Gerrymandering in Texas made positive political energy stayed out of Black arms even when inhabitants numbers mentioned in any other case. Voting districts have been sliced and stretched so Black and Latino communities have been diluted, their affect weakened by design. No ballots have been taken away, however the end result was managed earlier than Election Day arrived. The method was authorized. The consequence was exclusion.
Houston residents know this story effectively. In 2021, the state of Texas took management of Houston Unbiased Faculty District, eradicating native authority from some of the various college districts within the nation. Dad and mom, lecturers, and voters have been sidelined. The justification was efficiency. The consequence was state energy overriding group voice. No citywide vote. No referendum. Simply motion.
Black America additionally remembers how policing and federal authority have operated in Texas. From drug job forcesin the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties that disproportionately focused Black neighborhoods, to trendy surveillance and “high-crime” designations that comply with the identical communities yr after yr, authority has hardly ever wanted permission. It reveals up. It enforces. It explains afterward.
This is the reason what occurred in Venezuela resonates so deeply. The removing of a president with no vote isn’t stunning to individuals who’ve seen elected officers sidelined, college boards dissolved, and communities overruled within the title of order. The dimensions is international. The logic is native.
In Houston, zoning legal guidelines—usually described as nonexistent—have nonetheless been used to cluster polluting industries close to Black neighborhoods. Most cancers clusters in locations like Kashmere Gardens didn’t occur accidentally. Selections have been made. Communities have been knowledgeable later. The hurt was already carried out.
The world is now debating whether or not Venezuela represents a harmful new second in worldwide affairs. For Black Texans, it appears like a continuation of an previous story. Energy doesn’t all the time want tanks. Typically it makes use of maps. Typically legal guidelines. Typically courts. Typically “momentary” takeovers that turn into everlasting realities.
Black America understands that democracy isn’t nearly voting—it’s about whether or not your vote really issues when energy is exercised. Venezuela didn’t get a vote when its management was eliminated. Black communities in Texas know what it means to look at choices unfold after the actual fact, with no significant approach to cease them.
This doesn’t imply each scenario is equivalent. It means the sample is recognizable. When authority acts first and explains later, when consent is handled as optionally available, when management is framed as necessity— Black America has been there earlier than. The world is simply now asking the questions Black communities have requested for generations: Who decides? Who advantages? Who will get overlooked?
What occurred in Venezuela isn’t new. It’s simply occurring some other place.
And Black America is aware of precisely what it seems like.
