Dems Face An Unequal Poltiical Playing Field

Republicans Face No Accountability Because Voters Don't Know Or Want To Stop Them

The results of the 2003 mid-decade redistricting in Texas set a new precedent that Republicans are trying to use again this year.

I might have told this story before, so bear with me:

Throughout elementary school and junior high school, I had bullies. By sixth grade, I had had enough of it. One particular morning in March, I was walking up the stairs with my class at the start of the day. Out of nowhere, my primary bully grabbed the back of my head and pushed it into the wall. My braces cut the back of my lip, and blood started pouring over my lower lip. In what a friend later described as something from Dracula, I turned around, blood pouring down my chin, and punched the bully in the face, causing him to fall backwards and almost down a flight of stairs.

Within minutes, I was ushered to the principal’s office, holding a blood-soaked tissue against the top of the inside of my mouth. Both my bully and I got detention, and I was threatened with suspension. The bully was not. My mother, who was a member of the Home School Association (our PTA), was called to the principal’s office for a conference. She protested the unequal punishment.

The principal shut down any protest of unequal treatment with a quote that has lived rent-free in my head for 30 years:

“I expect it from him, I don’t expect it from you. You’re better than this.”

It might not surprise you that the bullying didn’t stop. Two months later, on my 12th birthday, the same bully decided to give me birthday punches for himself and every other student in the class. There were 32 kids in the class. You do the math. I was left with a giant black and blue that my pediatrician said could’ve caused a dangerous blood clot. When I showed the huge bruise to my principal, he just smirked.

“Boys will be boys,” he told my mother.

Boys will be boys, giving each other a hematoma.

The bullying didn’t stop until I graduated. My bullies were empowered by the fact that I got in trouble for fighting back. They relished the idea of eliciting a response that might get me in trouble, perhaps even suspended or expelled. They knew the rules were different for me than for them. The principal expected it from them, so he tolerated it from them, but he didn’t expect it from me, and thus wouldn’t tolerate it from me. The best way to ruin me was to get me to fight back. The game was rigged so they would win each time.

Are you figuring out the relevance of this story yet?