The Tennessee legislature recently expelled two Democratic representatives who had participated in a peaceful but (deliberately) disruptive protest on the House floor, which their Republican colleagues considered indecorous. Both of the expelled legislators, Justin Jones from Nashville and Justin Pearson from Memphis, are young Black men. They were protesting legislative inaction in the wake of (yet another) mass shooting, this time at a Nashville school, which cost the lives of three nine-year-old children and three adults. The shooter also died.
One might have thought Tennessee legislators would consider cleaning the blood of a murdered nine-year-old child off the floor of her elementary school the very apex of indecorous behavior. In order to avoid a repetition of this indecorum, one might have thought Tennessee legislators would address themselves urgently to the problem of gun control. Instead, they expelled the two young Black legislators who protested the inaction.
Many have pointed out that Tennessee Republicans opted, by a single vote, not to expel the White female legislator who protested alongside her Black male colleagues. (No Democrats voted for expulsion.) Others have written about the far more serious indiscretions that Tennessee legislators have left unpunished. But while this comparative mistreatment is noteworthy, none of it should come as a surprise once we know the larger pattern at work in Tennessee.
When one legislative body tells another what it can...
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