Portrayal of Southlake, its schools as racist is false. Here’s what really happened | Opinion

Journalist Mike Hixenbaugh just released a book on education battles such as recent ones in Southlake — the community I served as mayor until last month.

There’s only one problem with the book’s portrayal of the city: It’s not true.

The picture that Hixenbaugh paints of Southlake — a city full of bigots, divided and torn asunder by racial animus — bears no resemblance to the wonderful community my family and I have called home for 16 years.

I’d like to set the record straight.

Southlake has recently been the subject of national media attention, much from Hixenbaugh and his colleagues at NBC News. Here’s a brief history for those unfamiliar with these events:

The roots of this controversy trace back to 2020 and the Carroll school district’s proposed Cultural Competence Action Plan, or CCAP. It was an ill-conceived effort by leftists to introduce radical racial and identity ideology into our schools. Proposals included setting up a system of reporting “microaggressions” as a response to a few well-publicized incidents of perceived racial bias amongst teens.

Conservatives in Southlake pushed back. We formed a political committee to elect school board and City Council members, raised money and rallied the community to protect our kids from this indoctrination.

In 2021, NBC News began covering Southlake extensively, portraying our city as racist and intolerant. These stories cast a shadow over the true spirit of our community.

Conservative parents won decisive victories in the city and school board elections of 2021. School board and City Council candidates and yours truly as mayor all won with about 70% of the vote. We took office with a clear mandate to govern as bold conservatives. The community was awake and had given clear direction to the school district: Reject the CCAP and get back to the basics in school.

Over the next three years, Hixenbaugh published more articles and podcasts depicting our community in a fabricated negative light. Having lost at the ballot box, some local liberals sought help from the weaponized federal government with complaints to the Department of Education.

As mayor, I believed that the feds had no business usurping the clear will of the voters of Southlake. Along with leaders such as conservative radio host and author Dana Loesch, we pushed back. But just last month, news broke that the department found civil-rights violations by our school district.

So that is the ongoing story, but it’s hardly the entire story of Southlake. Hixenbaugh knows this, but he ignores so much about our true history.

For example, you won’t read in his book about Bob and Almeady Chisolm Jones, a prominent Black couple who rose from slavery to become ranchers and important city patriarchs. As mayor, I cut the ribbon on a statue honoring them in the Southlake park that also bears their name. Famously, their children ran the Jones Cafe in Southlake, which historians believe was the first racially integrated cafe in Texas.

You also won’t read about Southlake’s famous multicultural celebrations, including our Diwalifest, which is held annually in Town Square. Also during my tenure as mayor, we launched Somos Southlake, one of North Texas’s largest Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations, as well as Spring Fest, an annual Lunar New Year festival. Along with our Oktoberfest, Art in the Square, and many other events and festivals, Southlake is well known for gathering to celebrate the goodness of the people in our community.

In nearly a decade in public office, I witnessed countless acts of kindness and generosity among Southlake residents.Southlake is a tight-knit, caring community, and the vast majority of our citizens are proud to call Southlake home.

Southlake is not perfect, and we don’t claim to be. But the negative experiences of a few people — and the unrelenting attention of some journalists — cannot and will not define a community full of good, generous people.

Finally, it is important to contextualize the reason why these claims garner so much attention. Liberals, with the help of the Department of Education, are trying to overturn the last three years of elections by forcing critical race theory down our throats with a weaponized federal government.

This is wrong and should be condemned by everyone. In our republic, citizens speak and give direction to their elected officials through free and fair elections. And in Southlake, citizens gave us overwhelming mandates to reject the teaching kids that what matters most is the color of their skin, not the content of their character. The federal government has no right to flip that on its head.

So as Hixenbaugh tries to sell books by ruining the reputation of our city, my encouragement is this: If you want to hear the real stories of Southlake, just ask the residents who live here. We will tell you the truth — and you won’t even have to buy a book to hear it.

This story was originally published June 8, 2024 at 5:27 AM.