Big Beat

I attended the unveiling of the Tejano Monument at the Texas State Capitol on Thursday. Seated in front of a crowd of hundreds on the South Lawn were dignitaries including the governor and the first Latina Texas Supreme Court Justice. It was a momentous occasion, and I felt lucky to be there. After 500 years, Texans of Hispanic ancestry are officially recognized by the state of Texas. Right there in the front yard for everyone to see.

My favorite part of the event wasn’t listening to the hour of speeches thanking the many individuals who spent a decade turning the idea of a Tejano Monument into a reality. My favorite part was when Austin Community College professor of history Dr. Andres Tijerina gave the crowd a lesson in Tejano contributions to Texas culture.

“In so many ways the Mexican Tejano culture is so ingrained in our daily lives that many Texans fail to see the Mexican in their own lives,” Tijerina said. I wonder what members of the GOP would say about that. You’ve got a Mexican in you!

Tejanos brought the cattle industry and culture to North America, pioneered the wool and mohair industry that exists in Texas today, exposed Anglo Texans to mounted law enforcement—which they copied to form the Texas Rangers—and even served as an example to the United States legal system, which copied Spanish Tejano homestead and community property laws. “I could go on and on about all the American laws that are (based on) Spanish Tejano laws,” Tijerina said.

“In fact, everything that Texans brag about is Tejano,” he boldly proclaimed. “The Texas Longhorns, the Texas Mustangs, chili, everything they brag about today is Tejano. Come to think of it, if it wasn’t for the Tejano heritage, Texas would probably be Ohio.”

Of course, there are many people to thank for their hard work toward this incredibly important acknowledgment of Hispanic Texans. State Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo), who authored the Senate bill that made the monument possible, wanted everyone to know that Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst was at the top of the list of supporters in the Senate.

“If he had not sponsored it, if he had not stepped up and said, ‘I want this bill to pass,’ it wouldn’t have happened,” she told a crowd at a Wednesday night reception for the monument’s sculptor from Laredo, Armando Hinojosa.

“All of a sudden when Gov. Dewhurst gave his support, all the barriers simply melted away,” she reiterated at the unveiling on Thursday morning. “It was because of his simple statement of support that we passed this bill in the Senate unanimously.”

Gov. Rick Perry also made an appearance at the beginning of the event, addressing Hinojosa by saying, “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.” I had to laugh at his cowboy persona, but I also reminded myself that it was the governor who defended the DREAM Act during his presidential run under immense pressure from his party to do otherwise.

“As I’ve said before the future of Texas is tied directly to the future of the Hispanic population,” Perry said. And, as I wrote in a previous story on the Tejano Monument, Texas’ past is also directly tied to the Tejano past. Now, visitors to the Capitol will have a chance to know that. It’s a start.

On Tuesday, University of Texas student newspaper, The Daily Texan, published a political cartoon on the topic of Trayvon Martin and yellow journalism.

The image seems to say that all the fuss made over the gunning down of unarmed African-American Florida teen Trayvon Martin by self-appointed neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman is just a story cooked up by the liberal media.

It features a woman reading a story to a child. The title of the book she’s reading is, “Treyvon [sic] Martin and The Case of Yellow Journalism,” except that Daily Texan cartoonist Stephanie Eisner drew the title starting on the back cover and continuing horizontally to the front cover. If you read it the way it would read on a real book, it says, “Treyvon And The Yellow,” and “Martin Case of Journalism”.

Then there’s the fact that she misspelled Trayvon’s first name. And that it’s actually the rocking chair that’s labeled “The Media” and not the woman. Oh, and I know this is UT, but do we have to bring football into it? Or, what the heck is that on the child’s chest? It looks like she’s so shocked that the media made up this horrible story that she dropped her NCAA championship trophy.

I bring all this up to point out that the cartoon is so haphazardly drawn that it seems Ms. Eisner didn’t put much thought into what she was saying about this 17 year-old child who was gunned down for no reason at all, and the laughable justice system that still hasn’t charged his killer. And all this offensiveness is before we even consider the words being read by “The Media” to the child:

And THEN, the BIG BAD WHITE man killed the HANDSOME, sweet, innocent, COLORED Boy.

If Eisner’s beef here is really the liberal media bias and not African Americans, what on earth would possess her to call Martin a “colored boy”? Her statement to the press apologizing for what she calls an “ambiguous cartoon,” gives us no further explanation:

I apologize for what was in hindsight an ambiguous cartoon related to the Trayvon Martin shooting. I intended to contribute thoughtful commentary on the media coverage of the incident, however this goal fell flat. I would like to make it explicitly clear that I am not a racist, and that I am personally appalled by the killing of Trayvon Martin. I regret any pain the wording or message of my cartoon may have caused.

What Eisner seems to have missed in the creation of her cartoon is that the media is covering the story because Trayvon Martin was black precisely because he got shot because he was black, and George Zimmerman hasn’t been charged because Trayvon Martin was black. That Trayvon Martin was black is the story here.

What’s even more appalling is that this cartoon made it through a board of editors who defended themselves in yesterday’s Daily Texan by saying it’s their policy to let contributors say their piece.

The views expressed in the cartoon are not those of the editorial board. They are those of the artist. It is the policy of the editorial board to publish the views of our columnists and cartoonists, even if we disagree with them.

What’s upsetting about the cartoon is that it smacks of an entitled young, white person from The Woodlands, (and yes, there can be white Hispanics and George Zimmerman is one and, guess what, so is Stephanie Eisner), belittling the plight of dark-skinned children who are not allowed to walk down the street in a hoodie lest they be gunned down for the way they are perceived.

When I was growing up, I’d imagine life in the 21st century and wonder what kind of amazing advances we’d be living with by then. If Hollywood was to be believed, everyone was going to have a flying car and a moving sidewalk outside their home. We were well past the civil rights and women’s movements, so surely in another 20 years racism and sexism would be almost non-existent, if not eradicated. A woman had already been nominated for vice-president, so the political future looked bright for women.

Surprise: there are no moving sidewalks outside the average home and my car is still not only stuck to the ground, but runs on gas, for which people and wildlife die each year. But the biggest surprise is how far we’ve regressed in the areas of civil and reproductive rights. Between anti-Latino sentiment and the assault on women’s reproductive health, Texas has done more damage to goodwill between itself and Latina voters than I’ve seen at any other time in my life.

Let’s start with Planned Parenthood, which was forced out of the state’s Medicaid-funded Women’s Health Program (WHP) in March. Texas law prohibits any clinic that provides abortion services from getting funds from the Women’s Health Program. The Texas Legislature also cut the state’s family planning program from $111 million to $37 million, and then put Planned Parenthood and other traditional family planning clinics without comprehensive coverage at the bottom of a three-tiered list of recipients. The result is that many thousands of low-income women who use Planned Parenthood for basic health care, birth control and cancer screenings will be without coverage.

Then there’s the Voter ID law the state passed last year requiring voters to present a state or federally issued photo ID at the polls. Voters without the required identification may receive a provisional ballot, but it will be counted only if they return and present an approved ID within six days of the election. The problem, as opponents have repeatedly noted, is that the people least likely to have an ID are Latinos. Hispanics make up only 21.8 percent of all registered Texas voters, but account for more than 38 percent of registered voters who lack proper identification, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

For that reason, the Justice Department moved on March 12 to block the law from going into effect before the upcoming May presidential primaries. The department refused to “pre-clear” the new law, saying the statute disenfranchises some of the state’s minority voters.

The day after the DOJ’s decision, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed suit, challenging a key provision of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965, which singles out Texas and several other states with histories of minority discrimination. The Voting Rights Act mandates that these states get pre-clearance from the federal government on any changes to election laws. Which is why Texas had to get pre-clearance from the DOJ in the first place. Abbott asked a federal panel that is currently reviewing the Voter ID law to allow Texas’ lawyers to take the DOJ to court. Texas’ challenge to the Voting Rights Act could end up before the Supreme Court.

While Gov. Rick Perry has described enforcement of the Voting Rights Act as “continuing and pervasive federal overreach,” he sees nothing overreaching about his party’s gangly new voter districts, which reach all the way from Austin to San Antonio, and nothing overreaching about the sonogram probe he and his right-wing cronies are forcing into the uteri of Texas women who seek an abortion.

Old white men grasping frantically at their last vestige of power is what’s happening in this state today. They know the decisions they make now will affect whether they remain a relevant political force 20 years from now, and they aren’t messing around. They’re hanging on for dear life.

The rest of us can overreach, too, by standing up for our voting and health care rights. Texas can become a state that represents the majority of its citizens, or it can continue to discriminate. It’s up to us to decide. I, for one, will use the platforms available to me to overreach my way to a place at the table.

Please RSVP for this event to Nelson@TexasObserver.org.