Public Schools Are on the Ballot: Why Gina Hinojosa’s Campaign Matters, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. June 8, 2026

Public Schools Are on the Ballot: Why Gina Hinojosa’s Campaign Matters

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

June 8, 2026

Today’s news about Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa’s
launch of “Team Texas Public Schools” could not come at a more urgent moment. Across Texas, school communities are being forced to confront an unthinkable reality: neighborhood schools—beloved places where generations of children have learned, played, been fed, been loved, and been known—are being closed, consolidated, and destabilized.

It was an honor to stand with Gina today at the press conference she held at Pease Elementary this morning. CBS Austin below recorded the event so that you can view it in full.

Here in Austin, the pain is immediate. Ten schools are closing. Families are grieving not simply the loss of buildings, but the loss of community, continuity, trust, and belonging. Anyone who has ever walked the halls of a neighborhood public school knows that a school is never just a school. It is where children learn their own worth. It is where teachers become lifelines. It is where parents build relationships. It is where democracy begins, one classroom, one child, one family at a time.

That is why Hinojosa’s words today matter: “It is not just you.” Austin families are not alone. This is happening across Texas. It is happening in communities large and small, urban and rural, Black, Brown, white, immigrant, working-class, and middle-class. It is happening because our public schools have been pushed to the brink by policy choices—choices that have starved districts, demoralized educators, politicized curriculum, over-tested children, and opened the door to privatization.

Let us be clear: school closures are not natural disasters. They are political outcomes.

For years, Texas leaders have told us that there is no money for public schools while finding money for vouchers, border militarization, tax giveaways, political theater, and the steady expansion of private interests into the public sphere. They have manufactured crisis and then offered privatization as the cure. 

They have treated our children’s schools as though they were expendable, especially when those schools serve communities of color, working families, emergent bilingual students, students with disabilities, and children whose parents lack the political power of wealthy donors.

This is why the fight for public education is inseparable from the fight for democracy.

Public schools are one of the last great public institutions where we still gather across difference. They belong to all of us. They are funded by all of us. They serve the common good. When they are weakened, the entire civic fabric weakens. When they are closed, communities lose anchors. When public dollars are diverted to private schools, the children left behind are our children, our neighbors, our students, our future.

Gina Hinojosa’s campaign speaks directly to this crisis because her own public life began in the struggle to save a neighborhood school. As a former Austin ISD trustee, a state legislator, a mother, and a longtime defender of public education, she understands that schools are not line items on a spreadsheet. They are living institutions. They carry history, memory, culture, language, and hope.

Her critique of vouchers as a scam resonates because vouchers do not create real choice for most families. They subsidize private options for some while draining resources from the public schools that educate the overwhelming majority of Texas children. 

They do not guarantee transportation. 

They do not guarantee admission. 

They do not guarantee services for children with disabilities. 

They do not guarantee accountability. 

What they do guarantee is that public money will flow away from public institutions at the very moment those institutions are being told to do more with less.

And the A–F accountability system, as Hinojosa rightly notes, has become part of this machinery. A state agency can design the test, control the rating system, shift the rules, and then declare schools “failing”—often without acknowledging the structural underfunding, poverty, language inequities, and policy instability that shape school outcomes. This is not accountability in any meaningful democratic sense. It is a system that too often punishes the very communities that deserve the most investment.

This is why voting matters.

We cannot mourn school closures and then stay home on Election Day. We cannot say we love teachers and then fail to defend them at the ballot box. We cannot lament what is happening to our children’s schools while allowing the same political leadership to continue dismantling them.

Getting out the vote is not a slogan. It is a responsibility. It means checking our registration. It means helping our students, families, neighbors, elders, and young people understand what is at stake. It means offering rides, making calls, knocking doors, sharing information, and refusing cynicism. It means remembering that democracy is not something we possess once and for all; it is something we practice, protect, and renew.

Texas is not a lost cause. Texas is a living struggle.

Every school closure meeting, every parent testimony, every teacher who stays late, every student who speaks up, every community member who refuses to accept austerity as destiny—these are signs that people still believe in the public good. They still believe that our children deserve better. They still believe that a multiracial, multilingual, working-family Texas has the right to govern itself.

This election must be about more than personalities. It must be about whether Texas will continue down the road of privatization, underfunding, censorship, and manufactured crisis—or whether we will choose a future rooted in public schools, public accountability, and public care.

Our children are watching. Our teachers are exhausted. Our families are hurting. Our communities are organizing.

Now we must vote like our schools depend on it—because they do.

Hinojosa launches program to fight Texas school closures, citing public school crisis

by Jahmal Kennedy | Mon, June 8, 2026 at 5:08 PM CBS Austin



Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa in Austin Monday, June 8, 2026.

As school districts across Texas, including Austin ISD, face budget crises and the threat of campus closures, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa is launching a new effort she says is aimed at helping communities fight back.

Hinojosa said Texas public schools are in dire condition.

“I will tell you that our public schools are on life support right now,” she said.

ALSO "It hurts": Austin ISD families look to keep community alive on final day for 10 campuses

Hinojosa announced a nonpartisan organizing program called Team Texas Public Schools. The program is designed to train parents, teachers and administrators to fight school closures in communities “getting hit the hardest.”

“Ten schools in this city alone in the school district are shutting down, but it is happening all over this state,” Hinojosa said.

Asked about Austin ISD’s budget process and closures, Hinojosa said, “What I think is important for the people of Austin to understand as they are in the trenches fighting this fight is that it is not just you.”

She also blamed Gov. Greg Abbott for the situation, saying, “And it is important for supporters of our public schools for parents and teachers to understand that Greg Abbott meant for this to happen.”

Abbott, Hinojosa’s November opponent, has focused his K-12 agenda on school vouchers in recent years. In February, Abbott celebrated what his office called “record-breaking school choice demand” after more than 100,000 families applied for vouchers.

Abbott said of vouchers: “Through this program, families will receive funds to send their children to a school that is the best fit for them.”

However, University of Texas at Austin professor Jennifer Keys Adair studies elementary and early childhood education, and says, "vouchers are definitely diverting funds from public neighborhood elementary schools."

She also added, "it seems like in this voucher conversation, oh, it will allow all families to be able to choose where they go to school. But we know that that's not what's happening," said Adair. She added more affluent families are more likely to get a voucher and said, "So in that case, you're furthering the kind of pressure on teachers and we're furthering the like lack of resources that we're offering to children who need it most."

Hinojosa said she opposes that approach.

“I don't believe in public school vouchers,” she said. Hinojosa even called it a "scam."

Austin ISD parent and former district principal Claudia Kramer Santamaria said she believes Hinojosa is the right advocate for Texas public schools.

“We understand as former principal and teacher that we needed to really have an advocate and I think that's what failed,” Santamaria said.

Hinojosa also criticized Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath for what she called a “rigged” A-F report card system, saying Morath gets to "make the [STAAR] test, rate the test, look at results, and then decide who fails and who passes," and added "And he rigs it to make it show what he wants it to show. And he wants it to show that our Texas public schools aren't strong. And he wants it to show that privatization is a better option."

Hinojosa said that if she becomes governor she would replace Morath.

UT should restore Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, Opinion-Editorial, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. & Emilio Zamora, Ph.D.

Friends,

I welcome you to read the op-ed that Emilio Zamora and I co-authored, published today in the Austin American-Statesman. We are grateful to the editors for publishing it and for helping bring public attention to the importance of restoring Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at UT Austin.

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

UT should restore Mexican American and Latina/o Studies

By Angela Valenzuela and Emilio Zamora,Guest columnists
June 4, 2026 Austin American-Statesman

Mexican American and Latina/o Studies helps students understand the people, history and culture that shape Texas. UT should restore it, professors Angela Valenzuela and Emilio Zamora write.

Aaron Martinez/American-Statesman 

Concerns about the University of Texas’ commitment to a broad and inclusive education have grown since the dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion programs on the Austin campus. Those concerns deepened recently when the College of Liberal Arts consolidated four important departments— African and African Diaspora Studies, American Studies,Mexican American and Latina/o Studies (MALS), and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies — into a new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis.

The decisionraises important questions about the university’s intentions, its academic mission, its contractual obligations to faculty members, staff and students, and whether administrators followed the review process such a significant restructuring requires.

The new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis is now responsible for administering four fully developed academic programs with hundreds of faculty members, staff and students, each grounded in their distinct histories, scholarly traditions and educational goals. That arrangement is not a viable proposition, given the scale of the undertaking and the difficulty of administering a bloated department. Whether its officials anticipate it or not, a perverse incentive exists to pare down the new department to more manageable proportions, thereby diminishing the intellectual and curricular integrity of the fields serving students across the university.

Universities exist not merely to transmit established knowledge but alsoto generate new knowledge, cultivate critical inquiry and help students understand the full complexity of the societies in which they live. As one of the state’s two flagship public universities, UT Austin bears a special responsibility to prepare students for leadership in an increasingly diverse state and nation.

Programs such as MALS help students understand the histories, cultures, labor, civic contributions and lived experiences that have shaped Texas for generations. Weakening fields dedicated to such study risks narrowing, rather than expanding, students' understanding of the state they will inherit and help lead.

Major restructuring like what has occurred at UT allows a university to bypass standard personnel and budgetary rules governing employment and funding arrangements. Faculty, staff and students in the affected departments have been left feeling deeply insecure. Theirs is an uncertain future at the university.

Equally troubling are questions about the process that led to the decision. University officials know the importance of consulting faculty, students, staff, alumni and community partners when making decisions of this magnitude. Yet consolidation was not fully explained to the public or to key stakeholders. Nor was it accompanied by a statement of anticipated impact.

The review committee appointed by university officials to explore the possibility of restructuring the College of Liberal Arts did not include faculty representation either from MALS or Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies. Also, the university has not solicited feedback or encouraged a public dialogue on such an important issue.
The Latino Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education, a statewide advocacy organization, has made formal requests to meet with UT President James Davis and discuss its concerns. He has not responded in three months.

Universities make difficult decisions all the time. But those decisions should be guided by sound educational policy, transparency and meaningful consultation with the communities they affect. In this case, the university has fallen short.

The consolidation sends an unsettling message that the study of Mexican history, labor, culture, civic life, and thought matters less today than during the last 50 years. Advocates of the other affected fields have been equally perplexed by the university’s undue actions.

UT Austin should restore MALS as an independent department. The university's responsibility is not to marginalize fields that help Texans understand themselves, but to ensure their continued strength and vitality for generations to come.

Angela Valenzuela is a professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas. Emilio Zamora is a professor emeritus in history at the University of Texas.

A Report from UT’s College of Education, by Noah De Lissovoy and Deb Kelt, The Higher Ed Advocate June 3, 2026

Friends:

I am proud of my UT-Austin College of Education fellow colleagues, Dr. Deb Kelt and Dr. Noah De Lissovoy, for this powerful and timely The Higher Ed Substack Advocate post. Writing as educators, scholars, and members of our university community, they remind us that the struggle over academic freedom is not only a struggle over content, curriculum, or political ideology. It is also a struggle over pedagogy itself—over the conditions that allow teaching and learning to be intellectually honest, socially meaningful, and grounded in care, rigor, and relationships.

What Deb and Noah make especially clear is that these attacks do not remain confined to a single college, building, department, or program. In the College of Education, restrictions on teaching ripple outward into Texas classrooms through the teachers, counselors, principals, superintendents, and education leaders we prepare. In Liberal Arts, the consolidation of fields rooted in Ethnic Studies, gender and sexuality studies, and critical interdisciplinary inquiry similarly affects the future of knowledge production, civic understanding, and democratic engagement. In both cases, what is at stake is not simply institutional rearrangement. It is the university’s public mission.

Their post invites us to recognize the courage, solidarity, and clarity already emerging across campus. I am grateful to Deb and Noah for naming what so many of us know to be true: when we defend open and critical inquiry, affirming classroom relationships, and the knowledge traditions that speak to the lives of diverse students and communities, we are defending teaching itself.

May such reports from the front lines of our university continue to illuminate the stakes, strengthen our resolve, and remind us that defending education is a collective calling.

-Angela Valenzuela

A Report from UT’s College of Education

by Noah De Lissovoy and Deb Kelt, Members, AAUP@UT Chapter

In the field of education, we know something about what works in teaching. From this vantage point, the current attack on critical inquiry in higher education in Texas is not just ideological—it is also pedagogical.

Restrictions on academic freedom and on teaching about “controversial” topics (including race, gender, and sexuality) are not just a matter of moving the ideological center of gravity in the classroom; they fundamentally undermine teaching that starts from any perspective, since they make it difficult for teachers to explore with students the full scope of a subject and its social context and implications. But the current conservative attack is not just limited to these aspects of teaching. This attack also makes it hard to make connections between students’ lived experiences and class content, and to create a robust learning community that is grounded on care and solidarity. These pedagogical principles are supported by decades of research on K-12 and higher education teaching.

It should be no surprise then that even as legislators and university administrators in Texas seek to reorganize curriculum and teaching across the university, they have also turned their attention to colleges of education. Like our colleagues in other fields, faculty in education have felt pressure to self-censor and to limit the scope of classroom discussions. (Interestingly, in teacher education spaces, this pressure is felt doubly, since faculty are teaching about the pedagogy that they seek at the same time to embody.) And alongside our UT colleagues, we await the results of a shadowy curriculum audit connected to the passage of Senate Bill 37.

In addition, our College of Education dean, who has been dedicated to supporting faculty and reimagining education to better serve the state and its many communities, was not renewed in his contract despite broad faculty support and remarkable success. The search for his replacement, by a committee with limited faculty representation, has been shrouded in secrecy. At the same time, right-wing news outlets have vilified the college and called out specific courses and staff. A recent successful tenure-track faculty search was blocked at the last minute by the university for reasons that remain obscure to faculty. In the context of these developments, faculty are anxious for themselves and their students.

It is important to recognize that any move to compromise our freedom to teach -- and our students’ freedom to learn -- will not stay contained in the Sánchez Building on UT’s campus. Our students leave to teach in Texas and across the United States, mentoring children with care and rigor in numerous content areas. In this way, our graduates prepare young people for all professions. As teachers of teachers, we know that censoring our work ripples like a rock tossed in a pond: If our UT students receive a compromised education, so will their future students. When one considers the various departments in our college, we can see how the damage compounds further. Stellar superintendents and principals graduate from our programs, as do special education experts, health science specialists, and school counselors. Any move to stymie the work done in these departments will, undoubtedly, cause broad harm.

It is important to recognize that any move to compromise our freedom to teach -- and our students’ freedom to learn -- will not stay contained in the Sánchez Building on UT’s campus.

As educators and scholars dedicated to creating a better world for all people, we have organized to push back against the current challenges. Sixty tenured and professional track faculty in the college signed a letter of concern regarding the non-renewal of Dean Charles Martinez. (Neither the President nor the Provost responded.) We have grown our membership in AAUP in recent months, and we have met as a new college-based group to strategize against interference regarding our right to teach and research. We attend rallies, speak at state school board meetings, and network with like-minded colleagues across UT. We are also working to strengthen relationships with the community, as many of us have long histories with public school teachers here in Austin.

Our group knows the stakes are high for students, staff, and faculty. Though this work of resistance sometimes keeps us up at night, we don’t see any alternative. We have always advocated for our students, for their future students, and for schools in Texas and beyond. The times are certainly different – with aggressive forces working harder than ever to muzzle us -- but we are steadfast in our calling to serve.

Both the recent pressure applied to colleges of education and the resistance to it show that how we understand and organize the process of pedagogy is deeply consequential. This struggle is a reminder to faculty across the university that as we fight for content and courses that are critical and relevant to diverse students we are also fighting for enlivening and affirming classroom relationships, community, and collaboration– that is, for teaching itself.

Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center Grand Reopening—Saturday, June 6 from from 11:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Friends,

What a joy to welcome the grand reopening of the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center—Juntos de Nuevo—this Saturday, June 6, from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Home to Academia Cuauhtli (meaning "Eagle Academy" in Nahuatl), this reopening is more than a celebration of a beautifully renovated building. It is a testament to our resilience as a community, the strength of our cultural memory, and the ongoing vitality of Mexican American, Latina/o/e, and Indigenous arts, music, dance, food, and storytelling in Central Texas.

At a time when so-called “culture wars” seek to divide us—and when some would have us believe that honoring our histories somehow diminishes others—the MACC reminds us of a deeper truth: we are not at war with anyone. Our culture is not a threat. It is a gift. It is life-giving, bridge-building, future-making, and beautifully ascendant.

The reopening of the ESB-MACC signals real progress in the life of an important community institution. It points to a more inclusive and prosperous future—not only for our communities, but for all of Austin and Central Texas.

May this be a day of reconnection, celebration, and joy.

¡Juntos de nuevo! Together again!

—Angela Valenzuela

Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center Grand Reopening

Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center Grand Reopening
June 6th from 11:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.
600 River St, Austin, TX 78701

RSVP on Facebook or Eventbrite!

The ESB-MACC welcomes the community back to our newly renovated facility with Juntos de Nuevo -a day of reconnection, celebration, and cultural expression. This free family-friendly event is free and open to all.

This reopening is more than a milestone. It is a celebration of identity, creativity, and the enduring cultural legacy of Austin’s communities. The City of Austin’s Arts, Culture, Music and Entertainment department is honored to invite you to visit the renovated Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center.

Get Involved

• Volunteer for the event by signing up on Givepulse.
• RSVP and SHARE the event on Facebook and Eventbrite!  Follow @ESBMACC!
• For media inquiries, contact Olivia Tamzarian

Upcoming Events 

•  Discover all of the MACC's events: MACC Events Calendar

RSVP on Eventbrite

Arrival and Parking

• The address of the ESB MACC is 600 River Street, at the intersection of Rainey Street and River Street.
• The ESB MACC parking lot will be closed to the public from Thursday, June 4th to midnight on Saturday, June 6th. There is no public parking on-site for the Grand Reopening on June 6th.
• Parking is free in the Holly Street neighborhood. Parking is also available at the Austin Convention Center Parking Lot 5th St. Garage (601 E. 5th St) with a special flat rate of $5 from 10:00am-2:00pm.
• There will be a free shuttle bus giving rides from the Sanchez Elementary parking lot to the ESB MACC and back from 10:30am-10:00pm. Please look for the "shuttle stop" signs.
• The ESB MACC building is accessible from Rainey Street and the Ann and Roy Butler Hike & Bike Trail. For an exact location to the entrance of the ESB MACC on the Hike & Bike trail, type in "Trail of Tejano Legends" on Google Maps.
• Ridesharing and public transit are encouraged. Bicycle parking is available on site.
• The June 6th Reopening coincides with the reopening of the Waterloo Greenway's Confluence. 

View the MACC on Google Maps

Featured Artist & Performance Times on June 6th

Performance Time	Featured Artist	Location within the MACC
10:45am-11:45am	Mariachi Suroeste	Ribbon Cutting Ceremony at the Gran Entrada (Puerta 3)
11:45am-2:30pm	DJ Mira Mira (Xochi Solis)	Main Stage, Outdoor (Zocalo)
1:45pm-2:30pm	Ballet Folklorico de Austin	Auditorium, Indoor
2:30-3:30pm	Fuzion (Mariachi)	Main Stage, Outdoor (Zocalo)
4:00-5:00pm	Andrea Daniela	Main Stage, Outdoor (Zocalo)
5:00pm-5:30pm	Los Fandangueros de Austin	Snakepath Head, near Trail (outdoor)
5:30-6:30pm	La Moña Loca	Main Stage, Outdoor (Zocalo)
6:30-7:00pm	Ballet Folklorico Maricruz	Main Stage, Outdoor (Zocalo) - dancers in front of stage
7:00pm-8:15pm	Los Sabrosos de La Cumbia	Main Stage, Outdoor (Zocalo)
8:40pm-9:00pm	Danza Azteca Guadalupana	Main Stage, Outdoor (Zocalo) - dancers in front of stage

Event Highlights- June 6th

• 3 stages with live music under the Zocalo. The main "Zocalo Stage" is outside on our plaza. There will also be an outdoor stage at the edge of the Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail, at the head of the "snake path". There are also performances in the Auditorium, inside.

• Tours of newly renovated indoor & outdoor spaces. Tour times are 12:00pm, 12:30pm, 1:00pm, and 1:30pm. Anyone can join the tour- meet at the purple MACC tent which is in the middle of the Zocalo plaza.

• All-ages arts, dance, music, theater, and culinary workshops. See workshop schedule below.

• Free children’s art activities in the new youth education classrooms

• Art exhibits on view in the NEW Community Gallery (1st floor), Sam Z. Coronado Gallery (2nd floor), and Auditorium Atrium (1st floor)

• Community Resource Fair featuring local nonprofits.

• Artisan Vendor Market supporting local Latino/a/e entrepreneurs.

• Food trucks on site.

RSVP to the Grand Reopening

The Origins of White, Christian Supremacy: Can 15th-century doctrine explain today's culture wars? by David R. Brockman, Texas Observer, September 21, 2023

Today is David R. Brockman day. Here is another piece by him that explores the origins of White Christian nationalism, a focus of mine these days, as well. 

-Angela Valenzuela

The Origins of White, Christian Supremacy: Can 15th-century doctrine explain today's culture wars?

by David R. Brockman, Texas Observer, September 21, 2023, 11:11 AM, CDT

America is undergoing an identity crisis, author Robert P. Jones writes. As revealed in recent studies by Jones’s research organization, Public Religion Research Institute, dramatic demographic shifts have rendered once-dominant white Christians a minority; the nation is more ethnically, culturally, and religiously diverse. So it’s no surprise we find ourselves embroiled in bitter debates over who we truly are.

Many in Texas still insist (despite historical evidence) that we’re a Christian nation, founded by godly (white) men. Countering this mythos, the 1619 Project locates the nation’s genesis in the year Africans were first brought against their will to Great Britain’s American colonies, framing our subsequent history as one of stubbornly systemic racism.

In the new book, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future, Jones offers an intriguing alternative, which analyzes our racist and violent past and suggests a path to a more pluralistic democracy.

The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and
the Path to a Shared American Future
Robert P. Jones, Simon & Schuster,
September 2023

Though he applauds the 1619 Project, Jones argues that it neglects Europeans’ prior violence toward Indigenous peoples and “obscures the headwaters” of European colonialism. Jones locates those headwaters in the late 1400s, in the so-called Doctrine of Discovery. Promulgated in papal edicts, this doctrine proclaimed the superiority of Christian civilization and authorized Europeans to claim ownership of any newly “discovered” lands inhabited by non-Christians. The doctrine became part of U.S. law in an 1823 Supreme Court ruling that held the U.S. government had “an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy.”

Jones views the doctrine as a “Rosetta Stone” for understanding the “sense of divine entitlement, of European Christian chosenness, [that] has shaped the worldview of most white Americans.”

To show how whites’ sense of entitlement has played out in America, Hidden Roots examines three localities, each the site of white outrages against African-Americans: the Mississippi Delta, site of the 1955 murder of Emmitt Till; Duluth, Minnesota, where in 1920 a mob of more 10,000 whites lynched three Black men; and Tulsa, Oklahoma, where in 1921, whites descended on the prosperous Black district of Greenwood, burning homes and businesses and killing between 100 and 300 people. In each case, the whites responsible faced little or no punishment.

These atrocities were foreshadowed by earlier white violence in those areas toward Native Americans. A century before Till’s murder, the U.S. government forcibly removed the Choctaw people from the Mississippi Delta, clearing the land for white settlement and a plantation economy exploiting Black slave labor. Jones then shares tales of white depredations against Native Americans in Minnesota and Oklahoma. In 1862, some Dakota people in Minnesota rebelled against white mistreatment and treaty violations. At the end of the five-week uprising, the U.S. government hanged 38 Dakota men after sham military trials, most lasting “only a minute or two,” Jones notes, in the largest mass execution in U.S. history. 

Author Robert P. Jones (Noah Willman)

As for Oklahoma, Jones writes poignantly of the Osage people, who suffered forced assimilation, violence at the hands of white mobs hungry for their land, and then, after oil was discovered, a “Reign of Terror” in which whites systematically swindled and murdered them.


Yet Hidden Roots speaks of hope as well as horror.

Interracial groups in all three areas are taking steps to confront the legacy of white violence. Thanks to the work of the interracial Emmitt Till Memorial Commission, the Mississippi Delta has seen what Jones—a Mississippi native who previously authored The End of White Christian America—calls “an explosion of cultural memory work” around Till’s legacy. Duluth and Tulsa have seen similar efforts of truth-telling and reconciliation.

Though Hidden Roots doesn’t directly address the Lone Star State, Jones notes that “[e]very U.S. state contains similar legacies of white racial violence, because every … state was built on the same foundation … the conviction that America was divinely ordained to be a new promised land for European Christians.”

How did Christianity, which purports to proclaim God’s loving-kindness to all humanity, end up legitimizing racism and violence?

That’s certainly the case with Texas. Consider, for instance, the Battle of Village Creek, which took place just six miles from my Fort Worth home, not long after the removal of the Choctaw from Mississippi and for much the same reason: white hunger for Native American lands. In 1841, a company of Texan volunteers under General Edward Tarrant attacked an extensive settlement of Caddos, Cherokees, and Tonkawas; burned down huts; then engaged in a running gunfight, killing 12 Native Americans and wounding many more. In the wake of the attack, the tribes were forced to desert the settlement.

Four years before the 1920 Duluth lynchings, Waco saw its own gruesome act of white mob violence when Black teenager Jesse Washington “was beaten, stabbed, mutilated, hanged and burned to death” before thousands of “screaming, cheering spectators.” Viewed through Jones’s historical and religious lens, these Texas atrocities are not isolated acts, but part of a broader legacy of racism with religious underpinnings.

While Hidden Roots explores white supremacy’s origins, it begs another question: How did Christianity, which purports to proclaim God’s loving-kindness to all humanity, end up legitimizing racism and violence?

My book No Longer the Same traces this hypocrisy to Christianity’s long theological tradition of regarding non-Christians as largely ignorant of divine truth. Christianity’s confidence that it alone has “the way, the truth, and the life” has too often resulted in the exclusion and mistreatment of religious others. But such theological questions lie beyond the frame of Hidden Roots.

Instead, Jones’s religio-political perspective offers a compelling picture of who Americans are and where we came from. Thought-provoking, solidly researched, and skillfully written, Hidden Roots is a clear-eyed indictment of white supremacy and its religious foundations, one that can help us make sense of our troubled past and envision possibilities for remembrance and renewal.


David R. Brockman, Ph.D., is an author, Christian theologian, and nonresident scholar in the Religion and Public Policy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute. He teaches at Texas Christian University.

A Light the Darkness Cannot Extinguish," by David R. Brockman, Texas Observer, December 19, 2025

Friends,

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this encouraging piece by Dr. David R. Brockman, a scholar of religion at Texas Christian University and Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Like the Rothko Chapel itself, his reflection reminds us of the deep value of multifaith and ecumenical spaces—places where people can gather across difference, sit with complexity, and still search for meaning together.

Christian nationalists might dismiss this kind of expansive, justice-oriented faith as “woke Christianity,” but that label misses the point entirely. What Brockman helps us see is something far older and deeper: a faith rooted in compassion, humility, justice, and the shared dignity of human beings.

Even in darkness, Brockman beautifully shows, there is light. And where there is light, hope, love, and faith can take root. It's awesome that the Texas Observer has this powerful section on religion. As for David Brockman, I'm a fan! 😊

Enjoy!

—Angela Valenzuela

A Light the Darkness Cannot Extinguish

by David R. Brockman | Texas Observer, December 19, 2025

The editor of this publication wasn’t exaggerating when he called 2025 “this frankly awful year”: Things are dark, and likely to get much darker.

Our politics nationally and here in Texas is now firmly in the grip of a narrow, petty tribalism that feeds on enmity. Each day brings new horrors; scrolling through social media inevitably becomes doom-scrolling. The loudest voices work to divide us, inflaming distrust, demonizing (sometimes literally) those who disagree and dehumanizing those regarded as different. Meanwhile, those seeking a more compassionate and just society seem feeble.

As our nation spirals into a nightmarish darkness, there’s an understandable temptation to despair—even as the work of compassion, justice, and solidarity is more urgent than ever. But how can we fend off that temptation, especially when it sometimes seems as if the darkness is all there is?

I, too, struggle with this question. One answer I’ve found in my work as a religion scholar is an affirmation common to several religious traditions. Precisely because it transcends religious boundaries, it can speak to all of us. It testifies—in the words of my own tradition, Christianity—to a light that “shines in the darkness,” a light the darkness cannot overcome, a light of compassion, beauty, justice, and love. The darkness, it says, is never all there is. Indeed, the light is closer than we realize.

Like Christianity, Hinduism attests to a light the darkness cannot overcome. In the annual feast of Diwali (reminiscent of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights), Hindus celebrate the victory of light over darkness by lighting candles throughout their homes. As my Texas Christian University colleague Antoinette DeNapoli has explained, Diwali “celebrates the victory of goodness over evil, or truth over falsity, or knowledge over ignorance.” One need not be Hindu to appreciate setting aside a time each year to celebrate these values.

For its part, the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah points to sparks of infinite light scattered throughout the world. This teaching is rooted in the Kabbalists’ elaboration on the biblical creation story, according to which these sparks are “held captive within every object, every event,” as Tzvi Freeman writes. It is up to us to release them from their captivity through the work of “repairing the world”— tikkun olam—which includes acts of social justice, compassion, and kindness.

Again, one need not subscribe to the specific myth to appreciate the basic insight here. No matter how deep the darkness, sparks of light, beauty, and joy surround us—in, say, a baby’s smile, a lover’s touch, a refugee family’s safe arrival in a place of sanctuary, the first drops of rain on dry earth, a fragile monarch butterfly pausing its 3,000-mile migration to sip nectar from a blue mistflower. These simple beauties hint at a “more than” that transcends the ugly tribalism that consumes our current moment. “When we perceive beauty,” Freeman writes, “it is because we have found [a] window to the infinite.” When we let these joys radiate out in acts of kindness to all our fellow beings, we truly are “repairing the world.”

Perhaps we rejoice in these sparks of light because they reflect the light within each of us. Like recognizes like; light recognizes light. The Quakers speak of an “Inner Light” given to every person. This conviction anchors Quakers’ belief “in full equality among all people.” One Quaker site says, “Guided by the Light of God within us and recognising [it] in others,” we “learn to value our differences in age, sex, physique, race and culture.”

Buddhism, too, speaks of an inner light. In a process called “actualization of enlightenment,” one first “turn[s] the light inward so that we can find the Buddha we carry inside us. And then we turn this spiritual light outward so that we can see the Buddha in others.”

I’m not suggesting that these traditions are “all saying the same thing.” Each teaching is rooted in its religion’s own unique constellation of beliefs and stories. Yet they do appear to point to a common, perhaps deeply human, insight that the darkness of division, injustice, and ignorance cannot be all there is.

One need not subscribe to any religion to recognize and draw strength from this insight. The idea for this essay came to me during a visit this fall to Houston’s Rothko Chapel, which transcends religious boundaries and embraces people of all religions and none. Avowedly multifaith and ecumenical, it stands in stubborn protest against the divisiveness and hatred metastasizing across our nation.

I visited the chapel at a time when the darkness had become very personal. An outbreak of McCarthyist attacks on college faculty across Texas earlier this year resulted in firings for clearly political and ideological reasons, as well as threats and online harassment. I carried that with me as I entered the silent chapel.

Quite unlike the worship spaces of, say, Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism, where one might find colorful, comforting images of gods or saints or buddhas, the Rothko Chapel offers the visitor “no bright color, no engaging form, no figure with which to identify,” as Carol Mancusi-Ungaro notes. Nor are there the airy, diaphanous “clouds” of color of artist Mark Rothko’s earlier work. One is instead confronted by darkness: Rothko’s oversize, flat panels, apparently featureless, somber, mute.

At first, all seemed uniformly black and forbidding. But as I sat before Rothko’s work, my eyes gradually adjusted to the daylight filtering down from the dome overhead. Subtle differences in color appeared: deep plum and rose, alongside the shades of black. Gossamer textures, too, began to reveal themselves, whispers of form and glimmers of light in what had first seemed impenetrably obscure. Even on the blackest panels, an evanescent shimmering of the filtered daylight played across the surfaces.

When one sits long enough to let Rothko’s panels speak in their own way, they truly do, as art historian Barbara Rose writes, “seem to glow mysteriously from within.” But they require us to take the time to “stop and see” (as the Buddhist tradition says). They reveal their light only when illumined by our own Inner Light. In this way, Rothko’s panels testify to that which religious traditions also reveal.

I came away from the chapel feeling a kind of quiet joy—and energized to carry on the work of compassion, justice, and solidarity.

The lesson I took is simple: Persist; don’t despair. The darkness is never all there is.

This is not blithe optimism. (“Just look on the bright side!”—give me a break.) Realistically, we cannot expect relief from divisiveness, hatred, and tribalism anytime soon; they’re too deeply embedded in our politics and culture, and they’re far too toxic to ignore.

Yet that doesn’t negate the deep truth to which the religions and Rothko’s murals point: There is a light the darkness cannot extinguish. And it is all around us and within us. Our job is to keep doing the work of tikkun olam, repairing our broken world, by recognizing and releasing those sparks of light, of beauty, of joy, wherever and whenever we find them. To carry on the struggle—that’s our job.

For, after all, we are the light in the darkness.


David R. Brockman, Ph.D., is an author, Christian theologian, and nonresident scholar in the Religion and Public Policy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute. He teaches at Texas Christian University.