Op-Ed: The Texas GOP’s Gerrymandering Plan Is Rooted In Racism

It is not by coincidence that in the same week marking the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act being signed into law, Republicans in Texas are threatening to arrest members of the minority party in their efforts to steal political power from Black and Brown people – all in service to their bigoted leader.

As explained by President Trump in a Tuesday phone interview with CNBC: “We have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats. We have a really good governor and good people in Texas. And I won Texas. I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know. And we are entitled to five more seats.”

What Trump believes “entitles” him to five more seats is laid bare in the racial makeup of the districts being targeted by Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Republicans in the state legislature.

They include the current district of Congressman Al Green, which includes a portion of Houston where I was born and raised, where, as noted by Capital B News, the proposed change would drop the Black voting-age population from 39% to 11%. Likewise, the Black voting-age population of Congressman Marc Veasey’s Fort Worth-based district would drop 25%.

Then there is targeting of Congressman Greg Casar’s district in Austin, where last year, he became the first Latino to represent the Texas capital city in Congress.

Speaking with the Guardian about the proposed shift in his district that would significantly dilute the voting power of Latinos, Casar explained: “Even a conservative Supreme Court said central Texas Latinos deserve a district, and that’s why my district exists. If Donald Trump is able to suppress Latino voters here in Austin, he’ll try to spread that plan across America.”

Well, the Texas GOP certainly doesn’t want those Latinos in urban dwellings voting anyway, but I suppose if the Latinos in the border region that went GOP in the last election change in the midterms, Texas Republicans will just erase them like the minorities in the big cities, too.

Casar’s point about Trump’s motivations and intentions should not go ignored, though.

Thankfully, his sentiment was recently echoed by Congressman Jasmine Crockett, who told MSNBC, “This isn’t just about the five seats in Texas. This is about a power grab. It’s about basically setting the tone for what Donald Trump will try to do throughout the country so that he can suppress the voices of Black and brown folk just so that he can stay in power.”

To me, it is quite obvious how inherently racist this all is, yet I’m not hearing many others – including Democratic leadership – make a similar argument to the public.

Yes, it is right to dismiss Abbott’s plans as “stupid” and “just not right.”

Stupid because for all of Abbott’s barking in service to Bankruptcy Batista in the White House, there isn’t much he can do right now with the 50 Texas Democrats in the state legislature that fled to the state of Illinois to deny the quorum needed to convene the special session Abbott called to proceed with the GOP’s redistricting plans.

As explained by state Rep. Jolanda Jones on Abbott’s arrest threats to the press: “I’m a lawyer. There is no felony in the Texas penal code for what he says. Respectfully, he’s making up some sh-t, okay? He has no legal mechanism. He’s putting up smoke and mirrors.”

In essence, as Mark Jones, a Rice University political science professor, tells CBS News, Republicans “can make idle threats, but as long as they are out of state, there’s really nothing that they can do.”

Ultimately, Abbott has the power to call as many special sessions as he’d like, so it remains to be seen what the Democrats in Texas can pull off, but it would go a long way in the meantime for more messaging around how inherently racist this GOP plan is in its motivation and execution.

Governor Greg Abbott is a racist and it is evident in the way he defended the gun violence in Texas by citing what happens in Chicago; how he targeted “critical race theory” and “DEI” as a means to just get rid of Black people, and mentions of Black people in as many state-operated entities as possible; why he wouldn’t call out how racist rhetoric motivated the murders of migrants and immigrants in the state in years past; why he would pardon a racist killer that texted a minor; why he signed on the most racist immigration bills in the country.

It is now more than evident here, as he tries to take what little voting power nonwhite people have in a state where white folks only make up 40% of the population.

Donald Trump’s racism knows no limits, but in fairness to this power-hungry racist, none of this could have happened if not for Supreme Court Justice John Roberts.

Roberts, an acolyte of Ronald Reagan, another racist who promised to “Make America Great Again,” plotted for decades to gut the Voting Rights Act, and now that he’s been successful in those efforts, he has given way to the current racist scheme set up by Trump, Greg Abbott, and Texas Democrats.

Am I shocked that not many in the political or media establishment want to talk about how racist this all is?

No, but that shouldn’t deter the rest of us from putting on the pressure. It’s good that some Democrats in other states have stepped up now that their own futures are at stake. Their lack of willingness to engage in this subject is not unlike their reluctance to let the Republican Party dominate Texas politics for decades without fighting.

And look at where that got them.

Sixty years after the Voting Rights Act became law should not be where we are now, but we are, and the Democratic Party must stop pussyfooting around about calling out Trump and the GOP for who they are, what they do, and why they do it.

Michael Arceneaux is a New York Times bestselling author whose most recent book, I Finally Bought Some Jordans, was published last March.

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