Texas being excluded from the South (Dallas, El Paso: school, health, rated)

[Frustratedintelligence]

Originally Posted by River City Rocky

To be fair Texas South and West of San Antonio is probably more similar to parts of California than it is to parts of Georgia though.

Unless you've spent considerable time in all parts of Texas it really can be difficult to realize how different places like El Paso or even San Antonio are compared to places like Houston or Beaumont.

San Antonio feels way more like Houston than El Paso to me. In fact EP is the one major city in the state with no discernible ties to the south or its culture. The vast majority of Texans live in parts of the state that atleast lean more towards the south than the southwest.

[R1070]

Originally Posted by KathrynAragon

I agree. I live in the Tyler corner of Texas! I spent ten years in the Columbus, GA area. Very similar when it comes to topography.

Tyler and Columbus are very similar in looks.

[R1070]

Originally Posted by Treasurevalley92

If they offer you sweet tea, you are in the south. It's that simple.

Sweet tea is pretty common around the U.S. now thanks to the popularity of Chick Fil A and others. Going to eat in Dallas, you almost always see packets of sugar on the table at restaurants.

[River City Rocky]

Originally Posted by Frustratedintelligence

San Antonio feels way more like Houston than El Paso to me. In fact EP is the one major city in the state with no discernible ties to the south or its culture. The vast majority of Texans live in parts of the state that atleast lean more towards the south than the southwest.

San Antonio is way different from Houston, so is Corpus Christi and the valley.

[homeinatx]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

The same country (Mexico) shares a common border with California which has a history on par with Texas as far as influence and peoples. Is Texas more akin to Georgia or California? Hands down, it is a brother of Georgia and not California. Your point dismissed.

Not so fast. Texas and California have way more in common than either Texans or Californians like to admit. The 2 most populous states in the union. Huge diverse and growing economies. Multiple large urban areas. Huge Latinx populations: Over 50% in California, 40 % in Texas.

Georgia not so much. There is Cal-Mex and Tex-Mex. never heard of Georgia-Mex food. Georgia has one major metropolitan area, not four of five like CA and TX. CA and TX have huge energy industries. Much of the black population in CA comes from Texas. Georgia not so much. You forget that only coastal California is superliberal. The Central Valley looks, feels and votes like rural Texas. Of course, there are major differences, but economically and demographically Texas is way more like California than it is like Georgia, and those similarities are factually, not sentimentally and anecdotally, based.

My beef with people who claim Texas is Southern is that claim ignores 40% of the Texas population; the 12 million or so Latinx people who couldn't care less about the south or sweet tea. Anecdotally, I have Chicano friends in Corpus who drive trucks and love George Strait and identify as Texans but would never imagine themselves as Southern, nor would the growing population of Texasians...

The Alamo is a more important incident in Texas history than the civil war. There are today many Texans who identify as Southerners, but most of them will identify as Texan first and then there as many Texans of Mexican descent who are entirely removed from Southern culture and have contributed just as much, if not more to the culture and identity of the state... Why do you want to reduce those people to "spice"?

[Soonhun]

A lot of Hispanic Texans and Asian Texans identify as Southern. I have cousins, grew up in El Paso and living in California, who identify as Southern. It isn't a cultural thing to many people, just a simple geographic thing. Like, I personally don't feel I have anything in common with people from Georgia, any more, at least, than people in Arizona or Nebraska, but I am from Texas, which is part of the US South, which makes me a Southerner.

[kemahkami]

All the other states in the country with widespread Mexican influence (i.e. not just confined to major metros) are located in the SW, so I can see why people use that demographic as reason of grouping Texas with the SW. Frankly, I have to agree with homeinatx, Texas really just feels a bit like California on the GOMEX these days. Even in Houston, the cultural Southern influences are largely archaic at best.

[RJ312]

There are parts of Texas that still feel southern. Mostly the less populated portions of East Texas and parts of North Texas north of Dallas. The Panhandle feels more like the West, as do the West Texas desert regions around El Paso, Midland-Odessa, Big Bend National Park, etc.

Dallas, where I have lived during the entire time I've lived in Texas, has minimal Southern influences.

The U.S. Census Bureau classifies Texas as a Southern state.

[elan]

Originally Posted by hotboyxroshi

I've never understood why people try to exclude Texas from the South. Obviously places like West Texas and the Panhandle aren't Southern but it's just strange to me that there's always been a debate for the rest of the state and it sometimes gets excluded for the strangest reasons like Mexican influence (as if other cultures haven't influenced the rest of the South) or accent (as if there is only one Southern accent and only one Texan accent).

Is it the pine trees that only certain parts of the South have? The transplants? Is Atlanta kicked out of the South too? Not that I'm proud of Texas' role in the Civil War, but growing up in Dallas/Fort Worth, we had schools, statues and streets dedicated to Confederate soldiers. I grew up not far from two streets named Jefferson and Davis than run parallel to each other.

I just don't get it.

Well then, you should know that Jefferson is named for U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, and Davis is named for an Oak Cliff landowner and developer, A.E. Davis. The information is at the downtown Dallas Public Library and the UNT online portal (WPA). Folks have been unsuccessfully trying to make Texas fit their own individual agendas for eons. Texas is just Texas, it's a huge diverse state, there's no pinning it down really.

[kemahkami]

Originally Posted by RJ312

The U.S. Census Bureau classifies Texas as a Southern state.

Yeah, like it does with DC and Maryland...