Excerpt: Cal Jillson's "Lone Star Tarnished"
In this excerpt from his new book — Lone Star Tarnished: A Critical Look at Texas Politics and Public Policy — political scientist Cal Jillson of Southern Methodist University writes about the state's demographic changes and what those changes will mean.
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In Parents Involved in Community Schools vs. Seattle School District #1 (2007), United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” American law, the chief justice declared, should be color-blind. This view strikes a positive chord with most Americans; every ...
Comments (4)
Richard Moore
This could be an intriguing read – although it is not available through Amazon until the end of the month, I do plan on obtaining. This is quite telling:
“Texas’s rapid population growth has masked some internal dynamics of the growth that will repay detailed attention. In 1800, there were probably fewer than 30,000 inhabitants in Texas and more than 85 percent of them were American Indians. The rest were Spanish and Mexicans with a few black slaves. In 1850, when Texas was first included in the U.S. census, there were fewer than a quarter-million people in the state, but most now were whites and their black slaves. Population took off from there, breaking 1 million in the early 1870s and 3 million by 1900. In 1900, Texas was an overwhelmingly Anglo republic.”
So from 1800 to 1850, Texas must have undergone more cultural change than almost anywhere. This begs the question though – was that change positive or negative?
Stuart Greenfield
After hearing Cal on an NPR interview, Cal provided me an excerpt from LST. One would hope that every legislator will purchase a copy, as one would hope they take into account how their actions or lack thereof will affect the state's future.
jpt51
…and not a hint yet by Republicans in leadership positions outwardly acknowledging the change. The best that can be said is they haven't passed an inflammatory Arizona type anti-immigration bill. I do believe racism toward the Hispanic community was behind the lack of support in the Legislature for education this last session. The adage, ‘what goes around comes around comes to mind.’
Bob Reagan
Both Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Harlan were correct. The failure of the Court and the nation to recognize a color-blind Constitution in 1896 resulted in over a century of legal discrimination against black people in the country, and provided the mechanism for continuing that discrimination and adding new groups based upon their ancestry and supposed physical appearance. The civil rights laws of the 1960s and their progeny did not end racial/ethnic discrimination, they merely changed the manner in which such discrimination can be legal -- mostly to benefit the political agenda of the left wing. Our government, through the Census and other ways, classifies its citizens into various racial groups on the assumption that everyone in each group has advantage/disadvantages, benefits/burdens, and interests, similar to every other member. This is racism -- the basest and most vile species of collectivism pure and simple. The original reason for classifying persons in this manner was to facilitate the Constitution's three-fifths compromise. It should have been done away with after the 13th & 14th Amendments were passed. It should be done away with now, otherwise the fate of our state and nation will be Balkanization and the strife attendant to that.