Texas being excluded from the South (Houston, Dallas: education, rankings, lowest)

[Klassyhk]

Originally Posted by Nuclear Bear

I don't know anything remotely "southern" about Ft Worth. I've never seen a confederate flag, heard someone with a southern accent, or seen anything ever related to "Dixie" in Tarrant County.

New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville and Birmingham are large Southern Cities. Ft Worth is nothing like any of those cities.

Ft Worth is OKC or Tulsa with more $$$$.

Almost all native Texans speak with some type of Southern accent if they've never lived in another part of the country. I've been to Ft. Worth on short visits. The locals in Ft. Worth don't sound much different from locals in Dallas. If you haven't heard a southern accent in Ft. Worth, what accent have you heard them speak?

[LocalPlanner]

To the extent that being "southern" is tied to the pre-Civil War plantation economy, along with the Appalachian and Ozark settlements, and living in a region with relatively abundant rainfall, then much of TX isn't really "southern". A vast share of the state was basically unsettled by European immigrants, apart from some brave / foolhardy Germans in the Hill Country, until at least the late 1860s, because of the threat of Comanches. While a significant share of the eventual settlers in these areas came from the eastern half of TX and elsewhere in the traditional South, I don't consider these parts of TX "southern." Nor the areas of dominantly Tejano heritage southwest of I-37. Nor most of Oklahoma.

[Thoreau424]

Texas doesn't need the the South. It's been a republic, still has a republic/independent attitude, and has the Lone Star as a symbol. We don't need the South. It might need us, but not the other way around. Abandon the nonsense.

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by Thoreau424

Texas doesn't need the the South. It's been a republic, still has a republic/independent attitude, and has the Lone Star as a symbol. We don't need the South. It might need us, but not the other way around. Abandon the nonsense.

Unlike "others" Texas was a country for 10 years

[Thoreau424]

Originally Posted by Dopo

Unlike "others" Texas was a country for 10 years

I think it was nine years (1836-1845), but yeah.

[KathrynAragon]

Originally Posted by Thoreau424

I think it was nine years (1836-1845), but yeah.

March 3, 1836 till February 19, 1846.

[supfromthesite]

Originally Posted by Arkay66

As the part of Texas I grew up in got settled (long after that war), our culture was and still is cowboy and the West. The culture is not remotely "southern" and we never even thought of ourselves as anything but Texan or Southwestern. Our region has far more in common with eastern New Mexico, the Oklahoma Panhandle, and southeast Colorado than with any part of Texas that might have been "southern" at some point.

"American historians often write of a contrast between the South, a closed reactionary society, and the West, free and open and characteristically American. The dichotomy thus presented is a false one. The West is the South. That is, to the extent that the West is a theatre for heroic action, rather than just a place to start a new business, it is the Old South transmitted to a new environment. The cowboy, to the degree that he represents the embodiment of a code of life rather than just a person who tends animals, is nothing more or less than the Virginia gentleman on the plains.

It is no accident that the most famous Western novel, written by a Pennsylvanian, Owen Wister, and set in Wyoming, was called The Virginian; nor that the most memorable character in Robert Service’s Alaska poems was from Tennessee; nor that John Wayne’s best Western movie, The Searchers, begins in 1865 with the hero riding up to his prairie home in tattered gray.

But the Southernness of the American West is not just in the realm of romance. The romance in this case merely reflects the facts. Boone, Crockett, Lewis and Clark, the heroes of the Alamo, Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Jesse James, nearly all the epic heroes of the frontier were Southerners. The “cowboy humorist” Will Rogers was the son of a captain in the Confederacy’s Cherokee brigade. You will hear nothing except Southern accents today on America’s only remaining frontier, the North
Shore oil fields.

We repeat: The West is only Western because it is Southern, because it bears the impress of the culture of the Old South rather than the Old North. That is why Oklahoma produces cowboys, oil wildcatters, country music singers, writers and scholars, evangelists and outlaws, and Kansas produces wheat and an occasional communist."

[LocalPlanner]

Originally Posted by supfromthesite

"American historians often write of a contrast between the South, a closed reactionary society, and the West, free and open and characteristically American. The dichotomy thus presented is a false one. The West is the South. That is, to the extent that the West is a theatre for heroic action, rather than just a place to start a new business, it is the Old South transmitted to a new environment. The cowboy, to the degree that he represents the embodiment of a code of life rather than just a person who tends animals, is nothing more or less than the Virginia gentleman on the plains.

It is no accident that the most famous Western novel, written by a Pennsylvanian, Owen Wister, and set in Wyoming, was called The Virginian; nor that the most memorable character in Robert Service’s Alaska poems was from Tennessee; nor that John Wayne’s best Western movie, The Searchers, begins in 1865 with the hero riding up to his prairie home in tattered gray.

But the Southernness of the American West is not just in the realm of romance. The romance in this case merely reflects the facts. Boone, Crockett, Lewis and Clark, the heroes of the Alamo, Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Jesse James, nearly all the epic heroes of the frontier were Southerners. The “cowboy humorist” Will Rogers was the son of a captain in the Confederacy’s Cherokee brigade. You will hear nothing except Southern accents today on America’s only remaining frontier, the North
Shore oil fields.

We repeat: The West is only Western because it is Southern, because it bears the impress of the culture of the Old South rather than the Old North. That is why Oklahoma produces cowboys, oil wildcatters, country music singers, writers and scholars, evangelists and outlaws, and Kansas produces wheat and an occasional communist."

This again - oh, please. Much of Oklahoma, including OKC and its oil country, is not southern. It is a plains culture that happens to have a lot of people who trace heritage to southerners who migrated there in the late 1800s. The heavy presence of Southern Baptists is not of consequence in this regard. Same for northwestern and west TX and eastern NM. Quit trying to claim those areas as "southern." That is just not accurate.

[Frustratedintelligence]

I think if your definition of "the South" excludes states that are geographically southern, possess identifiably southern culture even in 2022 and were members of the Confederacy...then you're just splitting hairs at this point. Also maybe unaware that TX is not the only southern state with some un stereotypically southern traits.

[ParaguaneroSwag]

Originally Posted by Frustratedintelligence

I think if your definition of "the South" excludes states that are geographically southern, possess identifiably southern culture even in 2022 and were members of the Confederacy...then you're just splitting hairs at this point. Also maybe unaware that TX is not the only southern state with some un stereotypically southern traits.

They’re not unaware. They’re just embarrassed of them.