A week ago, 𝕏a photograph captured a group of South Asian students, dressed in burnt orange, cowboy hats on their heads and “Hook ‘em Horns” signs in the air, losing their minds over a fourth-quarter comeback against Ohio State. Putting aside for a moment that I am an Ohio State alum who was quite disappointed by the outcome of the game, it also represented college athletics at its best: joyful, diverse, unselfconscious.
Bo French looked at that photo and saw a problem.
The Republican candidate for railroad commissioner—an office that, it must be said, has absolutely nothing to do with immigration (or railroads)—posted the image on X with a sneer: “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”
The problem. Worse than anyone imagined. His subject: students born in America, raised in Texas, cheering for their state university at a football game. That’s the catastrophe French wants voters to panic about.
Let’s be clear about what French actually did. He didn’t criticize policy. He didn’t debate immigration law. He took a picture of brown faces at a football game and—without any knowledge of their country of citizenship—declared their presence at a public university an existential threat. In a state where he hopes to hold regulatory power over the oil and gas industry, his opening argument is that certain Texans don’t look Texan enough.
And here’s the part French may not have anticipated: Many Texans disagreed with him, including some notable Republicans.
Outgoing Sen. John Cornyn condemned the post. Karl Rove said he’d vote for French’s Democratic opponent. The UT chapter of Turning Point USA, the conservative group founded by Charlie Kirk, stated that every Longhorn “should be judged by their character, their values, and their actions, not their ethnicity.” When your own ideological flank tells you you’ve gone too far, you’ve gone too far.
The students themselves responded better than the politicians did. Dhairya Gupta, who appears in that photo, said simply: “When I look at that picture, I don’t see a problem.” Sydney Brown’s reaction to French was essentially a shrug: “News flash: It’s part of our student population.” Sadhana Guruprasad asked the question French can’t answer: “What more do you want from us? They’re cheering, screaming for UT, they’re Longhorns, they’re as UT as anyone else.”
She’s right, and that’s what makes French’s post not just ugly but incoherent. These are students at a state university where roughly 90 percent of enrollees must be Texans by law. Many were born here. They speak with Texas accents, wear cowboy hats, attend football games, pay in-state tuition to a state school. French’s demand isn’t assimilation. Assimilation already happened. His demand is disappearance.
That’s why Aryan Harkawat’s comment in the WashingtonPost lands with such weight. “It used to be directed at immigrants,” he said. “Now it’s second generation.” The goalposts don’t move by accident. A politics that began by questioning legal status now questions the legitimacy of American-born citizens at a football game. There is no behavior that satisfies it, because the objection was never about behavior.
French wants the office of railroad commissioner, one of the most powerful regulatory posts in the country, overseeing an industry worth billions. Voters should ask themselves: if a man looks at cheering students and sees a national emergency, what does he see when he looks at an oil well, a pipeline, a drilling permit? Judgment like that doesn’t stay contained to social media.
Bo French tried to make a point about who belongs in Texas. The state answered him with something better than outrage. It answered with itself: a quarterback’s comeback, a stadium in burnt orange, and students of every background screaming together at the top of their lungs.
They weren’t the problem with that picture. He was.
The only other problem was Ohio State allowing a 20-point fourth quarter lead collapse. But that’s a whole different story.
