Douglas Mercer
March 25 2023
Houston was founded by White Americans, mostly English and German, but now it has precipitately dipped to below a quarter White which means that for all intents and purposes it has been abandoned to the mud people. Rice University in Houston has naturally seen which way the winds are blowing and has swam along with the tide but, it must be noted, only dead things go downstream with the current. And given that in the current year our enemies seem to be morbidly obsessed with dead White people, having dug up Nathan Bedford Forrest and AP Hill, now Rice will move (they thought) the final resting place of the ashes of the White founder of Rice to a location more suitable to the coloreds.
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For the longest time the icon of William Marsh Rice sat magisterially in the very center of his eponymous campus. Now in an evil age they have had one of those racial reckonings we hear so much about and they are going to "de-center" him. You see Rice had something to do with slaves and that is more than enough to cast him from his proud perch. Perhaps Rice has not been as radical as other institutions, melting the statue down and reconstituting it as a negro, packing it in packing crates and putting it in cold storage, tossing it to the bottom of a lake, or smashing it to pieces. The time for that will come along with the change of the name of the University. What Rice is doing is removing him from on high and taking him down from the plinth and putting what remains and his remains on the periphery.
"Rice University founder's statue and ashes be moved from focal point on campus due to history as slave owner. The centerpiece at the Rice University Academic Quadrangle, which is flanked by Lovett Hall and Fondren Library, is the Founder's Memorial and Rice has announced plans to redesign its Academic Quadrangle."
What could raise their anger today more than a founders memorial? They are at war with founders in general. Not being about to found anything, indeed not being able to find their backsides from a hole in the ground, makes them seethe in resentment to no end, and it exacerbates their massive (and well earned) inferiority complex. A founder is a pioneer, a settler, a pathfinder, a trailblazer, someone who comes upon nothing and creates cities and culture and civilizations, universities, enterprises. They being natural parasites on these things and being unable to live without a host the founder cuts to core of their incapacity. And they know it which is why they don't want to be reminded of real founders, and prefer to have their representations destroyed or safely out of sight.
"The university will launch a process to select a distinguished architect or landscape designer to spearhead the reenvisioning of the quadrangle. The trustees have decided that the new design will feature a welcoming space at its center and that other sites around the quadrangle will include artworks or other elements reflecting and celebrating the university’s aspirations."
So instead of having a campus space watched over by a founder and centered around him they will have a "reenvisioned" space which will be welcoming (to all races) and which will highlight the universities aspiration to being a place where Whiteness has no home.
"The need to recontextualize the Academic Quadrangle became apparent during several years of conversations regarding its focal point, the Founder’s Memorial, given the founder’s history as an owner of enslaved people. Rice University’s Academic Quadrangle will undergo a major redesign that will include moving the Founder’s Memorial statue of William Marsh Rice to a new location within the quadrangle."
Recontextualizing is a big new buzzword when it comes to these White icons. The context which they had been in was more than good enough, it wasn't even a context, it was just the reality; a man funds and founds a university exclusively for White people and is therefore celebrated and honored. It's only when a new people come in that a new context emerges, a changing set of circumstances, wherein the old set of circumstances are found wanting, and oppressive, and racist. Usually in history the warring set of ideas will war for some time before one or the other emerges victorious. But what is all the more shocking about it is how sudden the victory for the other side has come in this war which has not really been a war so one sided and lopsided has it been. No sooner did our enemies strike the door and the collapse came.
"Rice held an invitational competition last summer to determine the design partner to help with the design plans. The internationally renowned landscape architecture firm Nelson Byrd Woltz was chosen to lead the project. The university's Board of Trustees picked NBW's plan, which it said: aligns with aspirations to enrich student experience, foster inclusivity and celebrate Rice’s evolution and values."
It's no understatement to say that enrich, inclusivity, and evolve are dagger words; they have been stripped of all content and meaning and have become weapons to wield. When you hear these happy sounding and seemingly well meaning and innocent words, and others like them (diversity, equity, justice) instead of assigning to them their normal or everyday meaning just hear the words "kill Whitey." Because that is what they mean in the new context. And just because the subterfuge of morality is involved does not make it any less so.
"Rice’s Board of Trustees has decided the relocated statue will be presented with historical context and information about the university’s founder, including his ownership of enslaved people. A new monument of similar prominence will commemorate the beginning of the university’s integration a half-century after its opening."
So not only decentered and on the margins and periphery but fenced in with words and that fence might as well say: High Voltage--Don't Touch. What a swan song for the founder Rice, to have his memory hemmed in with words indicating that the University is embarrassed by him and ashamed of him. Which is why it makes me think that this "new location" that they tout is just a waystation on the way to cold storage or obliteration. The leaders of Rice today don't quite have the courage of their anti-racist convictions and seem to want there to be some mediation between the old and the new. Soon enough they will find there is none.
As for the integration of the school in 1962 it was done over the vociferous opposition of the alumni and was motivated by the need for its students to be able to get grants from a federal government (NASA in particular) that would only give them to students at designated desegregated schools. They'll probably put all that on a plaque for a fashionable mea culpa.
"We intend for the Academic Quadrangle to both fully acknowledge the history of our founding and founder, and to mark and celebrate the important evolution and growth of our university over time, said Rob Ladd, chairman of the Board of Trustees. We believe the redesign will allow us to move forward as a community, and we are grateful to Rice’s Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Justice for its leadership."
What a thing for a task force to be dedicated to. Here we find ourselves in a hyper-competitive world and Rice (a top research school) is taking the time to mull over slavery and segregation as if they were the burning issues of the day. In actual fact they are the burning issue of the day, unbelievably. But a top flight school like Rice should have the courage to tell the negros it's time to stop whining and bitching about the past, first off you had it a lot better than you claim, and a lot better than you deserved. But even irrespective of that it's time to stop dining out on what happened (or didn't happen) to your people eons ago, clean up your act, get yourselves together, and try to salvage what you can from the admittedly meager potentialities of your race. It's a sorry thing but it is your own and it's time you got on with it.
"The Board of Trustees reached its decision after a working group led by trustee Charles Landgraf reviewed ideas and opinions from students, faculty, staff and alumni, who submitted more than 1,200 responses through an online portal soliciting their input. The working group also met with the chairs of the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice, the executive committee of the Association of Rice University Black Alumni and other leaders in the Rice community."
Back in the day when Rice began to integrate the alumni was vocally against it; now they have Black Alumni who further degrade the school by besmirching the founder, and putting up new monuments dedicated to integration. Once they began to solicit these opinions the die was cast, who really at this time will put in a good word or two for the old White guy who held slaves?
"Thomas Woltz, the owner and principal landscape architect of NBW, said that the firm’s goal was to reimagine the quad and recontextualize Rice's statue within it. The new design proposes relocating William Marsh Rice’s statue by Sewall Hall, placing it directly on the ground. Woltz said that this will allow visitors to contextualize Willy’s statue within the university’s history while also reflecting Rice’s current values of inclusivity and community."
No longer magisterially will the icon sit on the campus, no longer will the man who founded and funded this school be at its center. This contextualization is condemnation, whatever soft landing they are striving for.
"The idea is to bring William Marsh Rice to the ground amongst us, Woltz said. You can stand with him he’s no longer on a plinth looking down on the students, he’s eye-to-eye with the students."
They've cut him down to size, no more the exalted figure, but feet of cracking clay. They are mistreating the idols because of the guilt they have. Until the University caved there were daily protests at the site of the plinth/statue with big banners saying Rice only wanted White people to go there.
"Additionally, NBW proposes moving the plinth atop which the statue sits off-center and back, facing the Cambridge Office Building. Woltz said that the plinth will be a platform for student activism, debates and performances to uplift many voices."
In his will Rice mandated that the college be for the White men and women of Houston. Later on in the 60s by a feat of legal legerdemain and fancy magic they "overruled" that rule--and now they have moved his ashes (later they will scatter them) and they have taken him off his pedestal and moved him outward; and then they will take that plinth with its ashes and move that too. And then atop that plinth and atop those ashes will stand (at a school which was only intended for White people only) blacks, and Chicanos, and Indians, and the trans, and the gods know what else and the many voices (they have overcome) will clamor and screech that where they stand too must go and those ashes be cast to the wind.
