I adore Texas. I’ve always been a horse girl. The Bull riding at Fort Worth Stockyards is mesmerizing. The BBQ is phenomenal and the people are warm, genuinely friendly. During the World Cup, my social media feed was full of Europeans expressing utter awe and delight in Texas (especially the food). And it’s well earned! They aren’t the first to make this observation, either. Texas has been the recipient of refugees (the Chip and Joanna Gaines kind) from blue states, too. (Much to the chagrin of the locals who fear these newcomers will turn their red Texas purple.)
The reason people move to Texas is for the Texan lifestyle. But the lifestyle is changing—because the demographics are changing.
In the same way White liberal Californians are bringing their culture in tow, Latin Americans (who are displacing the original Tejanos), and now increasingly Indians, are bringing theirs. In 1970, the state was only 3.9% foreign born. Now, only 51% of adults in Texas were born in the state, and 19% were born in another country entirely. Without awareness and deliberate policy safeguards, Texas will soon slip into an unrecognizable soup of competing cultures—divided along ethnic lines.
