When the "Okies" fled to California during the last depression the natives spat on the Joads and ran them out of town (there were more Texans than Oklahomans but Texas has always had better marketing, besides "Texies" sounds a lot like "Pixies" and the last thing that the natives wanted was get into a fight with a bunch of offended redneck peckerwoods like my relatives, hell they were my relatives). Indeed today California continues to treat poor newcomers like Joads with the highest taxes, worst housing and schools and longest commutes of any state. And when they get to work their jobs are disproportionately wiping the arses if the rich coastal elites that have apparently organized the state for their amusement.
Noting that California is organized more and more like a northern version of Mexico, the middle class is decamping to more - shall we say - "friendly" locales where middle income people can live with dignity and have jobs outside of the various subfields of rich asswipery. Texas has been a particular beneficiary of this trend: as rich and diverse as Cali, it has far better schools, much lower taxes, more affordable housing and real, decent, middle class jobs to spare. For example, as of last year Joel Kotkin of Chapman University and New Geography estimated that the Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin metro areas were in real terms among the ten highest median per capita income MSAs in the nation and San Antonio - that fabled Gateway to Northeast Mexico - has a higher real median income than the Gateway to the Pacific: San Francisco.
And as the song by Lyle Lovett emphasizes "Texas wants you anyway". In addition to making itself a place where normal people can live in dignity, Texas is shockingly friendly to newcomers and outsiders. "Everybody talks to you here. And listens to what you say" said a California relative, "It cuts across race, they don't do this back home" - a friend from St. Louis.
From this outsider's perspective, one of the cool things about Texas is how the concept of Texas-ness can blur racial and ethnic boundaries. Texan is such an expansive and if you live here, attractive identity that it reduces the feelings of alienation that are all to common in our modern, oh so diverse society. I find myself actually working to interact with other people because they expect me to try. Not just say hello but have something to say. It forces you to connect with people you wouldn't dream of talking to elsewhere and you actually end up learning things about them and they about you. Most of it irrelevant except that it humanizes both of us to a degree that I have never experienced outside of the State. It's bloody weird, really.
My parents live in Fort Bend county which is one third non Hispanic white, 20 percent African American and African - there are a lot of African immigrants, 20 percent Asian and 25 percent Latino - my parent's suburb, Missouri City, is 25% non-Hispanic white and its long time honky (I get tired of writing non-Hispanic white so I shall use honky in its non pejorative sense) mayor was just returned for another term along with their city councilman: Danny Nguyen. Miss Fort Bend is from India and the last school district by election featured a honky, an African. an Arab and an Indian. Yet the place is Texas through and through.
And booming while much of the rest of the nation seems to be strangling on its own snot. Fascinating. And as I tell my kids constantly, they'd be smart to get themselves down here rather than rotting on the vine back home.
So what? Well as I'm sure you've noticed, our country is becoming 'more diverse'. And this diversity means that fewer and fewer places are 'honky' heavy. The places where this is happening fastest are California, New York City, Florida and Texas. Of these four areas only one could be described as 'doing well' and only one seems to have avoided most of the racial strife that usually comes with modern 'diversity'. Oh, and only one can be described as having a low tax, low service largely libertarian economy. And that one would be Texas.
So if you hope that our multi-culti-oh so diverse future will be one worth living in, you will hope and pray that we become more like Texas. Because if the country becomes like California or NYC - rich white/Asian islands surrounded by increasingly angry, resentful poverty kept in check only by a bankrupt government's handouts and truncheons - then this nation is truly and completely screwed.
Yee. Haw.
*And don't talk to me about the Honko-Asian Valhallas of Seattle, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Boston. First of all, they're surprisingly poor places given their demographics and without a doubt, unless they change their manipulative, meddlesome ways, the poverty and chaos they experience will explode as their demographics inevitably shift to more true diversity (you know, the ideology they preach rather than live). Just like it has in their close geographic and ideological neighbors who have gotten to 'diverse' first. Unless they want to join Canada who uses the US as a 1500 mile thick anti immigration and distraction barrier to ensure that only immigrants who can pay get to the Lone Leaf Country. But if so, they'd better start seceding soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment