When I saw this headline: “Texas tightens its grip on white power,” the Pollyanna inside me thought for a second it was going to be about our state cracking down on extremist groups.

But, LMAO!

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It’s about Texas political redistricting.

The opinion piece by LZ Granderson ran with a photo of Oak Cliff in the Seattle Times, and not inappropriately.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Texas Monday alleging “redistricting plans that deny or abridge the rights of Latino and Black voters to vote on account of their race, color or membership in a language minority group.”

Texas gained two new seats in the U.S. House of Representatives because of population growth in the 2020 census. And while 95% of that increase is attributed to “people of color,” as Ganderson puts it, the map our state put into law, “increases the number of districts with majority white voters while intentionally diminishing the power of Latino and Black voters by attaching their communities to heavily white districts. For example, 60% of new state Senate districts are majority white despite white residents making up less than 40% of the population.”

From Granderson’s column:

Latino Texans make up nearly 40% of the population, but just seven of the 38 congressional districts are predominantly Latino. Since 2010, Latino growth has outpaced that of white residents 11 to 1, and this new map is Abbott’s response. Or how about this: Texas is home to the largest Black population in the country, and not one of the 38 congressional districts in the state will be predominantly Black. What’s happening in Texas isn’t underrepresentation by happenstance, it is deliberate suppression.

Granderson points out that this whitewashing is no accident.

“White Texas lawmakers want all the political power that comes from being the nation’s third-fastest growing state but none of the political changes from being the nation’s second-most diverse.,” he says.

Read the column here.