By: Charles O. Neal
I’ve been going about this anti-racist congressional redistricting thing ALL WRONG!
I’ve been banging away on my keyboard, practically hollering at Black folks in Texas, trying my best to sound the alarm about white, racist, Republicans’ plans to disenfranchise the LARGEST BLACK POPULATION IN AMERICA!
Don’t get me wrong – it is ultra important that Black folks know what’s going on. But what I simply haven’t thought to do is remind white folks in Texas what their government is up to…
…this is for them.
White Texans, y’all are doing it again! Just like in y’all’s good ol’ days when lynching was a family pastime, you are watching while the largest Black population in America – your fellow Texans has their RIGHT to equal representation stolen from them. And just like in those leave-it-to-beaver-make-Texas-great-again days, all the “good white folks” have closed their blinds and locked their doors and acted like the raging mob outside is not made up of governors and attorneys general and state reps and senators who have told them they are acting on their behalf!
It really says something – again about you white Texans and your ability to say/think/act as if “reverse discrimination” really exists and must be stamped out with anti-DEI zeal, all while quietly witnessing the dismantling of the most fundamental American/Texan cornerstone – equal representation under the law.
White Texans – your quiet signals your complicity in this racially motivated travesty. All your clamoring about “patriotism,” and “Texas values” wither away to a whimper when in the face of OVERT RACISM you say NOTHING!
And while I really am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to those of you white Texans who feel powerless, the FACT is that the racist bigots who are engineering this plot are YOUR representatives, YOUR cousins, YOUR Neighbors and they are
counting on YOUR silence while they smash away the constitutional protections that Black Texans fought, bled and died to gain. Is that really what you want on your tombstone? “I SAT QUIETLY BY WHILE THE RIGHTS OF MY FELLOW TEXANS WERE STOLEN AWAY.”?
It’s been said that “past is prologue”… I shudder to think that white Texans are so numb that they don’t recognize that political partisanship is being used as a proxy substitute for OVERT RACISM!
One last thing… all your white Texan protestations that “… I don’t see color…” and “…I don’t have a racist bone in my body…” and (your favorite) “….I/my family never owned any slaves…” just melt away in the Texas heat while you sit there… sit there while good ‘ol Texas RACISM rears its head again!
I apologize, again, for my misplaced exhortations against the racist evil being perpetrated against Black Texans. And I am absolutely aghast and ashamed of the white Texans who are sitting quietly by while OUR government plans the evil, public, 2025-style LYNCHING OF BLACK TEXANS!
White Texans – Y’all gotta do better…
Charles O’Neal is the President of the Texas Association of African American Chambers of Commerce.
