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Only recently has Austin started to distance itself from its Southern roots.
But keep in mind that this occurred after Texas itself began doing so after the Civil War in order to distance itself from its Confederate past and play up its (very short) history as an independent republic and its Western cultural and historic aspects.
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Neither area is stereotypically Southern. But what metro over 500K is these days?
I can think of a few candidates such as Augusta, Jackson, Little Rock, Fayetteville (NC), etc.
Austin went from Nanci Griffin and Robert Earl Keen to Spoon and the Black Angles at breakneck speed. The Austin sound was greasy guitar and dripping (affectation) southern accents. And sloganeering aside, Texas never made any real attempt to distance itself from the South. It played up the “Texas is its own thing” thing but it turns out Texas’ thing was in lockstep with the South’s thing.
Austin went from Nanci Griffin and Robert Earl Keen to Spoon and the Black Angles at breakneck speed. The Austin sound was greasy guitar and dripping (affectation) southern accents. And sloganeering aside, Texas never made any real attempt to distance itself from the South. It played up the “Texas is its own thing” thing but it turns out Texas’ thing was in lockstep with the South’s thing.
Austin went from Nanci Griffin and Robert Earl Keen to Spoon and the Black Angles at breakneck speed. The Austin sound was greasy guitar and dripping (affectation) southern accents. And sloganeering aside, Texas never made any real attempt to distance itself from the South. It played up the “Texas is its own thing” thing but it turns out Texas’ thing was in lockstep with the South’s thing.
Also can't forget how popular Stevie Ray Vaughan was back in the gap in Austin. Like I said previously, I use to visit Austin regularly back in 05-07 when I was in college. It looks and feels so unrecognizable even in that short frame of time so I can only imagine how different it feels from many many decades ago. The Austin you see now is not even close to what it use to be culturally.
I'm not seeing how this article supports that. They make it clear that despite the state's unique history many Texans still have a lot of pride in its Confederate heritage, and this is true. There are monuments less than ten years old in Texas, and any movement to remove them or challenge the revisionist history behind them is met with backlash like in any other southern state.
Honestly from my personal experiences most Austinites or people living in Austin have little to no connection with East Texas. To a lot of Austinites, East Texas might as well be in Mississippi. You gotta remember a lot of Austinites even have a condescending attitude about cosmopolitan cities like Dallas and Houston let alone a region like East Texas.
I'll give you a perfect example.
Check out this video from Will Edmond a guy from East Texas. He mentions to the Austinite that he's from East Texas and when he brings up the town she literally has no idea of what town he's talking about. It's a town near Texarkana.
Which his hometown is a 6 hour drive from Austin. Just not enough interaction between both regions to attach it to each other. Even down to the BBQ. It's completely different.
Exactly! My birthplace of Marshall,TX is closer to Vicksburg Mississippi than it is to Austin.
Austin definitely has a southern history. I can recall looking at old footage of Austin from the 70's with people wearing shirts with confederate flags on them and of course Austin's heavy racist past and political structure. Austin was in close proximity to a lot of Freedmen towns in between Austin and Houston. Austin became a destination for those newly freedmen in it's formative years. Austin even has one of the oldest HBCU's in the state. Not only that but UT Austin has a very problematic racist past that feels no different than what you would find in most southern cities during that time period.
Difference is Austin made a complete transformation I'd say somewhere in the late 80's to early 90's and it's southern roots slowly started to fade over time. Not suggesting that it had a strong southern culture to begin with. Again there were White Southerners that established parts of Austin and central Texas but it was a little different too with the wave of German immigrants that had no ties to the southern antebellum. Which is probably another reason Austin in particular feels void of any southern culture.
Than again you said Houston didn't feel southern to you at all. I beg to differ. It's a major cosmopolitan city so of course it wouldn't feel as southern as a rural or smaller southern town with less transplants but it's roots are there. Especially in counties like Fort Bend and Brazos.
That was an interest article. Long, but very informative.
It isn't saying what you are saying though.
Seems like the gist of the article isn't about Texas being its own thing but how difficult a challenge it is changing incorrect narratives of Texas History. Seems like the majority is dead set against giving up support for the confederacy in addition to support for the republic.
If anything it seems that Texans are proud to be associated with the confederacy but not the US. All that talk about Texas is Texas may not be about it distancing itself from the south but distancing itself from the north.
I think both Texans and non Texans take too much out of Texas's self promotion. A place doesn't make a name for itself by being a second rate version of somewhere else.
Texas, it's like a whole northern country is a great slogan.
Our founding fathers couldn't make it in Tennessee and North Carolina so they came here isn't such a great slogan.
Texas plays up its brief stint at being a republic, so what? It sell. What would you like it to play up? The article is a very long article. Most people would just glance over it, but if you haven't I would recommend you read all the way through. It's about a boy's attempt to change Texas celebrating Confederate Heroes day to a sort of remembrance of the Civil War as a whole and how the Texas legislature was fiercely against that. Seems to me it wasn't about Texas distance itself from the rest of the south but fiercely against recognizing that there were union supporters in Texas too.
The article does say that Texas plays up its cowboy Culture and downplays that the True King is cotton, but again that just marketing.
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