A Civil Rights Sunday of Clips

Scanning the headlines at QuorumReport (the fast way to keep up) there is a striking frequency of Civil Rights news today, with all of the stories (but one) referring to Congress or a Federal Court.

In East Texas, a community of black folks have filed a federal suit against the Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) for racist behaviors. The TRC for its part says it is waiting on “formal notice of the lawsuit,” which is a nice way of helping the rest of us begin to understand its official attitude.
My own impressions of the TRC were formed back in the day of Commissioner Kent Hance (who beat George Bush, Jr. in a long-ago Congressional race by out-Bibling the now Bible-armored president.) Anyway, as my memory goes, Hance once took his experience as TRC commissioner to OPEC in a goodwill effort to help his brothers in petrol understand how you do a cartel the right way.

Today’s story from the New York Times wonders if the DeBerry community can prove that TRC has managed nearby oilfield waste in a manner that discriminates on the basis of race and class. We’ll root for the underdog while we wonder out loud if the social history of petrodollars isn’t a kind of global racism at root.

Federal judges Barefoot Sanders and William Wayne Justice are back in the news. Sanders will take no new cases. He was appointed by Carter in 1979, the year that New Deal Liberalism took its last breath. Sanders will go down in history as the judge who worked on desegregation of Dallas schools.

Judge Justice will hear a motion later this month to re-open an old federal case regarding discrimination against students with limited English proficiency (LEP). MALDEF filed the motion on behalf of one-in-six Texas students who fall into that class. It’s a legal strategy that takes Texas school funding back down the federal route, since the state route has been rendered hopeless by the Texas Supreme Court in alliance with Republican leadership.

Of course the state route had been suggested by Thurgood Marshall who was obliged to write a dissenting opinion when the US Supreme Court refused to act. Back and forth. Between and beyond. If you’re going to do Civil Rights in Texas, you’d better be riding the Eveready Jackrabbit.

Education funding is the topic of a San Antonio editorial. Under a state law passed in 2001, anyone who graduates from a Texas high school is granted in-state rates for college tuition. But the mighty, mighty Congress is talking about ‘proof of citizenship’ again, and this could be bad news for some high school grads seeking in-state rates. The Express News writes a helpful editorial, which maybe some Republicans will read.

In Dallas and Houston, the newspapers are talking about the death penalty. Houston Chronicle reporters Lise Olsen and Maro Robbins keep up their work on the wrongful execution of Ruben Cantu. The Morning News editorial board cites work being done at the Chicago Tribune on another wrongful execution. This story doesn’t explicitly involve federal power, but some day it will. If killing someone is not cruel, then what is? But the punishment must also be unusual, and that day is drawing nearer.

Finally, as if our dear readers did not know, there was a hearing in Laredo on Friday. Reporter David McLemore strikes a tone we are able to appreciate, although, we would have wanted more paragraphs like this:

“You have to wonder why the Republican-led subcommittee is taking evidence on immigration reform legislation that has already passed both the Senate and the House,” said Rep. Sylvestre Reyes of El Paso. Joining him were Charlie Gonzalez of San Antonio, Rubén Hinojosa of Mercedes and Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston. “Congress needs to get back to work in Washington to reach a compromise agreement.”

Reyes, please remember, was onetime sector chief of the El Paso border patrol. So he not only understands the contradictions of border policy from the ground up, but he doesn’t pretend not to, which adds up to an admirable combination all in all.

From Jackson Lee, Gonzales, and Hinojosa we would have liked to see more ink. Still, McLemore managed to get a few words in edgewise: joke, sham, and theater, which proved a helpful thesaurus for the fair and balanced copy desk in its quest for a concise sub-hed. Hope I don’t get anybody in trouble for pointing these things out.