Which Is Texas?

In “What Is Texas” (October 18), Kevin D. Williamson provides a thoughtful defense of Texas’s tremendous diversity. Halfway through, this fifth-generation Texan thought, “Finally, someone who gets us.” But sadly, at the end, he falls for the Texas-exceptionalism myth, an atavistic supremacism disguised as patriotism.

As a native, Williamson knows well the Mutant Texas Weirdness of which he writes. He finds it charming how some Anglo Texans kick up dust, shoot in the air, and dig in their heels when change comes too fast. But in a book I co-wrote, Forget the Alamo, we show how these tantrums are more communally damaging than Williamson acknowledges.

We argue that the Texas Revolt had as much to do with preserving slavery as with defending liberty. In rejecting our argument, Williamson relies on the same selective reading list that so-called heroes used to create what we call the “Heroic Anglo Narrative,” a justification for white supremacy since 1836. Williamson, though, is a son of the West Texas Plains, where people grow cattle, not the East Texas Piney Woods, where I spent summers and locals still hailed Confederate war dead. We are about the same age, but his experience with school desegregation in Lubbock was different from mine in Dallas. The Ku Klux Klan was a constant presence where I lived.

Williamson tries to shift the Texas frame just enough to appear more expansive, but he still resists acknowledging the state’s brutal history and culture. He’ll need to work harder to take in the whole picture.

Chris Tomlinson

Dallas, Texas

Correction

The Week (August 2) stated that “in 1991 several Canadian bishops and Indigenous representatives met with Pope Benedict.” Saint John Paul II was pope in 1991.