What does it mean to be Texan?

Hi all –

I am providing you with a transcript of a lecture to be recorded, "What does it mean to be Texan?" (Video below.) I have learned from teaching Texas Government that this is not an intuitive question. We want to avoid dealing with the concept of identity. It is too messy for us; school can empower in more direct ways. You could learn a strategy to master a game, or practice to make beautiful music, or get the credentials to get the job. Why do we need to talk about identity? Why struggle with the difference between who we are and who we think we are?

As you'll see, how you answer what it means to be Texan determines everything, especially if you think you are your own person, formed only by the earth and your will. Political outcomes flow directly from conceptions of identity.

What does it mean to be Texan?

I realize it can be hard to make notes when someone lectures, especially if they're going to talk for a while. I'd appreciate if you wrote questions down in addition to a few facts or things that interest you. The goal in a class like this is to convince someone outside of it that the questions are worth asking.

Our guide for this question will be Steve Lovelace's fantastic meditation in a blog post aptly titled "What Does It Mean to Be a Texan?" I can already hear the objections. More traditional teachers of Texas Government start with Six Flags over Texas. Everyone has gone there or wanted to go there, but what do the six flags really mean? Once you're aware that Texas was held at various times by the Spanish, the French, Mexico, the Confederacy, is part of the U.S., and also was its own independent country, you're aware of a rich, diverse history worth exploring. Shouldn't we start there?

I'm not a fan because that rough history doesn't help contribute to a sense of priority. What do we need to know now? The French flag flying over Texas does not have anywhere near the significance that the Confederate flag flying over it does. Some people will argue otherwise and the answer to them is "stop trying to argue things just because." This is not First Take or CNN; the value of human life and a corresponding struggle for freedom aren't up for debate.

Someone else might object to us reading a blog post in class. "You're a professor," they'd say. "Can't you provide the students something more rigorous? Like a study of how attitudes about identity correlate with political outcomes?" And my answer there is that if Aristotle starts his treatises with an examination of common opinions, we can fruitfully do the same. Aristotle at the beginning of the Ethics talks about whether some are right in asserting that life is fundamentally about collecting wealth, or whether others are right to say what is truly good is honor. What are the opinions we need to examine about being Texan? Steve Lovelace opens with this incredible story that we could spend weeks discussing:

I had a discussion (argument) with a good friend about what it means to be a Texan. I said that, after 7+ years of living in Dallas, I felt I could call myself a Texan. She said that you have to be born in Texas to be a Texan, and that I could never be one even if I lived here the rest of my life. But that made me start wondering about other scenarios. What about someone who was born elsewhere but moved here as a baby? Is that person a Texan? What about someone born in Texas, whose ancestors date back to the Alamo, but who lives somewhere else?

Lovelace had a fight with a friend over whether he could call himself Texan after living in Dallas nearly a decade. The friend said absolutely not – gotta be born in Texas to be a Texan. I want us to purposely ignore the friend's specific claim about being born in Texas. It's really important to ask y'all: Is this what you expect of a friend? Is this friendship to you? What is going on here?

Take 5 minutes and think about fights you've had with your friends. Are they like this? Write down something–obviously class appropriate–about whether this fight is out of control and why you think that. If you're wondering what this has to do with Texas government, ask yourself this: if we were all friends, wouldn't government work better? To what degree does government depend on us fighting for each other, no matter what?

So. 5 minutes: tell us all about whether this friend is out of control or not. When you're done discussing, I'll have something to say.

I'm old, so I've been both the one that's out-of-control and too-much-drama and the friend saying something completely reasonable. This friend of Lovelace's is way out of line. The bigger question is why. Why is she obsessed with the idea you have to be born in Texas to be Texan?

There's one common opinion, the one that in a previous age someone like Aristotle would write a treatise on. In this age you've got me, so I'm not going to do that. Do you agree that you have to be born in Texas to be a Texan? If you agree with that, what are the consequences of that thinking? Does it mean you can cut the line in Whataburger if everyone else in line wasn't born here?

Even though we just paused and had a discussion, this is a good place to have another one. Feel free to stop the video here and list various theories of being Texan. Maybe not being born here, but don't we feel that people have to know what Texas is about to be Texan? Do you have to give something back to the state to be Texan? How does this sense of identity work exactly?

You can stop the video here for a few minutes.

I'm assuming you had a short discussion and maybe even have an exact theory of being Texan. Maybe you have a residency requirement, a knowledge requirement, and a service one. "You're Texan if you lived here 5 or more years, know the roster of the Mavs when Dirk last won a championship, and have helped out at a church."

Something very serious is at stake here. The stricter you define being Texan, the more it looks like entire classes of people are excluded. Even if they've lived here all their lives.

When we consider the border, the stakes of questions of identity become markedly clear. The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, recently declared that National Guard troops could make immigration related arrests. Two questions there: 1) why, even if we are having an emergency, might it be problematic to give the military the power to make arrests? (We'll talk about this next class.) 2) how can giving the Texas National Guard this authority be interpreted as a statement of Texas identity?

It does look like we implicitly have a definition of being Texan that is rather strict. This is interesting because while it is strict, it isn't easy to pin down exactly. I think that's worth talking about a bit later. Right now I'd like to outline a more positive conception of Texan identity, one that's likely separate from the too strict one.

Lovelace has a useful passage for pinning this down. He identifies some stereotypes Texans themselves are drawn to:

Suppose you accept that being Texan is a state of mind. If you think you’re a Texan, you are. That brings about my next point. How much of the traditional Texas heritage do you need to share? Do you need to buy a cowboy hat and a pickup truck? Do you need to go to church and vote Republican? If so, then the whole city of Austin isn’t truly Texan. There are probably people who think so. But we can’t take such a narrow view of Texas culture.

For my students who are older, I usually ask if they've ever crushed on someone because they were really into Texas. I had a roommate who'd wear his cowboy hat and nice boots and belt with the big buckle everywhere. He only listened to Texas Country and made weekly trips to the honky tonk. He never lacked for a date. I thought for myself that I avoided being into someone who was more Texan than Texas, and then I realized I crushed on Pam years ago. You don't need to hear more about that.

What you do need is this. There's something compelling about the "traditional Texas heritage," about Texas stereotypes. Why might we be drawn to this? Do we think people are tougher? More self-reliant? More into western-themed amusement?

And if we're not drawn to this–if we're more into watching every episode of One Piece or metal bands or southern rap–how might those things be a response to more traditional notions of Texas?

I think a good place to conclude this lecture is with a vision of what a more positive notion of Texas identity looks like. Lovelace provides us with the material for one toward the end of his post. Look at how expansive and inclusive his view of Texas is:

Despite the anti-intellectual rhetoric of our most conservative politicians, there is a huge amount of science and technology in Texas. Think NASA and Texas Instruments. And Big Oil’s contributions to science are overlooked by liberals, but just as groundbreaking (no pun intended). And while Texas is nowadays known for its right-wing politics, this is the state that gave us Lyndon B. Johnson, who ushered in an unprecedented amount of social safety net programs. The truth is, Texas is too big and diverse to pin down to any one culture or ideology.

There's so much he's covering here. You all know Houston as Space City, but only a few of you might know about Texas Instruments, the Perot family, and Dallas. TI is a leader in technology and still quite the institution in the Dallas area. Big Oil is rapidly turning into "the energy industry." 43% of Texas' power grid comes from renewables–wind (which we have way too much of right now) and solar. The drilling techniques of Big Oil are leading to advances in geothermal power, too. And that mention of LBJ, Lyndon Baines Johnson, is what I'd like to leave you with. LBJ didn't just usher in the social safety net programs we rely on. Without the programs he established, the elderly in this country would be in a very tough position. Fully 3 in 5 nursing homes in Texas depend on Medicaid; nearly 50% of all births in Texas are funded by Medicaid. That's LBJ's legacy in addition to Civil Rights. The quick way of thinking about Civil Rights: the equal protection of the laws, the guarantee of the 14th amendment, is not simply a phrase on paper.

A Texas journalist, Chris Hooks, once said something very smart about being Texan. He said Texas nationalism is to America as America is to the rest of the world. Just like America goes around saying "we're number 1" and the rest of the world finds this pride a little obnoxious and misplaced, the same thing happens with Texas. Consider: you don't take classes in Delaware Government if you're from Delaware. Here, this class is a state requirement. It's worth thinking about how people used the notion of "everything's bigger in Texas" to fight for money poorer Americans needed and rights for all Americans. It's worth thinking about Texas identity as bigger than Whataburger or Six Flags. What does it mean, as Tocqueville once posed, to love your state so much you love your country?