Lone Star individuality

The subtitle of Lawrence Wright’s splendid God Save Texas (‘A Journey into the Future of America’) would be alarming if I found it entirely convincing. It’s hard to imagine a future where the Catholic Texan spirit of individualism would seriously overwhelm Yankee Puritanism, however mutated. In New England it’s about hard-earned old money shrewdly invested. In Texas it’s about striking it rich on a hunch, and new money rashly spent.

There are contradictions in Texas which allow you to select almost any argument you like from her. She is beautiful and she is barren; corrupt and honourable. Whatever you want to say about her, she will supply abundant evidence.

Texans are proud of their immigrant heritage, which includes indigenous, African, British, German, Czech, Central and South American and Vietnamese people. They have the largest Muslim population in the US. Texas census rightly classifies Mexican as white, though many are clearly of pre-Columbian descent. There is plenty of racism in parts of the state, but, when crossing the border from Louisiana, Oklahoma or Arkansas, relations between whites and minorities improve noticeably. It’s no surprise that so many thousands of New Orleans Katrina victims, invited in by Houston, decided to stay rather than go back. Sophisticated black friends of mine were shocked to find far more prejudice in Boston than they ever experienced in Austin. They returned in some relief. ‘Welcome home,’ says the immigration officer in Dallas. ‘Why are you here?’ they ask in New York.

A quarter of a century ago, when I first moved to Texas, I sat drinking in a crowded cowboy bar in our small town when talk turned to politics and healthcare. Foolishly, knowing the reaction this would have in most rural US communities, I found myself asserting that I’d voted socialist in the last British election. I guessed immediately I’d made a mistake.