While acknowledging that racism “isn't limited to Texas,” a Democratic activist from the Lone Star State told guest host Michael Eric Dyson during Thursday's edition of The Ed Show on MSNBC: “We're just more out and proud with it” and “don’t segregate and live apart from each other, like they do in the Northeast.”
Sarah Slamen -- a party official from Fort Bend County -- made the remark while discussing the comments of two-term La Marque City Council member Connie Trube, who is under fire after an audio of her calling for removal of “those blacks off the school board” was leaked to the public.
Dyson began the segment, which featured a graphic that read “Stand by Your Hate,” by asserting: “The reality is that racism is alive and well in Texas” since the state’s Republican chapter has called for the repeal of the Voting Rights Act because the GOP leaders “believe protections against racial discrimination and voting” are no longer needed.
He then played the recording of Trube describing a member of a local school board:
She really turned black. I mean, she used to be sociable with everyone and had a level head, and then she got on the school board with the rest of the blacks, and they all just ganged up, and that's why the school system has gone to hell.
It's not gonna get any better until you get those blacks off the school board.
“City officials launched an investigation” being conducted by an outside legal firm and “formally censured” Trube, but she only “doubled down,” Dyson continued, quoting her as saying: “What is on the tape is nothing more than me stating my honest opinion, and I don’t back down from that. I never denied what was on the tape.”
When Slamen joined the one-way discussion, she defined an investigation into Trube's comments as “stage dressing to protect all the racists that are around her.”
“I think everyone can look at this situation and see that Connie Trube needs to be out on her butt – immediately,” said Slamen, who added: “The 13,000 people or so living in La Marque deserve better than Connie Trube,” and “Texas deserves better than a GOP” that isn’t seeking “to correct the structural racism” she represents.
Using the common Democratic tactic of taking one person’s viewpoint and tarring all other members of the party with the same brush, Dyson stated that “Trube's comments served to illustrate just how out of touch the Texas GOP is. Her refusal to resign is simply unacceptable.”
Not surprisingly, Slamen declared that Lone Star State legislators are attempting to impose “clear violations” of the law on minority voters, and “there's no way that Connie Trube in District C can adequately or with honor represent the 35 percent of African-Americans who live there.”
“In that racist tape that Ms. Trube made,” the Democratic activist continued, Trube tried to blame the failure of Texas schools “on the melanin in people’s skin.”
The real problem, Slamen asserted, is “the structuring of how we fund our schools and how Republican statewide leadership has failed to adequately fund those schools, like when they cut $5 billion from the school budgets in 2011.”
The host then lobbed another softball question to his guest, asking: “How can the Texas GOP think the Voting Rights Act is unnecessary in this day and age?”
“That's a wonderful question, and I would love for someone to be able to put that right in the face of the party of 'supposed fiscal responsibility,”' Slamen replied enthusiastically.
“Connie Trube has no interest in representing every member of her district,” the guest declared, “and so she should be out!”
Slamen concluded the segment by declaring:
It hasn't even been 50 years that minorities in Texas and across the United States have been allowed to get to the polls with these protections, and already, Republicans all over the nation are trying to whitewash that history.
You look at these radical, regressive, repressive Voter ID laws, and you hear remarks like that from people who are in power like Connie Trube, and you know right away … we absolutely need affirmative action and voters' rights!
As NewsBusters previously reported, this isn't the first time Slamen has clashed with Texas officials. In July of 2013, she told MSNBC's Thomas Roberts that the state's “legislative branch has failed us so miserably” by passing laws restricting access to abortion -- despite testimony she gave that was so hostile she was removed from the state senate chamber.
“This is a farce,” she shouted as state troopers led her out of the room. “The Texas legislature is a bunch of liars who hate women.”
As a result of incidents like that, Slamen has become a regular guest on MSNBC, where she can accuse all Republicans of being hateful, and no one will challenge her unsubstantiated charges.
