Texas Republicans Run Risk of Minimizing
Juneteenth with Recycled Race Theory Ban

Capitol Inside
June 19, 2021

Texans celebrated Juneteenth on Saturday as a brand new national holiday that GOP state lawmakers will be voting to diminish if they heed Governor Greg Abbott's call for a second ban in 2021 on critical race theory at the schoolhouse in a special session at some point later this year.

Abbott vowed to revive the issue earlier this week when he signed House Bill 3979 into law as a measure that Republicans portrayed as a prohibition when they approved it on party lines votes near the end of the regular session that ended three weeks ago.

But the Republican governor suggested that the new law falls short of the actual ban that he wants to see as a result of changes that the House and Senate sponsors thought they had to make to pass the bill.

“House Bill 3979 is a strong move to abolish critical race theory in Texas, but more must be done,” Abbott said. “The issue will be added to a special session agenda.”

The events of the past week have demonstrated that Texas Republicans in Congress and the Legislature aren't on the same page when it comes to race. All but two of the Republicans in the Texas congressional delegation - U.S. Ronny Jackson of Amarillo and Chip Roy of Austin - voted this week for the legislation that established June 19th as the 11th official federal holiday. A pair of Texans - U.S. Senator John Cornyn and U.S. Rep. Shiela Jackson Lee of Houston - served as chief sponsors of the measure that made Juneteenth a formal American holiday when Democratic President Joe Biden signed it on Thursday.

Juneteenth represents the day in 1865 when a union order that was announced in Galveston put a final end to slavery in Texas more than two years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Texas - the most remote state in the Confederacy - was the last to free the slaves and the first to make Juneteenth a state holiday.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas didn't object when the Juneteenth resolution cleared the Senate this week in a unanimous vote. But Cruz seized on the timing to rail about critical race theory in speech on the eve of Juneteenth in remarks to an event in the Georgia city of Duluth called the Faith and Freedom Coalition Road to Majority Conference.

“Critical race theory says America is fundamentally racist and irredeemably racist,” Cruz declared. “Critical race theory seeks to turn us against each other.”

Cruz sought elaborate. “Critical race theory is bigoted,” he added. “It is a lie and it is every bit as racist as the Klansmen in white sheets.”

Abbott could see the controversial proposal's recycling in special session as a fallback option in light of the potentially unconstitutional tactics that Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick used to raise HB 3979 from the grave where it had been consigned after a fatal point or order by a Democrat in the House. Patrick brought it back to life, however, with a vote by Senate Republicans to strip amendments that they'd added to the bill before a vote to approve HB 3979 in the original form that it left the House.

The final Senate vote on HB 3979 appeared to be illegal on multiple fronts including the fact that a deadline for such a maneuver had expired several days earlier. A legal challenge could be a slam dunk for the Democrats in the wake of Patrick's desperation power play that made it possible for Republicans to say they passed a critical race theory ban without concern for the measure's eventual dismantling in the courts.

Democrats and significant numbers Republicans who aren't elected officials have decried HB 3979 as a blatant whitewashing with restrictions on the teaching on the significance of race and slavery in the history of Texas and the United States. The GOP sponsors argued that the measure was needed to keep young white children from being shamed and overwhelmed with grief when they learn the truth about Lone Star State's racist past.

Sone GOP lawmakers - including most of those from other states - have bristled in recent years at revelations on slavery as defining motivations for the Texians at the battle of the Alamo that Republicans prefer to remember as a tale about people who traveled to Texas to die for freedom and liberty.