Scapegoating shows facts aren’t sacred to Patrick
During commemoration of Yom Kippur in biblical times, two goats were brought to the high priest. One was sacrificed to Jehovah. Upon the head of the other goat, the priest laid his hands and confessed the sins of the people.
The goat, now burdened with the sins and crimes of a people, was called a scapegoat and released into the wilderness to pacify the demon Azazel.
Scapegoats, innocents upon whom the wrongdoings of others are placed, are always needed for the ritual of finger-pointing and deflecting blame. Anyone, and any group of people, can be a scapegoat, at any given time for any given purpose.
In the early days of COVID-19, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Texas’ high priest of misinformation and culture wars, suggested senior citizens should be willing to sacrifice their lives to preserve the economy for their grandchildren. We are, now, in what we’d hoped would be the final days of the pandemic but is instead a precarious moment with the rise of the delta variant.
As COVID rages, particularly across the South, Patrick continues to sacrifice facts upon an altar of ideology while dismissing, into the wilderness, African Americans he’s cast as scapegoats.
Last week, Patrick sat for an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, a woman who has advocated the use of Ivermectin, a horse dewormer, to treat COVID.
“The COVID is spreading, particularly most of the numbers are with the unvaccinated, and the Democrats like to blame Republicans on that,” Patrick said. “Well, the biggest group in most states are African Americans who have not been vaccinated. Last time I checked, over 90 percent of them vote for Democrats in their major cities and major counties, so it’s up to the Democrats to get … as many people vaccinated.”
This is a lie. Either out of harmful ignorance or malicious intent — we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that it’s the former — Patrick is repeating a centuries-old racist trope of blaming the spread of disease on racial or ethnic groups. His co-trafficker in falsehoods, Gov. Greg Abbott, has wrongly blamed immigrants, another group historically the target of these smears.
The Texas Department of State Health Services reports that while Black Texans have lower rates of vaccination, most of the estimated 8 million people unvaccinated in the state are white.
Responding to the backlash over his comments, Patrick issued this statement.
“Not surprisingly, Democrat social media trolls were up late misstating the facts and fanning the flames of their lies.”
But it was Patrick misstating the facts, and injecting race and politics into the issue by singling out one group to blame and suggesting that only Democrats are responsible for encouraging African Americans — or other Democrats — to get vaccinated while Republicans are responsible for the unvaccinated who are white and Republican.
COVID doesn’t care about such man-made distinctions. It thrives among the unprotected and vulnerable, infecting people regardless of race, class or station in life. People like the children in Texas, many too young to be vaccinated, who are returning to school at a time when they are more likely, than a year ago, to be stricken with COVID. Yet their governor and lieutenant governor have refused to allow school districts to enforce mask mandates, which would better protect them.
Instead of making scapegoats of others while lives are sacrificed, Patrick should think of what happens when the sins of the father threaten the health and lives of his sons and daughters.