Texas Resorts to ‘Old Playbook’ to Institutionalize Bigotry and Sow Fear
Instead of tackling real issues, the governor and attorney general see political gain in scapegoating trans people. Legal fine points don’t matter.
Ken Paxton (54235056781), Gage Skidmore, Source, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
by Denny
with reporting by Evan Urquhart
Texas officials are mounting vague “investigations,” issuing unlawful “directives” and pursuing legislation intended to create government hurdles to everyday life, all with one goal in mind: stirring bias against trans people.
Their campaign, which has intensified over the past month, “is part of an old playbook” that echoes the way Jim Crow laws sought to institutionalize racism and sow fear and self-censorship, Scott Skinner-Thompson, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School, said in an interview with Assigned Media.
“Instead of tackling real problems, governing groups have historically often blamed minoritized identities as a way of galvanizing support from majority communities,” said Skinner-Thompson, whose work focuses on constitutional law and civil rights with an emphasis on LGBTQ+ issues.
In short order this past month, Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general, issued a unilateral directive that state agencies revoke gender marker changes in defiance of prior court orders. Texas lawmakers pushed a bill to bar trans people from amending the gender on their birth certificates, a measure that could have harmful ripple effects on other forms of legal identification.
And the Republican governor, Greg Abbott called for a “child abuse” investigation of Bellaire High School outside Houston based on an unsubstantiated compaint from a right-wing, anti-trans group that teachers had used a trans student’s proper name and pronouns.
Actual legality is, in many ways, besides the point of this anti-trans campaign in Texas.
Ash Hall, a policy and advocacy strategist for the ACLU of Texas, noted this month that Paxton has repeatedly misused his office in wasteful efforts to disenfranchise trans Texans. As the Department of Public Safety told Paxton as far back as 2022, merely identifying specific records of gender marker changes — let alone reversing them — would be expensive and labor-intensive, if it could be done at all.
Texas officials’ legally dubious forays, wasteful as they are in serving the public good, do further a politicized goal: creating a public climate of suspicion of trans people and seeding anxiety among trans Texans and their families.
“Are we still safe to stay today? This week? Through the rest of the school year? Through graduation?” the parent of a trans child told Assigned Media, contemplating what would happen if they had to suddenly move from the state simply for supporting their trans child.
The official scapegoating of trans people has led this parent to have great apprehension of anybody outside of their trusted circle. Could their personal information, the parent said, somehow become ensnared in a bad-faith, politicized investigation?
“What ways might I minimize the disruption of a hypothetical move for my kids, my family, myself?” asked the parent, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their family. Running through a checklist of worrisome questions, they asked: “Does everyone have the numbers of our attorneys memorized? Does everyone know what they are supposed to say and do if they are confronted by some state official?
The drain of living under state-sponsored bigotry has caused them to lose sleep and appetite. “There's the sheer exhaustion. I am just so thoroughly exhausted in every conceivable way — emotionally, mentally, physically.”
In all, 125 anti-trans measures have been introduced in the Texas state assembly so far this year, part of a record-breaking 809 bills put forward nationwide.
Skinner-Thompson, the professor, said that stifling a targeted community is “a critical part of systems of oppression” that seek to skew public views of trans people. So, too, is making trans people fearful of participating in public life, or even voting, he said.
“Disenfranchising groups that one is hostile towards prevents them from influencing public policy outcomes,” Skinner-Thompson said, noting a national climate in which the Trump administration is also targeting immigrants, people of color and supporters of reproductive rights and free speech.
Scapegoating has been a powerful and frequently used political tool this past year across the country. J.D. Vance, now the vice president, blamed Haitian immigrants last year for the rise of HIV/AIDS. Days into his second term, President Trump blamed “gender ideology” – along with green energy – for inflation.
Skinner-Thompson holds some hope that the hostile political climate will improve, at least among the larger public. “Hopefully with time, those that are oppressing transgender people will appreciate that they have nothing to fear from sexual and gender minorities, and that recognizing the existence of transgender people doesn’t threaten anyone else’s identity.”