Monday’s with Ms. Marvel: stop mocking the south
In her weekly column, Monday with Ms. Marvel, Wingspan’s Trisha Dasgupta reviews different political issues and relatable topics in everyday life.
February 22, 2021
The winter storm that froze Texas last week was more than just a freak incident, a strange weather occurrence, or whatever other reductive labels people have come up with. The winter storm was a natural disaster, one that displaced families, killed Texans, and left millions suffering.
And no, it isn’t what “we deserve” for voting for Republican representatives.
While there has been an overwhelming amount of support for Texans from our fellow Americans, there has been nearly an equal amount of northern Democrats using this tragedy to push a tone-deaf agenda.
There is absolutely nothing productive in tweeting about “getting the government we deserve” in response to a crisis that has ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of families across our state.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this was a failure on behalf of our state officials. The storm’s impact hit as hard as it did because of the deregulation of Texas’s electric grid, and I believe that state officials should be held accountable for their actions, or in this case, their lack of taking preventable action.
Our state officials failed us, and I’m not denying that for a second. Texans froze in our homes and watched as our Governor refused to take the blame, as our senator jetted off to Cancun, and as officials continued to perpetuate lies about green energy and the status of Texas’s electric grid.
However, last week, regardless of who they voted for, families were cold. Children were cold. Immigrant workers were cold. There was no water, no power, no resources. And no one deserves to go through that.
Texas is a red state, but we have an overwhelming population of BIPOC, immigrants, and other minorities as well. If you look at a state like Texas and think that we are red because of anything other than rampant voter suppression, you’re not looking at the whole picture.
Texas is not, and never has been, the stereotype of the southern red state filled with ignorant people. We are a diverse state with a diverse population, and we saw how suppressed these voices were in Georgia this year. It took Stacey Abrams years to help bring the silenced voters to light, and look what happened when she did. What happened in Georgia wasn’t a miracle, it was years of hard work and effort.
So no, tweeting “go vote!” isn’t going to help Texas.
If you care about the state if you think we deserve a better government, put in the work to help us get all ballots heard, instead of just chastising us about voting. It’s performative, unproductive, and cruel. No one deserves to go through what millions of Texans went through this week, regardless of who they voted for.
