15-04-2025
At disciplinary hearing targeting Black Kansas lawmaker, ancient tropes and selective outrage
Kansas Rep. Ford Carr, D-Wichita, enters a hearing room on April 9, 2025. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
Rep. Ford Carr and supporters in the gallery for his disciplinary hearing must have felt as though Kehlani and Dreamville penned the lyrics of their haunting 2023 R&B hit 'Shadows,' about them. The hearing unfolded with painful familiarity and hypocrisy.
Tropes, hundreds of years old. Ancient double standards. Selective outrage.
Those there supporting Carr had decades of the Black experience in the workplace under their belts and, like him, have had to walk around with their defensive dukes up. Jobs are minefields, where your ability to clothe and feed loved ones often is arbitrarily threatened.
The song opens:
I can tell That there's something lurking in the dark I can tell That you're tryna catch me off guard
Carr, a Wichita Democrat, isn't the most sympathetic symbol. Video taken at a Topeka pub in January captured a stream of bile and aggression rarely heard or seen away from a street corner.
I've come to know Carr fairly well since he started at the Statehouse, and we've worked together on various projects. He's complex. He's an engineer and a martial artist. He revealed during the hearing how his father was killed.
He was accused of a broad pattern of menacing behavior, but he's not the one denying people health care. He's not the one denying children summer school meals. He's not the one hellbent on destroying public education.
Claims that he created a negative environment feel galling coming from his accusers.
Supporters love Carr's pugilistic style but worry about his defaults to coarse language and physical confrontation. They also know he's on the right side of issues and that he won't show up to a knife fight with pom pons.
Supporters also recognize the games his opponents are playing with his House seat, with his character and with his constituents. Like him, they've likely said:
And I'm trying my best, my best to keep from going under And it's hard to forget All the rain when we keep hearing the thunder
It just feels like shadows keep following me
Carr's supporters had a larger concern: how Black people with strong, culturally authentic voices, from Malcolm X in the 1960s to Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett today, get policed.
There's always a color tax. Whatever problem you have in this society, if you add Black, your situation worsens. Our mistakes cost us more. Our achievements mean less.
Carr touched on this during the hearing. He said of the more than 6,000 people who have served as legislators, only 128 were Black, or 2.13%. That percentage represents more than 90 percent of legislators hauled into hearings like his.
The hearing began with an explicit show of force from Capitol police positioned in the corners of the room.
The police presence brought back a scene from the book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, where police intimidated a client's supporters before a hearing with police dogs. Many remembered police unleashing dogs on peaceful civil rights protesters.
Then, a condescending warning from Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Lewis.
'This is not a political rally,' Lewis said.
Lewis controlled everything from meeting times (changed multiple times without concern for Wichita constituents), meeting rooms (changed multiple times) and what evidence he would allow.
That exclusion also felt familiar. African Americans represent America's 'exceptionalism' because the rights much of the country sings about while wrapping themselves in the flag, apply to everyone — except us.
It's why 'patriots' reflexively oppose civil rights. Whenever they exalt this nation, there sit Black people bearing the scars of America's worst impulses. That's why so many eagerly want to bury evidence of those misdeeds. It is not just that they don't understand. They don't want to understand so they can luxuriate in blissful ignorance of what others must confront daily. We occupy separate realities.
Consider the presence of Republican Rep. Leah Howell, Carr's accuser.
Howell is a small white woman. She appeared in the same hearing room as the towering Carr, a Black man. Her complaint reminded me of historical dog whistles, some made famous by the racist film Birth of a Nation.
Rep. Henry Helgerson, the Democrat whom Carr pushed down during that bar fracas, didn't file a complaint. Howell did so instead. The same bar video showed Howell patting Carr's shoulder as tempers raged.
It would seem difficult to claim fear after doing that, but Howell did so, saying tearfully that 'her conscience' compelled her to speak out, adding that she would have done the same thing had a Republican acted in similar fashion.
Only, she didn't.
In February, Republican Rep. Nick Hoheisel aggressively approached Carr, uttering profanity on the House floor. She filed no complaint.
Howell also invoked racism, which felt appropriate given that many Black Wichitans know her district for its overt racism.
During the past few decades, a cross was burned in a family's yard; residents protested the disciplining of a white child who had drawn a Confederate Battle Flag; parents hounded an educator for showing a diversity film; Black athletes have complained of crowds racially jeering at them. A mother there said bullying led her daughter to attempt suicide.
Suddenly Howell's conscience is calling? Sounds more like selective outrage.
Kansas Reflector reported in February for example, how Republican Rep. Patrick Penn joked — from the House floor — about shooting former Democratic Rep. Jason Probst in a conversation with freshman legislator Rep. Kyler Sweely, R-Hutchinson.
I guess conscience comes and goes.
Probst shared a story on his Substack blog about a racist joke told among a gaggle of Republican representatives. According to Probst, the members enjoyed the following: 'What's the most confusing holiday in Ferguson, Missouri?'
Answer: 'Father's Day.'
For the record, a 2013 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found Black fathers were more involved in their children's lives than white or Hispanic fathers.
Probst added in the blog: 'They (conservative leadership) actively legislate to silence any dissenting voice. They use the levers of the system they control to enforce compliance. They punish those who refuse to be controlled by the rules.'
This is why they wanted to break Carr's will.
I felt it in my spirit. I know they try to kill it … That two-faced sh– finished. Don't push me to my limit.
And that's the game so many people have faced at work.
And I'm trying my best, my best to keep from going under And it's hard to forget All the rain when we keep hearing the thunder
I can remember a nugget of weather wisdom I received from a security guard at my first job. As we locked up and stepped out into a cloudy March night, we could hear thunder grumbling in the distance.
'That means spring is near,' he said, pointing into the sky.
Maybe.
Spring symbolizes renewal and rebirth. Even resurrection for some. A new reality.
But for many of us, we only get rain.
The thunder hovers like shadows, and our springtime never arrives.
Mark McCormick is the former executive director of The Kansas African American Museum, a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission and former deputy executive director at the ACLU of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
