Yes, Texas Is Different

[jsr]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2012/09/yes-texas-is-different.html

September 27, 2012
Yes, Texas Is Different
Posted by Hendrik Hertzberg

... This, of course, is a reference to the Republic of Texas, as this spacious corner of the world styled itself from 1836 to 1846. In truth, the Republic of Texas was a transitional entity, the larval stage of the State of Texas. Nevertheless, “The Star of Destiny” has a point. Texas is different. It is big, for a start. Not as big as Alaska, which is bigger than France and England and Germany and Japan … combined, but big enough. And it was a nominally independent if ramshackle republic, with embassies and a Congress and everything. Vermont, Hawaii, and, arguably, California were once independent republics, too, but they don’t make a fetish of it. Texas does.

Texas is different. The qualities—the very existence—of the Bob Bullock Museum of Texas State History are evidence of that. Modesty is not the museum’s keynote. On the plaza out front is a huge sculpture of a five-pointed star. It must be twenty feet high. (“Mmm, subtle,” our ninth-grader murmured.) Inside, the exhibits are an uneasy combination of ethnic correctness and unrestrained boasting. One would think that Texas, besides being very, very great, has always been ruled by a kind of U.N. Security Council consisting of one white male, one white female, one black person, one American Indian, and one Mexican or Mexican-American, all of them exemplars of—the phrase is repeated ad nauseam—courage, determination, and hard work.

The stories the exhibits tell are mostly about the state’s economy, agricultural and industrial. Whether it’s oil extraction or cattle raising, rice farming or silicon chipmaking, quicksilver mining or sheepherding, the elements of each are usually the same. A few men become extraordinarily rich. These men are praised for their courage, determination, and hard work. The laborers whose labor produces their wealth are ruthlessly exploited. (The exhibits don’t put it this way, obviously, but the facts are there if you have eyes to see them.) These unfortunates may be poor white men; they may be Mexican immigrant women; they may be enslaved blacks or African-Americans held in sharecropper peonage. They, too, are praised for their courage, determination, and hard work. It all adds up to an unending progression of triumphs for the Texas spirit.

The boasting does not take long to taste a little sour. It begins to feel defensive and insecure. One begins to sense that the museum, on some level, knows that a lot of it is, well, bullockshit. ...



(The entire article must be read)

[WolverineDG]

1. Typical New Yorker

[Javaman]

2. Great article.

full disclosure. I live in Austin.

[northoftheborder]

3. Used to live in Austin, very familiar with Bullock Museum......

.....Very accurate analysis of the museum as it reflects the way traditional Texas viewed itself. If Texas still views itself in this simplistic braggadocio way, then it is very out of date in presenting such a narrow vision of it's history and culture. When they were planning this museum, this was the vision of the person who made it possible, Bob Bullock. I'm hoping that Texas someday will grow up and be able to present the whole story of a really great state. We have to grow out of Rick Perry first.