Why would you want to? All of the other colleges are dumb.
Minor nitpick: UTA is located just outside of Dallas (University of Texas Arlington, AKA “University of Texas… ALMOST!”). The Austin campus is just plain old UT (or, if you’re an Aggie, it is “t.u.”)
We did the Pledge to the Texas Flag when I was in high school. I would just quietly stand there without saying anything. Was never given any problems because of it. Basically my stance was that you shouldn’t pledge allegiance to a state, only to a country.
Those guys who make a serious argument for Texan independence are about as sharp as a sack of wet mice.
Yes, Texan is an ethnicity, & a proud one, to a great degree. There are (a very few) Texans who self-identify as such 'round here, in Missouri. Not everyone who lives in Texas feels that way, of course.
I’ve not encountered that kind of feeling about Missouri. We sort of make jokes about coming from or living in “Misery,” but not much more than that, in my experience. That said, I live by the border of the state, there may be different feelings in Columbia or somewhere.
Actually, I don’t remember people in Dallas being “Texan more than American,” either, & it’s near the border. Something to that?
Oh, twelve years ago, I was visiting family in Wyoming, & noticed Wyomingites who spoke scornfully of “Greenies,” referring to Coloradans (who apparently had green license plates). A sort of irritation at the people from larger cities who’d come in on vacation.
Then again, I get called “city kid” by people from the rural counties around my town, & then feel like a hick when I go to–well, anywhere larger than Springfield…
In El Paso we used to curse those damned “yellow plates”, that is, cars with plates from NM or “Fronteriza Chihuahua”*. “What do they give you if you fail the driving exam in NM? A yellow plate!” (Yes we were SO CLEVER :rolleyes: :D) We shouldn’t have complained; these folks were coming over to spend money! Good for the economy. It’s not like El Paso drivers were amazing. They too drove slow in their favorite lane, just not as slow.
*“Frunchies”. Just for border regions only. This is different from a plate in the interior of Chihuahua. I’m not sure exactly how it works.
Dallas is something like two hours from the border. While that’s not much of a drive for us Texans, I think back East that effectivel takes you through all of New England
When I went to college, a joke in my dorm was that Dallas was a “Bastion of Yankee Northernness” or something along those lines. The RA on my floor was from Dallas, and after losing some sort of bet, was made to shave the chin of his beard off and go to class with an Antebellum 'stache and muttonchops combo. As fast as his beard grew, the effect lasted until around lunch that day. :rolleyes:
Dallas does seem to have a somewhat less “Texan” culture than other cities (notably nearby Fort Worth, nicknamed “Cow Town” for its overwhelming Texasosity at times). I’ve been told that Houston can have the most aggressive Texans, and Austin is where we keep most of the hippies and politicians.
The subject of where I come from doesn’t come up much, but when it does, I will say “I’m from Texas-but-didn’t-vote-for-him”. (hell, I still have a grudge dating from when Shrub got himself voted governor.)
Ignorance, like a vampire, tends to disintegrate in sunlight. Your very use of the term “Metroplex” (and capitalized no less)…well, little acorn, I think that proves the point. Get away from the rural areas.
The bumper sticker, of course, is “I wasn’t born in Texas but I got here as fast as I could.” We need a retort. “I wasn’t born in Texas, but the jobs are here. What are you going to do?”
Seriously, if you dopers had to move to DFW, you’d be fine. Podunk, TX OTOH, maybe not.
One of my college buddies married a woman from Texas. So the whole lot of us flew out there for the weding. The couple seated next to us kept going on about Austin this and Austin that.
“Oh I declare Austin is my favorite city ever! I don’t think there is any city on God’s green Earth anything like Austin! It’s the greatest city ever! Austin! Austin! Austin! Where did you say ya’ll from?”
Well, amigo, all I can say is that there are assholes in every group. If they genuinely were from Texas and acted that way, then I apologize on behalf of the rest of us.
I was north of Dallas for 5 very long years 2002 - 2007.
I taught undergrads and grads…but in the undergrad courses the subject of Texas secession came up several times. I guffawed the first time I heard it thinking the student was pulling my chain. The dead-pan looks from the entire student body told me I was wrong.
They swear they have the right to secede.
And they are serious about it.
The attitude is that they are not seriously angling for it at the moment, mind you, but don’t fuck with them too much or they’ll just go ahead and do it.
What the Texans in this thread don’t realize is that even if you don’t seriously think you’re going to do it…joking about it is fucking bizarre. NOBODY else jokes about seceding from the Union. It is NOT funny. It’s about as funny as joking about killing your grandma. Yuk, yuk…come on I’m just kidding…you don’t really think I’m actually going to kill the old bat do you?..but you know I read that it would actually be legal if I did…yuk, yuk, yuk.
Personally I think Texas seceding would be about the best thing that could happen to the Union. The average IQ in the US would immediately rise about 8 points once those outliers were removed from the distribution. We could fuck with them militarily for a while, then turn them over to the Mexicans for a truly enjoyable Texas-sized ass-stomping.
I believe you’re from Virginia, aren’t you? Dude, are you for real?
ETA, not that there’s anything wrong with being from Virginia, but boo hooing about a secessionist attitude while residing in the spearhead of the frakkin’ Confederacy? Gotta be a joke, unless it’s serious and one of those “lady doth protest too much” things . . .
Seriously, as myself and many other Texans in this thread have pointed out, almost NOBODY in Texas takes that secessionist stuff seriously. The often misrepresented bit about Texas being admitted to the US with a provision allowing it to be split into five states somehow got twisted long ago into a “right to secede” myth that 7th grade [del]coaches[/del] Texas history teachers loved to spread. Maybe–unfortunately–some people do believe it, but I’ve never known anyone to advocate it or to really spend much time at all thinking about it one way or the other. I don’t believe your claim that an entire class full of college students had an attitude about it. Maybe they didn’t like their instructor and they were giving him shit?
Trust me, you are taking it far more seriously than any Texan I’ve ever known. And equating a stupid joke about our state seceding (which basically amounts to the tourism tagline “It’s like a whole other country” or to put it more simply, “We’re different than y’all!”) to someone joking about killing their grandmother? What the fuck? Those two things are not even remotely alike.
And you think getting rid of Texas would be good for the US? That’s idiotic. I imagine if you could rank the “importance” of the states to the well-being of the nation as a whole, from an economic standpoint at the least, Texas would be among the top few.
Hey, I don’t always look at Texas through rose-colored glasses. There are a lot of things about the place that I wish I could snap my fingers and change. But Texas bashing is such a tired and misplaced form of aggression that I felt the need to respond.
