Woke or Asleep?
To the Editor:
Most of us Texans and Americans believe that all of us of all races, backgrounds, and genders, and places where we reside should have the freedom to learn, become ourselves, be ourselves, and pursue our dreams. Most of us also believe in serving the public good and making life better for us all.
Becoming ourselves or establishing our identities—who we are as individuals and as Texans and Americans—involves receiving and interpreting over our lifetimes all kinds of influences and then assessing and measuring our responses in becoming and living who we are.
One such major positive influence is the book The 1619 Project (Nicole Hannah-Jones 2021). The book has become a major part of the enormously impactful WOKE movement for good, a conscience raising movement that is having or marked by an active awareness of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those involving the treatment of ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities.
But today inTexas, MAGA Republicans Governor Abbott, Lt. Governor Patrick, Speaker Phelan, Attorney General Paxton, and the Republican-led legislature are consciously building an ASLEEP movement: the willful silencing of others through discrimination, oppression, inquisition, and injustice using Silence Laws to incrementally plow ahead to further minimize and marginalize the influence and existence of others. In short, practicing the fine art of perpetuating structural injustice.
Perpetuating structural economic inequality, wealth inequality, educational inequality, justice system inequality, reproductive inequality, political inequality, and political divisions, are but a few of the structural legacies woven into the historical fabrics of Texas and America. ASLEEP as an ideological/religious movement badly distorts the world around Texans and Americans, and keeps many from seeing, listening to, reading about, learning about, interpreting, and defining who we more realistically are.
We have a moral responsibility henceforth to acknowledge and take action to minimize or eliminate legacies of injustice—many of which are intentionally maintained structurally and about which too many of us are unaware, won’t admit to, or lack the courage to change—as part of our ongoing efforts to serve the public good and make life better for everyone.
Senator Kolkhorst and Representative Kitzman, join with Texans to demand an end to ASLEEP and its enabling Silence Laws, so nothing stands in the way of telling the truth about history nor in the way of us becoming more realistically who we are as Texans. Lead us to further a morally responsible Texas agenda to serve the public good and make life better for all Texans.