Teaching accurate history about white supremacy may be painful, but it’s essential. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently called for the firing of an eighth-grade social studies teacher amid renewed controversy over police brutality. The Wylie, Tex., middle school teacher assigned a political cartoon to illustrate historical links between slavery and KKK violence and the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Abbott took to Twitter, calling for the teacher’s dismissal and outright denying any historical connections between slavery, Jim Crow and modern-day police brutality. The governor added this connection was “the opposite of what must be taught” in Texas history classrooms. Abbott is wrong. In reality, Texas has a long history of white supremacist violence and police brutality toward Black and Brown people. Bringing this history to Texas classrooms would go a long way toward reckoning with the white supremacy deeply embedded in the state’s history. The link between racial violence and Texas law enforcement goes all the way back to the state’s original police force, the Texas Rangers — the most celebrated state law enforcement agency in U.S. history. Established in 1835, popular mythology has long cast the Texas Rangers as the law-and-order good guys of the Old West, dealing out tough, but much-needed frontier justice. For decades, television shows like “The Lone Ranger” and “Walker, Texas Ranger” and novels like “Lonesome Dove” reinforced the Rangers’ heroic brand, masking the agency’s troubling and notoriously violent history.
via wasingtonpost: Though often mythologized, the Texas Rangers have an ugly history of brutality