About Uvalde, I can't help but wonder...

[AmBlue]

How much did deep-seated racism play a role in what happened there? I don't see this being discussed much. Granted, I've turned off much of the news coverage because it's so painful to watch, but for me this is the "elephant in the room." I did see Joy Reid speak about slow police response times in black and brown communities that POC are far too familiar with. But this goes beyond that. The egregious choice by law enforcement to arrest terrified parents and stand down while kids were being slaughtered-- this reeks of not only negligence and incompetence, but also of disdain and even malice. So my question is this: Did the police officers intentionally act with malice toward the children and families of this predominantly Latino community?

I am asking this because I've been to Uvalde. It is a beautiful, quiet little west Texas town. My ex-husband's family lived there since the late 1970s, and I was there in the 1980s. At that time, most service jobs, like restaurant servers, fast food workers, lawn service, etc., are filled by Mexicans. Business owners were predominantly white. As a white person visiting that town, my impression at that time was that it was an idyllically peaceful little town where most residents had lived for many years, even generations. Everywhere we went, people knew immediately that I was from out of town and asked my family members who I was. We went for drives in the beautiful hill country, and went tubing on the peaceful Frio River.

The one thing I found shocking about Uvalde back then was the casual, derogatory way that many of the white people I met there (including members of my own family) referred to people in the Mexican community, calling them "Mess-cans," or "dirty Mess-cans." It was very uncomfortable to me as I was raised in an urban area that is culturally more diverse and, at least the way I grew up, we were taught not to treat anyone that way. There were lots of older white men in those straw cowboy hats and you could sense that they were the "rulers" of that little town. They had a definite "strut" in the way they walked... chest out, thumb tucked under their belts.

So I'm curious if anyone here at DU is from Uvalde and has more recent experience and an informed opinion of this. Is there still a strong racist undercurrent in Uvalde today? Do you think it is possible that law enforcement acted with disdain and/or malice at Robb Elementary School?

[exboyfil]

1. No. They were overwhelmed

Most of the police and the chief are Latino. I don't think race had anything to do with it. Possibly if it had been an established Anglo family pushing the chief, he might have acted differently.

You would expect the CBP to be less sympathetic towards Latinos, but they went in (granted after a painfully long delay fighting with the chief).

It is enough to know that an entire police force of trained LEOs with the same weapon and body armor were unwilling to breach a door because of their safety. Now think about the rest of us.

[LeftInTX]

3. CBP are Latino themselves - especially in Texas

It's an attractive job to lower income communities
It's got decent pay and excellent benefits
Good job security etc etc etc
There are not alot of decent careers options in the border region and the rural South Texas brush region.
Most jobs are service and agriculture oriented. Agriculture and ranching are still very white occupations.
Uvalde itself does not have oil drilling because it is located in the Edwards Aquifer.

My daughter's ex BF was born in Mexico, but raised here. (could speak the language fluently), he wanted to go into border policing of some sort...(FBI..narco or Border Patrol etc) He ended up failing lie detector test in a job interview and joined the Marines instead. I don't know what happened to him. But these jobs are attractive and are a step up

[AmBlue]

7. Yes, that's chilling

LEOs more concerned for their own safety than those they are sworn to protect and defend. I just cannot fathom the calculation to wait and stand down.... until WHAT??!!??

And now we know not only were the kids calling 911 repeatedly, those LEOs knew they were calling, and knew they were still in grave danger.

I just cannot understand.....

[dchill]

2. There are really no safe assumptions...

...but it wouldn't really be all that unsafe to assume, either. I've never been to Texas, so I wouldn't know.

[sarisataka]

4. It seems people really, really want

This to be about race.

Why is that?

[AmBlue]

6. Not true, at least not here

No one "wants" this to be about race. I fervently hope it is not. But with what I experienced personally in Uvalde, the question is one worth asking.

[lees1975]

5. I lived in South Texas, not far from Uvalde, in a county and city very similar in demographics

and the Latino population there lived in fear of the police, because there is a different standard applied to them than to the white community.

Many of the members of the Latino community are more native than the white people who live there. Local politics made for interesting observations in a town where 70% of the population was Latino, but the sheriff, mayor, city council and state legislators were white, usually Republican. The difference between Democrats controlling state politics in Texas, and the white Republican control that currently exists is the large segment of the Latino population that lives south of interstate 10 that is not registered to vote. In the big cities that are predominantly Latino, which includes San Antonio, Austin and Houston, the precincts are heavily blue. But get just one county out into the rural area, and even though the population is still predominantly Latino, the voter registration among them drops.

When I left in 2010, there was still a lot of racist "undercurrent" as you say, and the community was segregated. Even on Friday night at a football game, there was a section in the bleachers where the Latino parents sat, separated from most of the white parents.

[BlueCheeseAgain]

8. You probably have a better perspective than me, as you've been there.

Just from what I've read in the news, though, it appears that these days Latinos fill many of the positions of power around there. The school police chief who apparently was the incident commander is a local man who grew up in Uvalde named Pedro Arredondo. The city police chief is Daniel Rodriguez. From the looks of their pictures, three of Uvalde's six city councilmembers are Latino men (the other three are white men-- no women).

My sense right now is that it's more likely that it was incompetence and fear that drove the police's poor response, rather than racism. But I understand my perspective is only from the news and a little online research, and not from any first-person experience.