Texas Republicans should confront racists and bigots directly
On Friday, the Texas State Preservation Board voted unanimously to remove a racist Confederate plaque from the Texas Capitol.
And on Thursday, the precinct chairs of the Tarrant County Republican Party voted to allow their vice chairman, Shahid Shafi, to continue to serve in that role, even though he is a Muslim. Republicans across the state are therefore feeling proud of themselves, and many of them are feeling vindicated, too. The Tarrant County Republican Party’s debate attracted a lot of attention, most of which neglected to mention that the majority of Republicans aren’t outright bigots.
So let me begin by saying that in my experience, a majority of Republicans aren’t outright bigots. And Republican leaders in Texas are less prone to racist dog whistles than Republican leaders in states like California, for example, or Iowa.
That’s always been true, and the explanation is obvious: White Republican voters are joined by enough voters of color to carry the GOP candidates over the finish line in statewide elections. But Republicans can’t afford to be reckless.
By the same token, though, I expect Texas Republicans to be better than Republicans like U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa, who has repeatedly sympathized with right-wing bigots over the years and explicitly defended white supremacists this week.
It’s true that Gov. Greg Abbott, who chairs the State Preservation Board, voted in favor of the plaque’s removal, as did the other Republican elected officials on the board — Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and state Rep. Jeff Leach of Plano.
It’s also true that Republicans in Tarrant County rejected religious bigotry by an emphatic margin this week. Roughly 75 percent of the precinct chairs
who attended the meeting stood with Shafi. Only 49 Republicans wanted to remove him, and one of them quit after the vote.
Those are victories, I guess. But they’re pyrrhic.
Shafi, a surgeon, is a devoted member of the Republican Party who also serves on the Southlake City Council. Republicans in Tarrant County should be thankful that he’s willing to serve as a party official. Instead, Republicans had a protracted public debate about whether to oust him because of his religious beliefs. That’s disgusting.
Some of them, moreover, insisted that their objections to Shafi’s appointment have nothing to do with his religious beliefs, and are merely due to the fact that some Republicans are bigots and therefore might find those beliefs objectionable.
“We don’t think he’s suitable as a practicing Muslim to be vice chair because he’d be the representative for ALL Republicans in Tarrant County, and not ALL Republicans in Tarrant County think Islam is safe or acceptable,” wrote precinct chair Dorrie O’Brien in a Facebook post.
Abbott could have taken action on the plaque years ago, if he’d wanted to. The plaque was placed in the Capitol in 1959, at the behest of the Texas division of the Children of the Confederacy. And in addition to being racist, it’s historically inaccurate.
“The war between the states was not a rebellion, nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery,” it says.
As soon as I read that, I could see the problem. And state Rep. Eric Johnson, D-Dallas, has been formally calling for the plaque’s removal since August 2017. He sent a letter to the members of the State Preservation Board, including Abbott, after a woman was killed while protesting white supremacy in Charlottesville, Va.
Johnson, who is black, had never been a fan of the plaque. But what happened at Charlottesville was eye-opening as well as shocking for many Americans.
On Friday, after the vote, Johnson wasn’t in the mood for celebrations.
“While I’m glad the State Preservation Board voted to remove the ‘Children of the Confederacy Creed’ plaque from the Texas Capitol, none of us in state government should be high-fiving each other or patting ourselves on the back today,” Johnson said in a statement.
“The plaque should never have been put up by the Legislature in the first place, and it certainly shouldn’t have taken sixty years to remove it,” Johnson continued. “And that’s on Republicans and Democrats alike, to be perfectly honest.”
Johnson is right, and Texas Republicans shouldn’t be patting themselves on the back about what happened in Tarrant County, either. They should apologize to Shafi if they know him personally.
The attacks he endured were personal — and they were enabled by Republicans who aren’t outright bigots, but often look the other way when Americans like Shafi endure such things.