The Texan Threat
The Case Against Texans
The recent mass shooting in New Orleans by Shamsud-Din Jabbar reminds us of a familiar threat: deadly rampages by violent Texans. The FBI has reported that Jabbar was a US citizen from Texas. In a 2020 video, Jabbar himself said he was born and raised in Beaumont, Texas. A classmate from Beaumont Central High School described Jabbar as “a regular dude.”
Texas is infamous for mass shootings. In 2022, a Texas man brutally executed 19 students and 2 teachers at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The man was born in Fargo, North Dakota but grew up in Texas and in fact had attended the same elementary school he had attacked. In 2019, Texan Patrick Wood Crusius, a graduate of Plano Senior High, murdered 23 people in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Crusius was apparently motivated by white nationalism and feared “cultural and ethnic replacement” by a “Hispanic invasion”.
No place is safe when Texans want to kill. In 2017, Devin Patrick Kelley attacked services at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, TX, killing 26 worshipers. Kelly had grown up in New Fraunfels, Texas.
Texans hate American institutions. In 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed police in Dallas, Texas, killing five. This was the second attack on Dallas police in two years. Johnson was born in Mississippi but was raised in Mesquite, Texas. Of course, everyone knows Dallas was the scene of one of the worst episodes of political violence in US history. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald and his family moved to Texas from New Orleans when he was five.
Texas actually pioneered American mass shooting with the Texas Tower Sniper attack at University of Texas, Austin, way back in 1966. The perpetrator, however, was raised elsewhere, mostly in Florida. We can speculate that the sniper was unusually susceptible to whatever murderous urges Texas apparently causes in people.
The violent tendencies of Texans is not confined to mass murder. The Texas Observer reported in 2023 that ”domestic violence murders” there are increasing. For instance, a 34 year old mother was talking to domestic violence investigators when her Texan husband shot and killed her in front of her 3-year-old child. Murder is rampant in Texas. In 2022, Texas had 2026 homicides, almost 10% of the total for the whole country. It had the second highest number of murders of any state.
In November 2014, fire fighters in Fort Worth, Texas, responded to an emergency call and found a deceased victim inside the burning house. The woman, a “fun, outgoing” twenty-something year old named Ashlea Harris, had not been killed by the fire. Her corpse was found with her hands and feet bound with duct tape. The autopsy, according to journalists, found “blunt force trauma to the face and head and strangulation marks on her neck and throat,” and “blood everywhere” in the room. She was identified by a “Jeremiah 29:11 tattoo,” referring to the Biblical verse “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”
Ashlea’s coworkers, Texans Clarence David Mallory and Carter Carol Cervantez, were convicted of murdering her after Ashlea had accused them of stealing from the store where they all worked.
Remarkably, both Democratic and Republican leaders have completely ignored the danger posed by Texans. Traditionally, there are no restrictions on freedom of movement between states. However, in view of the great violence and criminality found among Texans, perhaps it is time to revisit this tradition. Certainly the government could at least do more to keep track of people who have lived in Texas and then move to other states.
Holes in the Case
If you are thinking that there are some holes in my case against Texans – you are right!
Nothing I have written about supposed Texan violence differentiates Texan crimes from the crimes of anyone else. While school shootings are horrific events, we know that there have been similarly horrific school shootings in Colorado, Connecticut, and Florida, as well as other mass murders throughout the country. This applies even more to regular murders, whether as part of domestic violence or revenge. Texas has the second highest number of homicides merely because it has the second highest population. Its homicide rate, 67/million in 2022, was lower than 19 other states and close to the national average of 63/million.
Imagine if instead of a little blog I had a mass media empire and an axe to grind against Texas. I could run a story every week about a different horrible crime that occurred in Texas. Such a campaign may seem stupid and unfair to you now, but if you were subjected to it week after week as a viewer, you might see things differently. You would start associating Texans with violence. You may even start to think of Texans not as fellow human beings but as a threat, a problem to be solved. Any time you hear anything bad about Texas, you may think, “There they go again. Typical!”
It may seem absurd to you that anyone could gin up such prejudice out of nothing. Now replace “Texans” with “Illegal Immigrants.” This is exactly what Fox News does. For one of many, many examples, check out the article on its website: “These are some of the most shocking crimes allegedly committed by illegal immigrants”. The list of crime after crime – a total of six for 2022 alone – is designed to look like a crime wave. Just a little bit of thought should show how bogus this “crime wave” is. After four years of the Trump Administration’s supposedly successful campaign against illegal immigration, the US still had over 10 million people living here without permission. If those immigrants committed crimes at the same rate as Americans in general (63 homicides per million population), they should have committed 630 murders per year. Had they committed “only” 100, they would be far more peaceful than the average American citizen, yet there would still be a long list.
The same Fox piece also includes rapes, which broadens the pool of perpetrators to write about. Even though the article is linking the crimes to the “Biden” “crisis at the southern border”, some of the perpetrators were actually in the US since the Trump administration. Fox even had the nerve to include one who had not snuck in over any border: he was actually a Canadian who had overstayed a visa.
People I have talked to about this often have the same reaction: They say “of course illegal immigrants are dangerous!” and then proceed to detail the most recent crime involving unauthorized immigrants. They do not seem to grasp that the same Point and Blame technique works for any group. Dislike the Irish? Gather stories of murderers with Irish last names. Worried about overpopulation? “Prove” that big families produce criminals by finding perps with more than one sibling. Yet many people who readily see the absurdity of finger-pointing at Texans as a special threat to peace and safety are persuaded by the same reasoning when it is applied to immigrants.
Top Photo: Ashlea Harris, a young woman brutally murdered in Fort Worth, Texas (Photo Credit: W H/Find a Grave).