The Racial Geography Tour at UT Austin
1st April 2019
For almost two decades, Ted Gordon has been leading tours of UT Austin that show how racism, patriarchy, and politics are baked into the landscape and architecture of the campus. This month, that tour goes live online. In honor of the launch of the new website, “The Racial Geography Tour,” we are featuring an interview Joan Neuberger conducted with Prof. Gordon last week.
UT Austin is the metastasizing core of the Blue tumor of Travis County in Texas. If there’s any place in Texas where racism, patriarchy, and ‘politics’ have been expunged, it’s UT Austin — and yet people like Gordon attempt to prop up the decaying corpse of the past because otherwise their Change Compulsion would wither and die.
The central paradox of Progressive politics is the fact that, even as they cling to the certainty that Progress Is Inevitable, they have to believe that Progress Hasn’t Arrived Yet AndWe’re Still Stuck In The Bad Old Days.