Actually not so much. Texas has an unusually friendly relationship with Judaism that’s been going on for a long time now. These days, the evangelical philosemitism seems to drive a pretty tolerant feeling, and historically, Texas Jews have been a driving force for commercial activity, especially in the larger cities. And earlier than that, Rabbis Henry Cohen of Galveston and David Lefkowitz did a lot of notable things- Cohen organized the "Galveston Movement ", and Lefkowitz organized against the Klan in Dallas, as well as starting the first Hillel Foundation organization at Texas A&M in 1916 along with Dr. Jacob Taubenhaus.
This.
If you’re a person that prioritizes low cost-of-living, and have little to no empathy for the plight of marginalized groups, then Texas is a great place for you to move to.
I am not that type of person. Therefore, the answer for me is an unconditional no.
Absolutely not and I did live there for a couple years. The political climate just gets more toxic and the endless driving in the Metroplex was awful.
My California employer straight-up states that if I relocate outside CA my compensation will drop commensurately with where I relocate. Moving to TX from CA is a 15-25% pay cut. So yeah, fuck that.
Many Canadians have a varying mix of admiration, astonishment and being appalled by the United States. I’m no expert in climate change, but this seems a weird win here. Texas had well-publicized energy concerns. And Stevie Ray Vaughan sounds very soulful on his best album, Texas Flood.
But I once also saw a map showing each state and largest ethnic groups. I seem to recall Vietnamese being well-represented on Texas, which means lots of cheap and delicious food. You could probably do worse than brisket, blues and beef soup.
As you may have heard Texas is big. A lot of Vietnamese relocated to the Gulf Coast in the 70s. There is spread over the years but it’s not like you see Vietnamese culture all over the state.
Forget moving…as a woman, I won’t so much as consider another visit to Texas as long as I’m regarded as a second-class citizen there.
I don’t disagree with that, just wanted to note that the Asian population of Texas is growing at an incredible rate, mostly as you said in specific locations (besides the Gulf Coast, I’d point out that Arlington, midway between Dallas and Fort Worth, is over 7% Vietnamese now - roughly 1 in every 14 residents!).
Plano is now 20% Asian, Frisco has three cricket pitches and Frisco High School has a cricket PE unit. The whole thing has been remarkable and cool to see. (when I grew up there, Plano had one high school and Frisco was a bunch of farms and a water tower)
I suspect that, unlike Dopers, the vast majority of people choose where to live based on factors other than “political climate” - jobs, closeness of relatives, climate, lower taxes, a reasonable commute, medical care, educational and entertainment opportunities, shopping, familiarity* etc.
As for Texas, one can find bastions/refuges for the Left in lots of places, where if they can’t get everything they want (including the luxury goods and services featured in glossy ads in the left-leaning Texas Monthly), they can find satisfaction in constantly bitching about those nimrod Neanderthals in the state legislature.
*Won’tcha come with me to Alabammy
Back to the arms of my dear ol’ Mammy
Her cookin’s lousy and her hands are clammy
But what the hell, it’s home
- Tom Lehrer
Ontario is a big place too. Apart from Indigenous populations, Canada is very much a nation of recent immigrants. Not long ago here, a restaurant serving basic Italian or Indian food was considered remarkably exotic.
Twenty years ago, you could confidently say the size of an Ontario small town by the regional chain stores it contained. Does it have a Tim Hortons? A Canadian Tire? A Big V or IDA drugstore? Which fried chicken joints? Now, no one would be surprised to see a small town place serving pho, perogies, poutine, pilaf or pissaladiere even if most immigrants prefer cities.
Sure, but a lot of those are affected by political climate. The abortion issue is medical care (and treatment of women’s rights in general), I mentioned Texas’ inane education policies (and they fall well under the 50% mark in state rankings), the catastrophic power grid failures reflect on climate and what the future could hold, etc. It’s not like people just crossing their arms and saying “Red Bad!”, it’s a matter of how the state’s political climate will actually impact your life.
For those of you saying that you’d never move to Texas due to the conservative policies adopted by the state’s Republicans – just realize that you’re playing right into their hands. Texas Republicans have started to get antsy at the enormous number of newcomers moving to the state from blue states. The passage of high-profile, outrageous legislation like the abortion bounties bill is designed in part to provoke Californian and East Coast liberals from wanting to move to Texas. Which just further delays the day when Democrats have a chance to come to power and reverse these policies.
I’d say it makes more sense to try to address those on a federal level from the state of your choosing than to move to Texas and suffer under a couple decades of right-wing nuttery policies until there’s finally enough transplants to break the anti-democratic policies and get a word in.
Do you think we don’t know that? But the problem is that these policies are at the level of oppression for many. And it’s not reasonable to ask people to volunteer to be oppressed to try and change the government. That’s exactly why rule by majority and minority rights so often clash.
The whole reason their plan is so nefarious is that it isn’t generally rational at the individual level for people who oppose those policies to choose to live there. It’s actually a really good way to try and keep those people away.
The main flaw in the plan is not realizing how much of the change is coming from within, from people who have ties there and thus would rather stay and fight than leave. And that the consequences of their policies themselves actually often sabotage their own efforts, like with the power outage last winter, and how little they’ve done to try and prevent a resurgence. It’s unlikely the plan will actually work on any larger scale, while slight changes in policies and priorities might have worked better.
But that just describes the whole Republican Party, really.
It’s no secret hate thrives.
Benzene smells like money
An illegal dump of shingles gets SIX stories high before Texas gets off it’s arse to address it.
Texas fails to even make the top ten of the fun most cities in the country
Heat, traffic, wacky winters, toxic air, bizarre politics, y’all can have it. Though I’ve met some great people from Texas so I won’t judge them for it.
Texas has no mountains. Fuck that.
Texas has no nice icy clean snowmelt rivers full of salmon. Fuck that.
Texas has no old growth forests. Fuck that.
Texas does NOT have ocean front, the Gulf just doesn’t count, especially now that it’s catching on fire from all the drilling spills. Fuck that.
Texas is too fucking hot. Fuck that.
Texas gets hit with hurricanes and tornadoes. Fuck that.
Texas is full of asshole racist rednecks. Oregon has them too, but not nearly as many. Fuck that.
Texas is full of Crazy Christians. Fuck that.
Texas is within driving distance of Florida. Fuck that.
Texas hates women. Fuck that.
You know those giant artillery guns they have to mount on rail cars to move around? Yeah, that’s how big a gun you’d have to point at my head to even get me to think about moving to Texas, and after 4.3 picoseconds I’d be screaming at you to pull the trigger. The only redeeming feature of Texas is that it borders Mexico, but so does California and I can go to California without wanting to nuke the entire place from orbit.
Fuck Texas.
Is that a whoosh? Of course Tx has mountain ranges, never heard of Big Bend N P?
No, it’s not. Highest elevation in Texas is Guadalupe Peak, which doesn’t even make it to 9000 feet. Mt Hood, visible from anywhere in Portland, is over 11,000 feet and peaks in the Sierra Nevada range are higher than that. I don’t count anything as a “mountain” unless it has a timberline, which rules out most everything east of the Rockies. If I want a desert mountain, I’ll head out to the Alvord desert and Steens Mountain, which is still a thousand feet higher than Guadalupe.
Not to mention that it’s possible in any of the Left Coast states to drive from high mountains to the ocean in a day. Try THAT in Texas.
The problem a number of us are trying to highlight is that the current “political climate” in Texas directly and sometimes dangerously interferes with our medical care.