barbara jordan

On the top floor of the Bob Bullock museum, there was a series of small exhibits in the most extreme corner of the floor. Hidden behind an airplane (which I never explored the significance of), several profiles of different faces were shown in the museum. I was immediately drawn to the beaming face of the right-most African American woman. It looked strangely familiar.

hammering barbara jordan into unity

It was none other than Barbara Jordan. Although we had briefly discussed the significance of Barbara Jordan when our class took a picture beside her, I honestly had forgotten her achievements. The plaque by her face emphasized that she was the first African-American member of the Texas Senate since 1883 and the first Southern black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. As I attempted to use my sympathetic imagination to reflect on how her political experience must have been, it was interesting to speculate on how it must have felt to be the first post-reconstruction African-American Texas Senator while simultaneously being the first black African-American Texas Senator in that time period. Books such as the Bluest Eye reveal the intersectionality of certain hierarchies (a concept that I have devoted significant attention to in previous writings), and knowledge of this complex experience makes her achievement even more significant.

babara jordan, truly an american patriot

While significant discussion has been devoted to the diversity in quantities of people and animals, there has been a lack of discussion in how political representation has corresponded with this change in diversity. Theoretically, a just democracy should have an equal representation of every ethnicity. Obviously this was not the case in Barbara Jordan’s time period. However, I examined the racial breakdown of the current Texas Senate in the context of the distribution of different ethnicities within Texas. African-Americans comprise of just over 10% of Texans, while there are only two black males and zero black females in the Texas Senate. There were six Hispanic males and zero Hispanic females, while Hispanics represent over one-third of the Texas population. The Texas Senate has 31 seats, showing both are not on-target. There were zero naturalized citizens on the list, although immigrants are a major demographic in Texas.

I drew two major conclusions from this analysis. First, Barbara Jordan’s election was a major achievement for diversity. Even in the 21st century, when the United States lauds itself for having elected an African-American president, there is still a lack of female minorities in the Texas Senate. Second, it would be useful to imagine the election of non-natural born citizens to public office. Certain citizens do not have any greater right to the social contract simply due to their place of birth if all citizens must participate and be subjected to the same political system equally. Moreover, immigrants probably need more representation than other citizens due to structural inequalities that they frequently must overcome.