Minorities should be governor’s priority
Summer 2020. Americans, confined to their homes due to a raging pandemic, watched their smartphones in horror as George Floyd’s life was taken by a depraved officer’s knee to his neck and his indifferent accomplices stood close by for eight minutes and 46 seconds. However, it was in the pages of this chapter of the long American story of racial inequality and police brutality that the story took a turn: Floyd’s legacy became a unifying force. Protesters from all races and walks of life marched across America against police brutality even in the most unexpected towns like Vidor. Major corporations donated to those fighting against America’s 402-year-old “pandemic.” And, droves of elected officials publicly declared the need to fight against racial injustice and for police reform, including Gov. Greg Abbott, who acknowledged the need “to make sure that we prevent police brutality like this from happening in the future of Texas.”
However, during Abbott’s State of the State address, the first day of Black History Month, he failed to mention George Floyd or any meaningful legislative priority for Texas’ minority communities. Instead, he doubled down on his dog whistle politics of “law and order.”
Abbott’s “law and order” legislative priorities were thinly veiled nods to the historical resistance to social justice and racial equity coined during Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign against President Lyndon B. Johnson at the height of the civil rights movement. The term gave Americans opposed to social progress and racial equity a seemingly innocuous motive for resistance.
As Abbott rolled out his legislative priorities, he threatened municipalities’ ability to control their local police budgets but failed to give more than passing mention of better training and tools for police. When criticizing bail practices, instead of criticizing the disparate harm to legally and factually innocent minorities, he turned the issue on its head and called for making it harder for defendants to get out of jail. In other words, he pushed priorities diametrically opposed to his statements advocating for social justice during his summer visit to Houston and with the Floyd family. In addition, he ignored the need for the police accountability found in the “George Floyd Act,” a bill that aims to tackle comprehensive police reform.
The “George Floyd Act,” filed by Texas legislators, Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, as House Bill 88, and Royce West, D-Dallas, as Senate Bill 161, set out to require officers to intervene if another officer is using excessive force, address qualified immunity, end no-knock warrants and ban police chokeholds among other proposed criminal justice reforms. Abbott, who committed to working with the Floyd family for reform this past summer, failed to state the proposal among his goals for the current legislative session though Rodney Floyd, Floyd’s brother, emphatically supported the longtime-coming proposals.
As for Texas, we are still inking the formidable chapters leading to true social justice and racial equity. As uplifting as it is to know this story is being written with more Texas residents unified than ever before, it is equally disheartening to see that Abbott, who quite literally had a seat at the kitchen table of the ravages of injustice and inequality, chose not to make the most of a moment, in a month so dear to so many Texans. Abbott had a momentous opportunity to forgo political platforms and truly bring people together — and it is disappointing to see him prove himself as nothing more than another hypocritical politician who takes advantage of the moment without truly listening to the heartbeat of a movement. We can hope the Legislature still passes the law and Abbott remembers what his commitment to the Floyd family. Otherwise, the next chapter is November 2022.