Black Male Lives Are Not Disposable: Confronting Gun Violence and Anti-Blackness, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Black Male Lives Are Not Disposable: Confronting Gun Violence & Anti-Blackness

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

August 3, 2026

Gun violence is a national public health crisis, but its burden is not shared equally. Black communities—and Black boys and men, in particular—experience a profoundly disproportionate share of the deaths, injuries, trauma, and grief.

A recent report from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence
documents the scale of this emergency. In 2024, one in every 143 Black men ages 18 to 24 in Philadelphia was killed or injured in a gun homicide or shooting. In Rochester, New York, the figure was one in 85. In Cincinnati, it was one in 81. Although most shootings are committed by a relatively small number of people, the consequences reverberate across entire families, schools, neighborhoods, and generations.

Black Americans die from gun violence at 2.6 times the rate of white Americans. Nearly 13,600 Black people die from gun violence each year, on average. Most strikingly, although Black boys and men constitute only about 6 percent of the U.S. population, they account for more than half of all U.S. gun-homicide victims.

Among Black men ages 15 to 44, homicide has been the leading cause of death for more than half a century. In the nation’s 20 largest counties, Black males ages 15 to 24 die from gun homicide at nearly 23 times the rate of white males of the same age. In 2024, more Black men ages 15 to 24 died from gun homicides than from unintentional injuries, suicide, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, police shootings, HIV, and numerous other leading causes combined.

These statistics require us to say something plainly: Black male life continues to be treated as disposable.

Gun violence Is also structural violence.

We must reject explanations that portray gun violence as evidence of a defect within Black culture. Violence does not develop in a historical vacuum. It is closely connected to racial segregation, economic abandonment, underfunded schools, limited health care, housing instability, unemployment, and the withdrawal of public and private investment.

Shockingly, according to the Giffords Center report, "One study showed that Black Americans are just as likely to be shot and killed by law enforcement if they are unarmed as white Americans who are armed. 39

Disinvestment is itself a form of symbolic violence. 

Disinvestment helps produce violence, and violence is then used to justify further disinvestment, surveillance, policing, and incarceration. Communities are denied resources, blamed for the consequences, and punished rather than supported.

Anti-Blackness operates through these institutional choices. It shapes whose neighborhoods receive investment, whose trauma receives treatment, whose children are protected, and whose deaths generate sustained public urgency.

The trauma extends beyond those who are shot.

Black boys and men are not only the people most likely to be killed or injured; they are also among those most likely to witness gun violence or live near it. More than half of Black youth in one study lived within a mile of a gun homicide. Children living within several blocks of a shooting were nearly 50 percent more likely to seek emergency mental health care.

Every death affects parents, children, partners, siblings, classmates, and neighbors. Black women and girls frequently carry much of the caregiving and emotional labor that follows, holding families and communities together while managing their own grief.

The rising rate of firearm suicide among Black youth is also alarming. Between 2020 and 2024, firearm-suicide rates increased by 26 percent among Black Americans and by 22 percent among Black people ages 10 to 24.

These figures remind us that Black boys and men must be recognized not only as resilient, but also as vulnerable human beings deserving care, protection, tenderness, and mental health support.

Fighting anti-Blackness across aur communities.

This is not a crisis that Black communities should be expected to solve alone. Anti-Blackness exists across institutions and across racial and ethnic communities, including communities that have themselves experienced racism.

It appears when Black masculinity is equated with criminality, when Black neighborhoods are treated as dangerous and disposable, when racial slurs and stereotypes go unchallenged, and when communities pursue their own advancement by distancing themselves from Black people.

Meaningful Black-Brown and multiracial solidarity requires more than symbolic declarations. It requires confronting anti-Blackness in our homes, organizations, schools, universities, churches, movements, and public policies.

Black boys and men should not have to be perfect, respectable, middle class, academically successful, compliant, or unarmed for their lives to matter. Their humanity is not conditional.

From punishment to prevention and healing.

Evidence-based gun-safety laws—including firearm licensing, waiting periods, and strong public-carry laws—can reduce homicides. These policies must be combined with sustained investments in community-led violence-intervention programs, mental health care, youth employment, quality education, stable housing, mediation, mentorship, and trauma recovery.

We must choose prevention over abandonment, healing over punishment, investment over criminalization, and solidarity over racial division.

Black boys and men deserve to grow older. They deserve safety, opportunity, joy, dignity, and belonging.

Black male lives are not disposable. Our policies, institutions, communities, and collective actions must finally demonstrate that truth.

Reference

https://www.ddtonline.com/communities-crime-local-content/one-year-later-seeking-justice-james

REPORT

Gun Violence in Black Communities
by ALEX NGUYEN & KELLY DRANE 

Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence | APRIL 14, 2026

Introduction
For decades, gun violence has taken a disproportionate and grueling toll on Black communities—leading to tens of thousands of gun deaths and hundreds of thousands of gun injuries. The impact of gun violence on this community is particularly devastating for young Black men. In 2024, one in every 143 Black men ages 18 to 24 in Philadelphia were killed or injured in gun homicides or shootings.1 In Rochester, New York, it was one in 85 young Black men.2 In Cincinnati, it was one in 81 young Black men.3

The vast majority of shootings in these cities—and in similar communities across the country—are perpetrated by a very small number of people.4 But the impacts of this violence are felt across entire communities, contributing to generations of trauma and collective grief that have disproportionately affected Black people.

Importantly, gun violence in Black communities is a direct cause and consequence of systematic, structural disadvantages. Research shows that high rates of gun violence seen today have been forged by past and present racial discrimination, including historic racial segregation and disinvestment.5 As gun violence plagues these communities, it leads to diminished economic opportunities and a lack of investment, creating a vicious cycle.6 This reality provides not only a strong impetus for action, but also a reminder that solutions to this problem must address the underlying inequalities driving gun violence in Black communities.

Trends in Gun Violence

Gun violence touches every community and every racial group in the United States, but none more so than Black communities. In fact, Black Americans die from gun violence at 2.6 times the rate of white Americans.7 On average, nearly 13,600 Black people die from gun violence each year.8

The total gun death rate among Black Americans declined 20% from 2020 to 2024.9 Yet, in recent years, different types of gun deaths among Black Americans have seen different dynamics. For example, the firearm suicide rate for Black people rose 26% between 2020 and 2024.10 However, both the Black firearm homicide rate and the Black unintentional firearm death rate fell over the same time period (28% and 12%, respectively).11 Additionally, police shooting deaths among Black Americans have remained at high levels over the time period.12

Firearm Homicide

The vast majority of gun deaths among Black Americans are gun homicides, and Black Americans make up the majority of gun homicide victims in the US. In fact, 81% of all Black Americans who die from gun violence die by gun homicide.13 Despite the fact that Black boys and men account for just 6% of the total population, they comprise more than half of all gun homicide victims.14

Recently, gun homicide rates across the country have fallen. Between 2020 and 2024, the gun homicide rate among Black people decreased nearly 28%—the second fastest decline among racial and ethnic groups.15 However, gun homicide rates for this population remain higher than rates seen in 2019, before the pandemic, and Black Americans still die from gun homicide at higher rates than any other group.16 Black women also experience higher rates of gun violence than any other group of women. In 2024 alone, the gun homicide rate among Black women was 5.3 times higher than the gun homicide rate among white women.17

The disparities in Black and white homicide rates are particularly stark in large cities and counties. Research suggests that roughly half of all gun homicides take place in just 127 cities,18 driving the elevated rates of homicides in these geographies. In the nation’s 20 largest counties, Black men ages 15 to 24 die from gun homicides at a rate nearly 23 times that of white residents of the same age.19 This disparity means that while roughly five out of every 100,000 young white men in these counties die from gun homicides, nearly eleven in every 10,000 young Black men are killed in such incidents.16

Homicide has been the leading cause of death for Black men ages 15 to 44 for more than half a century.20 More than 87% of homicides in Black communities involve firearms.21 These disparities are even more striking for young Black men: gun homicides are the leading cause of death and more than outstrip deaths from other leading causes of death combined.16 In other words, in 2024, more Black men ages 15 to 24 died in gun homicides than from unintentional injuries, suicide, heart disease, cancer, nonfirearm homicides, diabetes, congenital abnormalities, chronic respiratory diseases, police shootings, cerebrovascular diseases, anemias, sepsis, influenza and pneumonia, and HIV combined.16

Gun violence is also the leading cause of death for Black children, in large part because of the severe burden of gun homicides on this population. In fact, while gun violence only recently became the leading cause of death for all children in 2020, gun violence has been the leading cause of death for Black children since 2006.22 Eighty-four percent of gun deaths among Black children are gun homicides, and, in 2024, Black children were 16 times more likely to be killed in a gun homicide than white children.23

The toll of our nation’s gun violence epidemic, however, extends beyond gun deaths and injuries. The high rates of gun violence in Black communities lead to more exposure to gun violence. In fact, Black boys and men not only are the most likely victims of gun violence but also are exposed to gun violence most often.24 For example, more than half of all Black youth in one study lived less than a mile away from a gun homicide.25 These exposures traumatize communities, leading to and exacerbating mental health problems like elevated levels of psychological distress, depression, and suicidal ideation.26 In one study, researchers found that children who lived within a few blocks of a shooting were nearly 50% more likely to seek mental health care at an emergency department.27

While Black male youth are the most likely to experience gun violence and particularly gun homicides, entire communities grieve and mourn losses inflicted by firearm homicide. Black girls and women are often tasked with providing care in the aftermath of loss.28 One scholar describes this as a “living death” or a “…‘second killing’ of Black women and girls who are forced to relive the trauma of vicarious, violent loss at the hands of others.”16

Firearm Suicide

In the US, the vast majority of gun suicide deaths have involved white people: over the last 20 years, in fact, white people have comprised 81% of all suicide deaths.29 However, more recent data suggests a worrying trend. Suicide and gun suicide rates have risen for every racial and ethnic group in recent years, with Black people seeing a more rapid increase in such rates compared to white people. From 2020 to 2024, gun suicide rates increased just 9% for white people, but 26% for Black people.30

Gun suicide increases—and the racial disparities in these increases—are particularly pronounced for Black youth. From 2020 to 2024, the firearm suicide rate for Black people ages 10 to 24 rose 22%.31 During the same period, the firearm suicide rate decreased 2% for 10-to-24-year-olds overall.32 For white youth in this age range during this time, the firearm suicide rate decreased 7%.33

From 2020 to 2024, gun suicide rates increased just nine percent for white people, but 26% for Black people.

On average, more than 3,700 Black Americans die by suicide each year.16 Nearly 3 in 5 (59%) involve firearms.16 However, scholarship suggests that these numbers likely undercount the burden of suicide in this community. Black Americans face numerous barriers to accessing mental health care,34 meaning that medical examiners are less likely to have sufficient data to accurately determine and classify deaths in these communities as suicides.35

Police Shootings

The sharp disparities in gun violence impacting Black Americans also extend to police shootings. One in four fatal police shootings involves a Black victim, though Black Americans make up just 14% of the US population.(In 2024, there were 49,207,745 Black Americans in the US and a total population of 340,110,990. From 2020 to 2024, there were 5,766 fatal police shootings. During that same time period, there were 1,437 Black victims. 36 When compared to all other racial and ethnic groups, Black Americans experience the highest rate of fatal police shootings.37 Police fatally shoot Black Americans at three times the rate they fatally shoot white Americans.38 One study showed that Black Americans are just as likely to be shot and killed by law enforcement if they are unarmed as white Americans who are armed.39

Recent research also suggests that Black–white disparities in police shootings were even more pronounced for nonfatal police shooting injuries.40 For example, researchers found that in Florida, Black people were approximately three times as likely as white people to be fatally shot by police, yet more than five times as likely as white people to be nonfatally shot by police.16

Risk of fatal police shooting if Black

Unarmed black civilians are three times more likely to be shot and killed by police than unarmed white civilians. Importantly, research is clear that these disparities in police shootings are not simply a product of more police contact between Black Americans and police or a product of increased crime in communities of color.41 Rather, police shooting disparities are amplified by residential segregation and the resulting racial biases.42

Police shootings have broad impacts on entire communities, leading to trauma and worsening mental health. One study, in fact, found that a police killing of an unarmed Black person led to a significant increase in the number of poor mental health days for Black people living in proximity to the shooting in the following three months.43 The mental health burden of police shootings in Black communities is estimated to be nearly as large as the mental health burden associated with diabetes in these communities.16

The consequences of police violence, however, extend beyond the shooting itself and its traumatic impact. Research is clear that shootings by police can erode community trust in law enforcement.44 Fractures in police-community trust, in turn, can fuel cycles of community gun homicides and shootings that disproportionately impact Black people.16

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Gun violence is a complex problem, and while there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, we must act. Our reports bring you the latest cutting-edge research and analysis about strategies to end our country’s gun violence crisis at every level. Learn More

Conclusion

The statistics on gun deaths among Black Americans paint a grim picture, but we should not be resigned that this toll and these disparities are inevitable.

Evidence-based gun safety laws can help address the epidemic of gun violence in Black communities. Recent research has found that specific policies, like waiting periods,45 firearm licensing laws,46 and strong public carry laws16 all reduce homicides in Black communities. Importantly, many of these policies enjoy strong support from Black Americans. A poll of Black Americans and Black gun owners found that these groups support a number of gun safety laws, in many cases at higher rates than white Americans and white gun owners.47

These policy reforms must also be coupled with direct investments in community-led violence intervention programs. Community violence intervention programs engage individuals at highest risk of being victims or perpetrators—or both—of violence through a variety of strategies including building relationships and providing supportive social services, addressing conflict through nonviolent means like de-escalation and mediation, and working to support community healing from violence. At their core, these programs ​​directly invest in communities and the people in them, with many programs helping to address systemic inequalities by meeting the economic, educational, health, and social needs of the participants and their families. Many communities have been employing these strategies for years, but dedicated, stable investments are needed to scale and sustain these programs.

Black communities have disproportionately shouldered our nation’s gun violence epidemic for decades, and will continue to do so unless we take concerted, community-driven steps to address this public health crisis. It is imperative—from an equity perspective, a moral perspective, and a human perspective—that we support these communities in reducing gun violence.

South to Freedom: Silvia Hector Webber, Mexican American Allies, and the Underground Railroad to Mexico, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. July 21, 2026

South to Freedom: Silvia Hector Webber, Mexican American Allies, and the Underground Railroad to Mexico

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

July 21, 2026

Silvia Hector Webber’s life illuminates a little-known but essential chapter ofTexas history: the Underground Railroad did not lead only north. For many enslaved Black people in Texas and other parts of the Southwest, freedom lay south—across the Rio Grande and into Mexico. Their journeys depended first upon their own extraordinary courage, but they were also assisted by networks of Black, Mexican, Mexican American, and white residents who provided food, shelter, directions, transportation, and protection (Baumgartner, 2020; Hammack, 2024).

Born into slavery in 1807 in Spanish West Florida, in an area that later became part of eastern Louisiana, Silvia was sold at the age of 12 for $550, roughly equivalent  to $11,568 in U.S. dollars 2025 according to Wikipedia, 2025).

She later came to Mexican Texas as the enslaved property of John Cryer. Between 1826 and 1829, she met John Ferdinand Webber, a white settler and business associate of Cryer. By 1834, while Silvia remained enslaved, she had given birth to three children with Webber (Hammack, 2024).

Any account of their relationship must recognize the profoundly unequal and coercive conditions created by slavery. Silvia did not possess legal control over her own person, and under the doctrine governing slavery, her children could also be treated as property. Whatever bonds developed between Silvia and John existed within a system that denied her autonomy and placed her and her children in continual danger of sale, separation, and exploitation.

On June 11, 1834, Silvia and John negotiated with Cryer to secure freedom for Silvia and their three children. Cryer did not demand payment simply in money or land. He required that the Webbers provide him with a two-year-old enslaved boy and provide a three-year-old enslaved girl to one of his relatives (Hammack, 2024). Later records discussed in the Wikipedia account indicate that the Webbers did not deliver the children and ultimately forfeited a substantial portion of their Webberville property to settle the debt associated with Silvia’s and her children’s freedom (Wikipedia, 2025).

This episode exposes the moral horror at the center of slavery: freedom for one Black woman and her children was assigned a price to be paid through the enslavement of other children. Silvia’s story must therefore be remembered not only as one of perseverance and eventual liberation, but also as evidence of slavery’s immense suffering—the sale of children, the commodification of Black bodies, the vulnerability of families to separation, and the ability of enslavers to extract wealth from the human desire to keep one’s family together.

Even after Silvia and her children gained their legal freedom, they continued to experience severe anti-Black racism. The Webber children were prohibited from attending the local school with white children, requiring the family to hire a live-in tutor. Although some neighbors respected Silvia for her intelligence, kindness, and generosity, they did not treat her as a social equal (Hammack, 2024; Wikipedia, 2025).

Conditions deteriorated further after Texas separated from Mexico and established the Republic of Texas in 1836. The new republic expanded and protected slavery, outlawed interracial marriage, and severely restricted the rights that free Black people had possessed under Mexican law. As settlers from the slaveholding South moved into Central Texas, the Webbers faced growing hostility, discriminatory treatment, and threats of violence. They also feared that slave catchers or so-called "Blackbirders" might kidnap Silvia or the children and sell them into slavery (Wikipedia, 2025).

By the early 1850s, the danger had become so great that the family left Webberville and relocated to the Rio Grande Valley. They eventually settled near present-day Donna, Texas, across the river from Reynosa, Mexico. There, they established the Webber Ranch and operated a ferry across the Rio Grande (Hammack, 2024).

Family histories and regional accounts identify the Webber Ranch as a possible station on the southern Underground Railroad. Silvia was widely remembered for opening her home to people who were hungry, destitute, or seeking refuge. The Webbers reportedly fed and sheltered freedom seekers and used their ferry to help fugitives from slavery cross the Rio Grande into Mexico. Their neighbors, Matilda and Nathaniel Jackson, another interracial family, were also known to assist people escaping enslavement (Hammack, 2024; Wikipedia, 2025).

The Webbers were part of a much broader history of resistance. Research on the Underground Railroad to Mexico demonstrates that Mexican residents and Mexican Americans participated in these freedom networks. People of Mexican descent guided escapees, shared information about routes and conditions across the border, offered food and hiding places, and sometimes helped freedom seekers evade slave catchers. Some endured intimidation and violence from slaveholders precisely because they assisted enslaved Black people seeking freedom (Baumgartner, 2020).

This history is important because it challenges the familiar geography of the Underground Railroad, which is usually imagined as moving north toward free states and Canada. It reminds us that another vital path led south through Texas and into Mexico. It also complicates histories that portray slavery and abolition exclusively through a Black-white framework. Mexican and Mexican American communities were not merely observers of enslaved people’s flight to freedom; some were active participants in making that freedom possible.

The story of Silvia Hector Webber therefore reveals a profound history of Black resistance, Mexican and Mexican American assistance, interracial family struggle, and cross-border solidarity. At the same time, it exposes the long reach of slavery and anti-Black racism: the buying and selling of children, the denial of education, the threat of kidnapping and re-enslavement, the dispossession of property, the displacement of free Black families, and the persecution of those who opposed slavery and the Confederacy.

This important history will be addressed this coming Saturday, July 25, 2026, with Webber family members and descendants present at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center in Austin. The symposium, “Visibilizing a Freedom Fighter, Silvia Hector Webber: A Legacy of Resistance & Black Freedom in North America,” will bring descendants, scholars, genealogists, and community historians together to honor Silvia’s legacy and deepen public understanding of Black freedom-seeking, Mexican American solidarity, and cross-border resistance.

The free symposium will take place from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the ESB-MACC, 600 River Street, Austin, Texas. As I shared in an earlier blog post, the gathering is part of the Webber Family Preservation Project and will highlight both the Webber family’s history and the important work descendants are undertaking to recover and preserve their ancestral histories, cultures, and historic sites (Valenzuela, 2026).

Source note: This account draws principally on historian María Esther Hammack’s archival research on Silvia Hector Webber, including her discovery and transcription of the 1834 freedom papers that secured freedom for Silvia and her three young children. It also draws on Hammack’s authoritative biographical entry in the Handbook of Texas Online and the Wikipedia entry “Silvia and John Webber.” Broader historical context regarding the southbound Underground Railroad and Mexico’s importance as a destination for freedom seekers comes from Alice L. Baumgartner’s South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War.

References

Baumgartner, A. L. (2020). South to freedom: Runaway slaves to Mexico and the road to the Civil War. Basic Books.

Hammack, M. E. (2024, March 20). The life and legacy of Silvia Webber: A pioneer of freedom in Texas (1807–1892). Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/webber-sylvia-hector

Wikipedia. (2025, May 28). Silvia and John Webber, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silvia_and_John_Webber&oldid=1292671328

Valenzuela, A. (2026, July 17). Invitation: “Visibilizing a freedom fighter, Silvia Hector Webber: A legacy of resistance & Black freedom in North America” at the ESB-MACC, Sat., July 25, 2026. Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas. https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2026/07/invitation-visibilizing-freedom-fighter.html

Academic Freedom in Texas Higher Education is also a Latino Struggle, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. July 9, 2026

Academic Freedom in Texas Higher Education is also a Latino Struggle

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. 

July 9, 2026

I am grateful to see attention given to this important lawsuit challenging censorship in the Texas Tech University System. I also want to thank Lily Kepner for her tireless coverage of Texas education politics. My concern here is not with the messenger—far from it. We need more journalists willing to cover these consequential struggles with care and persistence. May her kind multiply.

My concern is that the issues named here—academic freedom, faculty governance, classroom censorship, LGBTQ+ rights, and the teaching of race, gender, and inequality—are urgent and consequential not only for Texas Tech, but for all of higher education in Texas.

That said, I want to gently but critically note an omission that matters. Latino communities, scholars, students, and organizations have been deeply and tirelessly involved in these very struggles across Texas—shoulder-to-shoulder with Black communities, LGBTQ+ communities, faculty organizations, civil rights groups, students, and other allies. These fights are not new to us. They are the same fights over curriculum, representation, Ethnic Studies, DEI, academic freedom, and the right of students to receive a truthful and complete education.

Indeed, many of us have researched, documented, testified, organized, and published on these issues for years, including the harms produced by SB 17, attacks on DEI, the chilling of race- and gender-conscious scholarship, and the broader dismantling of democratic governance in Texas higher education. Latina/o students and faculty are not peripheral to this story. 

We are central to so much of it.

That is why it is disappointing to see the article frame the issue almost exclusively through Black communities and Black professors, without also naming the Latino communities and scholars who are likewise targeted by these policies and who have been in the struggle from the beginning. In Texas, this omission is especially consequential. 

Latina/o students make up a major share of the state’s public higher education population. Many of the programs, courses, histories, and pedagogies now under threat—Mexican American Studies, Latina/o Studies, Ethnic Studies, bilingual education, immigration studies, borderlands history, and critical policy research—speak directly to our communities’ lives and futures.

This is not a call to diminish the anti-Blackness at work in these attacks. Quite the opposite. Anti-Black racism must be named clearly and confronted directly. But in Texas, anti-Blackness, anti-Latino racism, anti-immigrant politics, anti-LGBTQ+ attacks, and hostility toward gender justice are intertwined in the same authoritarian project. The struggle for academic freedom is strongest when we name all of the communities whose knowledge, histories, and presence are being targeted.

So yes, this lawsuit matters. It deserves support. The chilling of faculty speech and the restriction of what students can learn should alarm everyone who cares about democracy.

But the public narrative should also reflect the full coalition of communities that has been fighting this fight. Latino communities are not bystanders. As reflected in this very blog, we are part of the intellectual, legal, pedagogical, and political resistance to censorship in Texas higher education—and have been for a long time.

And this is not about recognition for recognition’s sake. It is about accuracy, accountability, and coalition. When the state targets race, gender, sexuality, immigration, Ethnic Studies, and DEI, it is not targeting one community at a time. It is targeting the very conditions that allow for a multiethnic/multiracial democracy to exist in public higher education.

Professors' union sues Texas Tech System over LGBTQ, race teaching restrictions

By Lily Kepner,Staff WriterUpdated July 8, 2026 1:05 p.m.

Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, authored Senate Bill 26, which would invest more than $4 million in teacher pay increases.

Jay Janner/American-Statesman

A national professors' union and its Texas chapter are suing the Texas Tech University System’s chancellor and regents for restricting professors' ability to teach about LGBTQ identity, gender and race, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court.

Brandon Creighton, chancellor of the Texas Tech University System and a former Republican state senator, announced last academic year that the five universities he oversees could not teach courses that advocate for race or gender “prejudice” or mention that more than two genders exist.

In April, he canceled all academic programs “centered on” sexual orientation and said professors “generally” cannot teach courses that include LGBTQ themes.

Wednesday’s lawsuit, filed by the American Association of University Professors and its Texas chapter, alleges that the decisions violate the First and 14th amendments and censor course discussion.

“This case presents an extraordinary system of censorship in higher education, in which professors in the Texas Tech University System are prohibited from teaching the most basic scholarship, while at the same time not fully comprehending the contours of prohibitions that place them under threat of losing their employment and livelihood,” lawyers for the professors' union wrote in the filing. “To make matters worse, professors cannot reasonably make sense of what is and is not prohibited, further chilling their classroom speech.”

Creighton said in a statement that the university system is confident its policies are “lawful and compliant.”

“Our commitment to academic integrity and the First Amendment rights of our students and faculty will not be distracted by lawsuits as we continue our mission to deliver rigorous academic programs, relevant coursework, and groundbreaking research,” Creighton said.

What do the policies restrict?

Creighton, who championed legislation restricting faculty input and diversity, equity and inclusion practices at universities during his time in the Texas Legislature, has said the restrictions ensure the Texas Tech University System provides “rigorous” and valuable degrees.


There is no law restricting what can be taught in Texas higher education. In 2023, Creighton authored Senate Bill 16, which would have restricted teaching that compels students to adopt beliefs that one race or sex is superior. The bill did not pass.

A higher education reform bill he authored, Senate Bill 37, succeeded in giving regents more power over curriculum and defanging faculty governance in 2025, but it did not include specific restrictions on race and gender. Initial drafts included those limitations.


Regardless, university systems have increasingly adopted policies to restrict what professors can teach after a Texas A&M University professor was fired at Gov. Greg Abbott’s urging for teaching about gender identity.

The viral fallout ultimately resulted in the president of Texas A&M stepping down, and the A&M System restricting courses that “advocate” for gender identity or race. Before Creighton was appointed, the Texas Tech University System banned teaching that there were more than two genders, and the University of Texas System also announced an audit of courses concerning gender identity.

The professors' union lawsuit specifically targets two decisions from Creighton that go further. In one of his first acts as chancellor, Creighton banned advocacy or promotion of race or sex-based “prejudice.”

In April, when he announced the cancellation of programs that teach sexual orientation, or gender identity, Creighton instituted a “strict prohibition on (sexual orientation or gender identity) content in all core and lower-level undergraduate courses,” and on “instruction that advocates for concepts of inherent racial or sexual superiority, inherent bias, or collective guilt.” That order did not apply to teaching about historical events tied to LGBTQ and civil rights.

The legal filing states Creighton’s orders are too vague, “chilling” any speech that has to do with LGBTQ identity, gender or race. The Texas Tech System provided guidance on its restrictions, but the suit maintains that the orders suppressed professors' academic freedom.

TJ Geiger, the vice president of the Texas Tech University AAUP chapter, said that the policies have led to confusion across campus, leading to self-censorship and “inconsistent” directives to professors on what they can teach. The limits ultimately hurt students, who “are not getting a full, accurate, and complete education” if professors are censoring their teaching, he said.

“It’s just been a really tumultuous time leading to what I’ve characterized as intellectual and professional triage,” Geiger said. “Our otherwise good work and effort that would have gone into teaching and research has been directed toward trying to figure out where the lines are in terms of what we’re supposed to say or not say.”

What is the lawsuit seeking?

The 84-page court filing asks a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas to prevent Creighton’s directives from being enforced.


Antonio Ingram, senior counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, a legal organization focused on racial justice that is representing the professors' union, said the restrictions have prevented professors at Texas Tech University’s medical school from teaching about health disparities based on race, and left law professors unsure about how to teach about legal victories for racial equality.

A spokesperson for Creighton did not immediately respond to the claims.

“These are targeting Black communities, Black professors,” Ingram said. “We want the federal court in El Paso to declare the memorandums unconstitutional based on First Amendment violations, based on vagueness, and based on its racial discrimination.”

This is a breaking story that will be updated.


July 8, 2026|Updated July 8, 2026 1:05 p.m.

Lily Kepner

HIGHER EDUCATION REPORTER

Lily Kepner started at the American-Statesman in October 2023. She has appeared on BBC, NPR and Texas Standard to talk about her coverage, which has spanned the impact of state laws and politics on the University of Texas, pro-Palestinian protests, free speech, the anti-DEI ban, LGBTQ student belonging and more. Kepner graduated with honors from Boston University's College of Communication in 2023, where she received the college's highest awards for writing and journalism leadership and led the award-winning student newspaper as Editor-in-Chief. In her time with the American-Statesman, she contributed to reporting that won an Edward R Murrow Award for breaking news, won the School Bell Award for Outstanding Feature from Texas State Teachers Association, and Critics Choice for Best of Austin in the Austin Chronicle. Previously, she has been published in USA Today, The Boston Globe, The National Catholic Reporter and GBH. Kepner is passionate about accountability and service journalism and encourages anyone to reach out to her to tell their story or share a tip.

When the Center Shifts: Bad Bunny and the Politics of Cultural Power, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. April 30, 2026

When the Center Shifts: Bad Bunny and the Politics of Cultural Power

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 30, 2026

Bad Bunny’s Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show performance

united music fans around the world, according to real-time listening data from Apple Music and Shazam.

What does it mean for Latinas and Latinos to “win” the culture war? Not perform it. Not survive it. Not even just contest it. But win it—at a time when immigrants are under renewed political attack, when curriculum battles rage across states like Texas, and when the very meaning of belonging is once again being contested.

The answer came into sharp, unmistakable focus in that unforgettable cultural moment when Bad Bunny took center stage in a spectacle as massive and symbolically loaded as the Super Bowl.

What unfolded was not simply a performance—it was a cultural intervention at scale. An estimated 128.2 million viewers watched live in the United States alone, with the performance generating over 4.1 billion views globally within 24 hours across broadcast, streaming, and social media platforms (Brown, 2026; PR Newswire, 2026). This was not marginal visibility. This was mass presence—a re-centering of language, sound, and identity before one of the largest audiences in the world, without translation, dilution, or apology.

And it was deeply personal.

You could feel it—not as branding, not as choreography, but as conviction. This was not an artist accommodating an audience. This was an artist bringing his full world with him, insisting that the audience meet him there. Spanish was not a flourish; it was the foundation. Puerto Rico was not a reference; it was the frame. The performance did not ask for inclusion. It assumed presence.

That is what winning looks like.

But this moment also reveals something deeper. For generations, Latina/os have been cast through a narrow and racialized script—criminal, foreign, disposable. These narratives were not accidental; they were produced through institutions that controlled what stories could be told and how. Film, television, journalism, and publishing have long functioned as gatekeeping structures that shape public perception and, in turn, public policy. When a community is consistently misrepresented, it becomes easier to marginalize it politically, economically, and socially.

Culture, in this sense, governs. It shapes what feels legitimate, who is perceived as belonging, and which policies are seen as reasonable or necessary. It prepares the ground on which law and policy take hold.

This is why moments like Bad Bunny’s matter so profoundly. They do not simply “represent” Latina/os; they reconfigure the terms of representation itself. They shift the center. They expand what is legible, audible, and possible. They interrupt the long-standing assumption that Latina/o/x/e identity must be translated, softened, or made palatable to be accepted. More than visibility, this is a form of epistemic power—the authority to define reality rather than be defined by it.

But we must be clear: this kind of moment does not emerge out of nowhere. It is the result of years of refusal, experimentation, and risk. It is built on the insistence that one’s language, one’s rhythms, one’s histories are not obstacles to success—but the very source of it.

That insistence is political.

If we understand culture as a site of power, then “winning” the culture war requires more than visibility. It requires control over the production of meaning. It means moving from being objects of representation to being authors of narrative. It means asking not only who is on the screen, but who is behind the camera, who is writing the script, who is financing the project, and who ultimately decides what stories get told.

And this is where the analysis must turn to structure.

Latinas/os cannot rely on institutions that have historically excluded them to suddenly tell their stories with nuance and care. Change requires pressure—organized, sustained, strategic. It requires building alternative platforms while also demanding accountability from existing ones. It requires recognizing that culture industries respond to economic and reputational forces, and leveraging that reality to push for transformation. This is the work of building cultural sovereignty—not just inclusion within existing systems, but the capacity to shape them.

And this is where the analysis must also turn inward.

As a people, this requires more than visibility—it demands a deeper reckoning with who we are and how we show up for one another. Our diversity is not incidental; it is foundational. We are Indigenous, Afro-Latina/o, Afro-Indigenous, Caribbean, Central and South American, immigrant and U.S.-born, multilingual, multiracial, and multigenerational. 

We also name ourselves in ways that reflect history, place, and struggle: Mexican, Mexican American, Chicana/o, Tejana/o, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Nuyorican, Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Brazilian, and more. We are also gender diverse, encompassing women, men, nonbinary, queer, and trans communities whose experiences and leadership have long been central to our survival and resistance.

These identities are not interchangeable, nor are they reducible to a single narrative. They carry distinct histories of migration, colonization, dispossession, resilience, and creativity. This is not a complexity to be managed or simplified for public consumption—it is a source of intellectual, cultural, and political strength. And yet, it is too often flattened, sanitized, or erased in ways that limit how we are seen—and how we come to see ourselves.

We are American.

We are not uninteresting. We have never been.

At the same time, we must confront a harder truth: there is no path to transforming cultural power without transforming ourselves. Colorism, anti-Blackness, and the persistent marginalization of Indigenous, Afro-Latina/o, and Afro-Indigenous voices are not peripheral issues—they are central to how power operates within our own communities. 

Consider, for example, how lighter-skinned Latina/os continue to dominate media representation, while Afro-Latina/o and Indigenous voices remain underrepresented or erased. Left unaddressed, these dynamics replicate the very logics of exclusion we seek to dismantle. A politics of representation that elevates only the most palatable, light-skinned, or culturally assimilated among us is not transformation—it is tokenization, fostering an illusion of inclusion.

If we are serious about reshaping the narrative, then we must be equally serious about building a cultural and political project that is explicitly anti-racist, anti-colonial, decolonial, and accountable to those most historically erased—particularly within our own ranks.

Winning, then, is not simply about being seen. It is about who among us gets seen, and how.

Bad Bunny’s rise—and moments like that Super Bowl performance—also remind us of something else: the power of imagination. When communities are consistently erased or distorted, their ability to imagine themselves differently is constrained. Cultural production—music, art, storytelling—is not ornamental. It is foundational. It shapes what people believe is possible, who belongs, and what futures can be envisioned.

That is why these moments resonate so deeply. They do not just entertain; they expand the horizon of the imaginable.

And yet, even as we celebrate them, we must resist the temptation to treat them as endpoints. They are not. They are openings—evidence of what becomes possible when the rules are broken, when the center shifts, when the story is reclaimed.

This brings us directly to Texas.

In Texas, where battles over education, curriculum, immigration, and public life continue to intensify, the stakes of this cultural struggle are especially clear. The fight over curriculum—what is taught, whose histories are included, whose knowledge is valued—is inseparable from the broader struggle over narrative power. Whether in the revision of social studies standards, attacks on ethnic studies, or policies that reshape access to higher education, we see again and again how narrative frames policy, and policy structures possibility.

This is why the question of “winning” matters.

Latinas/os will not win the culture war by asking to be included in someone else’s story. We will not win by translating ourselves into frameworks that were never designed for us. And we will not win by mistaking visibility for power.

We win by reshaping the story itself—by insisting that our languages, our histories, our cultures, and our communities are not peripheral, but central. We win by building and controlling the platforms through which meaning is produced. We win by confronting internal inequities even as we challenge external ones. And we win by refusing to separate culture from the broader structures of power that govern our lives.

What Bad Bunny showed us on that stage was not just performance.

Todd Rosenberg/Getty Images

It was posture.

A posture of refusal. Of affirmation. Of unapologetic presence.

And perhaps most importantly, a posture that said:

We are not asking to be part of the story.

We are here to rewrite it.

And we can rewrite it—centered in our own stories and in solidarity with broader struggles for justice that extend beyond us.

In doing so, we help open space for a future that is more just, more truthful, and more fully shared.

Because the story that comes next should belong to us all.

References

Brown, M. (2026, February 10). Super Bowl LX viewership second highest all-time; Bad Bunny has 128.2M viewers. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2026/02/10/super-bowl-lx-viewership-second-highest-all-time-bad-bunny-has-1282m-viewers/

PR Newswire. (2026, February 10). Bad Bunny sets global viewership record for most-watched Apple Music Super Bowl halftime show performance of all time, reaching 4.157 billion views. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bad-bunny-sets-global-viewership-record-for-most-watched-apple-music-super-bowl-halftime-show-performance-of-all-time-reaching-4-157-billion-views-302701639.html 

What If Black People Had a 'Green Book' for Finding the Schools Our Kids Deserve? by Carrie Sampson, Ph.D.

Friends,

My Arizona colleague, Dr. Carrie Sampson wrote this cogent piece that not only informs the reader of this historical Green Book published in 1966 and 1967 that allowed Black people to travel safely. You can learn about this from a Smithsonian website titled, "How the Green Book Helped African-American Tourists Navigate a Segregated Nation." There is also a 2020 PBS documentary of this history titled, Driving While Black: Race, Space, and Mobility, streaming for free on PBS.

Hence, Dr. Sampson's phrase, "Green Book-worthy" that she applies to what should be safe schools for Black—and I would add, Brown, children. Such schools are deeply committed to educational excellence for Black and Brown children and youth. And they are deeply committed to "anti-racist practices that affirm the inherent worth of Black children." Expressed differently, parents shouldn't have to pick between high-performing schools and culturally-affirming, diverse and inclusive anti-racist education. What conservatives really need to understand is this isn't about indoctrination or political correctness, this is about safety and truly caring for children.

Here is where "reformers" who think that some combination of charter schools, high-stakes testing—together with the punitive notion that ever more stringent accountability measures will save the day—have it woefully wrong.

How many charter schools are anti-racist, decolonial, and for true inclusion of the historically "othered" children? And does this inclusion apply to special education children and others that might "bring their numbers down?" How many of them are linguistically and pedagogically aligned and appropriate for emergent bilingual children? How many of them are even cognizant of the Indigenous children and languages in their midst and embarked on linguistic and cultural preservation?

I'm not saying that public schools do this enough either. What I am saying is that charter reforms, with a few exceptions, are not reform at all. At best, they re-cast the same colonial, subtractive logics of cultural and linguistic assimilation and Europeanization, particularly through white-washed curricula and mind-numbing tests and curricula that teach toward those tests. N.B. English is a European language. It is not native to "Turtle Island," America's and Central America's original name emanates from the Algonquians and the Iroquois. Moreover, pre-contact America was a model of linguistic diversity (Jaimes, 1992).

I am in full agreement that we need a Green Book, as well as that schools to be Green-Book worthy. I would Though threatening to the status quo, what a wonderful discussion such considerations could entail.

-Angela Valenzuela

Reference

Jaimes, M. A. (Ed.). (1992). The state of Native America: Genocide, colonization, and resistance. South End Press.

Townsend, J. (2016). How the Green Book Helped African-American Tourists Navigate a Segregated Nation. Smithsonian Magazine.

What If Black People Had a 'Green Book' for Finding the Schools Our Kids Deserve?

BY CARRIE SAMPSON, PH.D.

August 2, 2019

Black families should not be forced to choose between schools that challenge them academically and schools that nurture and love them for who they are. Yet, this is the choice so many Black families make every day because very few learning spaces are truly committed to meeting the needs of Black children. 

It is painful to think about the conditions that lead to the creation of The Negro Motorist Green Book. With Blacks regularly facing exclusion, humiliation, and violence on buses and trains, the growth of automobile transport was a welcome liberation. But for Black people, it turned out that "getting your kicks on Route 66" meant getting kicked around and getting kicked out. The Green Book helped “The Negro” traveling by car navigate this issue by sharing safe places "that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trip more enjoyable."

The right to travel is considered a fundamental right. But so is the right to a free and appropriate public education. What if Black families had a guide to tell them which schools would provide them the learning they deserve without getting kicked around and getting kicked out? Until we can send Black children to any school knowing they will learn and thrive, we need an Education Green Book. We know schools that literally beat us down, criminalize our children as early as preschool and have academically failed our kids for decades. Let’s put those aside and ask a more pressing question: where can Black children learn without facing soul-crushing racism?

This is Personal

We were so excited when we found a gem of a school for our young children in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona. Arrowhead Montesorri had almost everything a parent could ask for. Beautiful learning spaces. Personalized learning that had our daughter reading at 4 years old. A completely ridiculous outdoor learning environment filled with all sorts of animals and opportunities for project-based learning. 

Like many suburban schools, there was very little diversity. This was not surprising in a city where Blacks make up only 7% of the population. It was surprising, however, for children in this supposedly progressive learning environment to tell our children “I didn’t invite you to my party because we aren’t allowed to have brown people over,” or “that’s why nobody likes brown people” with no accountability or real consequences. 

The supposedly colorblind leadership at Arrowhead Montessori did not have the skills to address this. But sadly, they also lacked the will to address this, ignoring our offer to set up their staff with free training on anti-racist practices after the first incident occurred. To ensure our children will be protected from further unacceptable racist acts, we were forced to pull our children out.  

Education 'Green Book’ Schools

With all of the degrees we have between us, we are utterly clueless when it comes to figuring out how we are supposed to discern the answer to what should be a simple question: where can our children learn and be truly loved at the same time? The truth is, we are in an amazing position of privilege when it comes to answering this question.

Arizona is a 100% open-enrollment state, meaning that we can send our children to any district school we want as long as there is space. Arizona also has the highest number of public charter schools per capita. And we are privileged to have the means to practice the oldest form of school choice by just picking up and moving wherever we want. So, in theory, we have hundreds of options of where to send our children. But there are far fewer options once we consider the two main criteria that ought to make a school Education Green Book-worthy:

• A demonstrated commitment to successfully educating Black children
• A demonstrated commitment to anti-racist practices that affirm the inherent worth of Black children.

To be clear, schools that have mostly Black student populations and mostly Black school and teacher leadership would not automatically be included in an Education Green Book. And schools with mostly White student populations and mostly White school and teacher leadership would not automatically be excluded. 

Whether a school is in a traditional district, a public charter school or a private school would not be decisive either. The deciding questions should be whether this school is truly a place where educators believe in the unlimited learning potential of Black children and whether this school is truly a place with policies and practices that affirm their dignity and inherent self-worth.

As the 1948 printing of the Green Book stated in its introduction, "There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States." We are not there yet; definitely not in education. So, until we can send Black children to any school knowing they will learn and thrive, we need an #EducationGreenBook. Who’s in?

Photo by luismolinero, Adobe Stock-licensed.

Carrie Sampson, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. Her research focuses on educational leadership, policy and equity from three interrelated perspectives—democracy, community advocacy and politics.