The sad reason for that is this town once was a sundown town. We have a smattering of people of color, but this being Central Texas we have perhaps 30 percent Hispanic folks (at a guess).
Our law enforcement is hired by the county rather than our town so accountability is spread out over a purple county with a majority of Commissioners who are Rs.
We don't have media across the county to keep us informed, just newspapers in each town, most of them weeklies. Some small radio stations, but dependent on the community for support and too poor to tackle real investigative reporting. In fact that's probably true of all the newspapers too. Gotta keep public opinion on their side or risk losing their business.
And though many loving people live here, there is at least one person that will leave an anonymous hateful note on the porch of a resort cabin where a black family was staying, causing them to cut their vacation short and head back to Houston.
A couple of color initiated a six-month series of Zoom community conversations around the theme Voices at the Table. It's been eye-opening, delving into the history of our town and the town that's the county seat.
We saw a photo of a funeral home ledger, where all the Hispanics who died and were buried by the company were listed by ethnicity, as was those who paid for the funeral, rather than name in the handwritten ledger.
Then when a typist turned the handwritten entries into type, only the white names were even copied down.
We heard from parents of Hispanic and Black kids whose kids are left out of social groups, their bullying is ignored, and who don't get the same opportunities at AP classes. No, no one from the school district has attended.
Maybe only the liberals in town are paying attention and participating. But even if it's only us, it's eye opening and what we have found out is filtering out to others.
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