Former Texas Assistant U.S. Attorney Ponders Texas’s Changing Demographics

A former Assistant U. S. Attorney in the southeast Texas region was among the speakers at a virtual conference on the state of civil rights in the United States.  

The Conversations: Newsmakers Conference, which took place on November 6, featured Debra Carr, an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Department of Justice near Beaumont for three years.    

“The minority will become the majority much sooner than demographers had predicted,” Carr told The Dallas Express. “What you’re seeing – when you talk about diversity, equity and inclusion, when you talk about civil rights when you talk about voting rights when you talk about hate crimes and when you talk about economic matters – is a nation trying to come to grips with how to include everyone, but also trying to come to grips with a potential shift in power.”  

Dallas-resident Lovell Brigham moderated the conference. Other speakers included retired Birmingham Police Detective Kenneth Prevo and National Press Club President Lisa Matthews.   

“Texas, Florida, Wisconsin, and Ohio are going to be on the cutting edge of how states start to respond to these political, social, and economic issues,” Carr said in an interview. “The question will be whether states lean into the change and try to find positive ways to react to it, or will states try to retreat and maintain the status quo or try to put things in place that reflect what they think were the good old days.”    

Although Carr has not lived in Texas since 1991, she was raised in Beaumont and attended college and law school in San Antonio.  

“Texas is a really good place to watch as we figure out how the nation could respond to the changing demographics and this whole idea of what that means in terms of shifting of both economic and political resources,” she said. “Texas is also a really good case study for how we handle other social issues like a woman’s right to choose.” 

On November 1, 2021, arguments regarding Texas State Bill 8, also known as the Heartbeat Act, progressed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the highest court in the nation heard arguments on the constitutionality of the anti-abortion bill.     

“I think the state of Texas has multiple personalities,” Carr said.   

“Politically, it appears that the state is resisting the change but there are pockets in Texas like Austin and Houston that appear to be more in a posture of embracing the change and being forward-looking. The state internally is going to have to have a conversation with itself because the state is not monolithic.”   

Carr was the acting national director for Job Corps and is currently on detail to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Employment Training at the Department of Labor (DOL), working on a diversity, equity, and inclusion plan.  

“Civil rights law is all about making sure there’s equal footing, and Job Corps is about taking those that are educationally and financially disadvantaged and teaching them a skill so that they can become financially independent,” she said.   

Job Corps, a DOL program, offers free education and vocational training to men and women between 16 to 24 years of age.

The training programs vary between 18 to 24 months in length, depending on the subject matter. Participants include high school graduates and high school dropouts.    

“It’s free skills training, free room-and-board, and clothing so that you can leave the program in 18 to 24 months with skills and, ideally, a job,” Carr added. “All you have to do is show that you are low income and that you’re within the age range.”

The North Texas Job Corps is located in McKinney.