Texas linebacker DeMarvion Overshown will sit out “all team activities” until “real action” is taken regarding Longhorn’s players’ demands for inclusiveness at the university.
“We have been told that things are being done behind close doors but have yet to see any changes,” Overshown wrote in a tweet. “We are constantly preached urgency throughout the program and I feel that the university should be held to the same standard,” ESPN reports.
It’s urgent? They should take his scholarship away.
Imagine receiving a scholarship from one of the best programs in the country, accepting it without qualification, and then one day saying the school is not inclusive enough and he won’t fulfill his obligations.
It’s not 1964, someone please tell this young man.
He wrote, “…this is something I’m very passionate about and I can not continue to perform for a program that doesn’t show me the same love and support I do for them.”
LAST MONTH’S FIASCO
Dozens of Longhorn athletes issued an unsigned, two-page statement requesting the school rename several campus buildings named after school officials with ties to its segregationist past.
They also said the school should stop using “The Eyes of Texas,” which once allegedly had ties to minstrel shows with characters in blackface in the early 1900s.
It’s always sung at games. It’s a great song. No one even knew about this alleged history, and how are they responsible for other people who sang their song?
They also want diverse statues designed only by people of color. They want Black athletic history in the school’s Hall of Honor and they have called for renaming part of the stadium after the first Black player.
The university president met with the team last month to listen to their ‘frustrations.’
Junior linebacker Juwan Mitchell said after the meeting that he did not “feel comfortable representing the University of Texas” in a tweet that has since been deleted. “It seems they only have our front but not our backs. People who want to create change don’t care how much money can be lost, don’t care about who hates them or any bad outcomes that may happen. The only thing on your mind should be equality.”
These privileged young men — who get to play a sport they love while on a scholarship with a chance at the pros — are oppressed. The only idea I like at all, although it’s divisive is the Hall of Honor. We shouldn’t be singling out people by race. It’s obscene, but it’s nice to make them feel better.
Until We Are One. pic.twitter.com/OQN7xmjFRd
— DeMarvion Overshown (@dee_overshown6) July 2, 2020
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