What Does the Rest of the USA and the World Really Think of TEXAS?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have read some bizarre stuff about Texas over the past few month because of the election. So I was really wondering what people(from all over the country and the world) thought of Texas and what perception do they have about Texas?

Do ya’ll like Texas or don’t like us? Are we all rich and ride and have big belt buckels? And on and on.

I have heard people in Colorado don’t like Texans but now they even like Californians less.

So please type away how you percieve and feel about Texas and PLEASE reveal where you are from (state or country).

Thanks. This should be v e r y interesting.

2

Johnny Winter said it best, “There’s so much shit in Texas, you’re bound to step in some.”

I’m from Chicago.

3

I lived in TX from age 9 to 20, but now live in GA, so I’m objective by no means.

What I think is interesting is how often people outside of TX consider it a “Southern state,” as in the Rebel flag-waving, Confederacy-reminiscing, Old South.

When I moved to GA, I realized how UN-Southern TX actually is.

I think this is a common misconception about the state.

4

i]Originally posted by Dinsdale *

Why step in it when you can stomp in it. We prefer being called shit stomping Texans over shit steppin Texans anyday. :smiley:

5

My first meeting with a Texan was in electronics school in the Air Force. The guy seemed a bit intimidated by the presence of west- and east-coasters, and constantly boasted about Texans this, Texans that. It became unbearable, at least until he brought up the subject of the Alamo: “We Texans beat off the whole Mexican empire!” Someone in the group replied, “Didn’t your hands get sore?” After that we heard no more about Mighty Mighty Texans, though there was always this low grumbling in the air.

In the military we had a running joke about holding up a bootlace and calling it a Texan with the bullshit removed.

Over the years I’ve met several transplanted Texans, and for the most part if they’re not trying to justify their state to everyone else, they’re very fine people.

Texas is an unusual state. It’s not Southern, though it’s one of the most southern. It’s not western, though one wouldn’t guess that by watching Westerns. I guess we can consider it The Gateway to Mexico. :wink:

For the record, born in NY, raised in France and Germany (Army brat), lived for about thirty years in CA (in the Bay Area and out in the sticks), then the last eleven in WA.

6

Actually, my impression of Texans is that they are Southern, but they seem to want to dissociate themselves from the rest of the South. They have the same, religion-heavy, grits-eating, drawling, mama-loving, macho, let’s-go-huntin’ culture as the rest of the South (except with a little Mexican spice thrown in).

Can’t imagine why they’d try to separate themselves from their Southern heritage.:slight_smile:

Texans do tend to be blowhards, though. I put it down to some sort of state-wide inferiority complex.

7

There’s reason Texas is so big. It’s to hold all that ego.
I’m from Mississippi.

8

I’ve heard of Texas. It’s what you have to drive through to get to New Mexico.

9

Since it was specificaly mentioned in the OP I will throw in one Coloradoan’s view. We don’t particularly like Texans, or Californians, or east coasters for that matter. BAsically we are a very laid back little state, who just want to mind our own business, and be left alone in turn. Texans have a reputations for being the ones who say stupid things like ‘they should have an escalator so you don’t actually have to climb to get to the top of the mountain’ and breaking the nice calm air of a ski mountain with an ear sharrering ‘Bil-ly, I dropped my po-le from the li-ft,… Billy, damnit Billy listen to me … I dropped my po-le, off the cha-ir… well I need my po-le back, I ca-n’t ski without my po-le!’ In some pointless tirade that lasts 5 minutes, sticking all kind of extra sylables into words where they don’t belong. We basically don’t like loud people, and Texans are the loudest of all. :slight_smile:

10

… you know the rest.

But seriously, Texas sounds very much like Alberta - except for the snow and the cold. Otherwise, it’s the same bunch of western boot wearing rednecks. Not that there is anything wrong with that…

11

I went to high school (in Plano), college and worked for a time in Abilene. I now live in Minnesota, and if I have anything to say about it, I will not live in Texas again.

Being a non-Christian, I found so many people to be arrogant, rude, judgmental, intolerant, and quite frankly, more than a little scary. I found such a focus on religion that I didn’t feel comfortable living there anymore.

Abilene was like living in a city where about half the population were living, breathing Chick tracts.
So I left.

Robin

12

I was stationed in San Antonio for 4 years while in the Air Force. I found most Texans to be arrogant and loud-mouthed and for some reason need to justify the greatness of their state to anyone from another state. Plus there’s the whole fixation on how BIG Texas is. So what? Alaska’s bigger. Face it, you’re number 2 in size now.

The biggest problem with Texans I found, is that so many of them are Dallas Cowboy fans.

13

Complete inferiority complex, those Texans. I went to school with many of them, and they constantly think that the rest of the country is constantly talking about them. They all assume we know who and what Ann Richards did. They constantly assume we know and are interested in their daily affairs.

Personally, its one of 50 states in the country. Its not Southern enough to be in the South, their trucks are too big to be in California, and they’re too arrogant to be in Mexico.

In other words, Texas is much like Al Gore - trying to appease everyone, but just managing to fall through the cracks.

14

Oh, I’m from Kansas and Indiana.

15

So you wanna fight some ignorance and fill me in?

BTW - I guess I should have said earlier, I’m from Missouri.

16

[hijack]Hey!!! I work for Plano ISD. [/hijack]

I have nothing to add to the topic since I’m from Austin and now live in Frisco.

God Bless Texas! :wink: :smiley:

17

The only Texan (a West Texan) I know well is completely against the stereotype–quiet, self-effacing, sweet accent that’s almost-but-not-quite-Southern, highly intelligent, classical-music-singing, and happily married to a guy from western NY, which is of course a whole different ballgame from the City.

But don’t try to push her around, or argue with her in a stupid way, because there’s steel under there. And she does have a sort of–baroque–family history, with drunks and fundies and people running off with other people’s spouses. She herself is the picture of virtue, though, AFAIK.

Most of the Texan tourists I run into in both places where I’ve lived are nice folks who are a little awed at their surroundings and happy to talk to a friendly face, which most of us Easterners are once you crack the shells. They seem thrilled to be someplace so different and don’t put down what they’re seeing, at least within earshot of me.

As for my opinion of TX, it seems a lot like NYC–it’s so big and diverse and has so many different kinds of people that everything you hear about it is true! I read a lot of Molly Ivins and I wouldn’t underestimate her books as forming a lot of opinions about the state. I also know plenty of people assigned there in new branch offices that have managed not to run back home screaming in a few months, so most of the boom cities can’t be TOO weird. The Houston Opera is cool. The love of language and quiet, matter-of-fact brilliance of the metaphors are fun. MsRobyn’s wonderful metaphor about a bunch of walking Chick tracts sounds like my idea of hell, though. I hate sloppy thinking. And, like most people, I resent it when other states assume that it’s impossible to lead a decent life in NYC and Boston, that we don’t have churches and synagogues and families and PTA’s and Girl Scouts, and Texans do seem to think that they’re “real” Americans compared to us.

My brother from the Bronx went to TX for Basic Training and got ribbed a lot, but in a respectful sort of way. Everyone just assumed he was carrying a knife all the time and set fire to abandoned buildings in his spare time. But at least he was really from the city–another TX idea, according to him, is that Texans think everyone from NY State is from the City and everyone from CA is from LA, etc. And when he came home he could do the coolest accents!

I feel there’s more to know about Texas that we don’t hear because of cowboy this and oilman that. I for one would like to know a lot more about black and Mexican Texans and how they react to the rest of the country.

And even Peggy Bundy knew that y’all LOST the Alamo.

18

Ann used to be their governor. I have no idea what she did. Neither does any normal person outside of Texas. I believe she was in a potato chip commercial, for what that’s worth.

19

Actually, it was a Doritos commercial (Mario Cuomo was in it too) and a somewhat humourous one at that.

I’ve said my piece

20

Having grown up in Florida (which has its own level of weirdness, more south than the South yet much less South, and which ATM is coming to rival Texas in gossip notes) and now in San Francisco, the images i saw of Texas was always either taken out of Westerns or of what Texans promoted Texas as. I therefore assumed that everyone in the state was required, by law, to wear a cowboy hat, under penalty of execution, and that all Texans were homogenized into a single image: blonde, blue-eyed, chiseled features, big men, little women, watching football, driving pickup trucks and SUVs, eating steak, voting Republican, and above all, intensely proud of their state and filled with a “heaven help me if I don’t die on Texan soil” attitude.

Of course, the idea that EVERYONE in Texas is like this has gone away, but i think they key fact here is that this is the way Texas seems to portray itself.