this high-stakes win — and win we did.
Bo French, the Republican nominee for Texas railroad commissioner, saw images of passionate students cheering and logged onto X to say, “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” He doubled down, saying Americans have been “displaced by foreigners.”
He said this because the image featured students of South Asian descent, particularly Indians, celebrating.
The official U.S. Department of Education went on to make an Instagram post of a picture of Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium with the words “Make College Football Great Again.”
I was born and raised in the United States. I have always been aware of the fact that many people wouldn’t consider me American because I’m also Indian, but it wasn’t until I came to Texas that I realized how oddly particular and deep the specific disdain for Indians was.
During sorority recruitment, I was immediately dropped from houses that didn’t take women of color, or I was intentionally (and rather awkwardly) paired with the one South Asian girl in each chapter. Fraternities make lists of brown girls to poke fun at; guys pointedly say, “I voted for Trump, but I promise I’m not racist”; and I might not have anything in common with someone, but because we are both brown, everyone mixes us up. Then there’s the sheer amount of people who don’t seem to realize that their racist Instagram reels likes about Indian people are, in fact, public.
I quickly learned that because there are so many Indian people in Texas, there are just as many people who don’t want us here.
That’s not to say that anti-Indian sentiment doesn’t exist outside of Texas. This is a countrywide issue. But in this state in particular, it seems almost normalized to be racist toward brown people.
Texas state law requires that 90% of incoming freshmen are residents of Texas. Most of the people in that picture Bo French posted aren’t just Americans; they’re Texans. The only reason he — and many others — think they aren’t is because they’re not white.
I can turn my nose up and say it’s jealousy. I can brush it off and say I don’t care. I can laugh along with the jokes. I can even try to ignore it, but I’d be lying to myself.
I do care, and it does bother me, because I am American. I belong in that student section too, along with every person in that picture Bo French posted.
I debated publishing this article because speaking out about these kinds of things makes you the one who couldn’t let it go. You’re the one who made it political — who made it racial. My paranoia itself is a quiet mechanism that makes this feel so normalized in the first place.
But belonging isn’t Bo French’s to hand out, nor anyone who thinks like him.
That Saturday, when we beat Ohio State, no one was thinking about where we or our parents were born. The only thing that mattered was that we won. The whole stadium, all of us wearing burnt orange, was throwing up Hook ‘Em and cheering alongside strangers and friends — alongside everyone.
That says more about Bo French and anyone else who has an outdated racist outlook on what it means to be an American and a Texan than us.
Thakkar is a government junior from Winter Park, Florida.