Dear Texas,
First off, I just want to say that you are extremely narcissistic. Like tone it down man you have nothing to be proud about. You literally failed as your own country and the Alamo you lost. Why do you have to remember it? Also let’s not forget you were a part of the Confederacy, there is no pride in that. Just had to get that off my chest real quick.
There is something about your hospitality that doesn’t sit right with me Texas. In Foreigner Question Coming from Abroad from the Foreigner by Derrida, the philosopher brings up this circular logic: “the one who puts the first question. As though the foreigner were being-in-question, the very question of being-in-question, the question-being or being-in -question of the question. But also the one who, putting the first question, puts me in question.” Though the logic is hard to follow, it reminds me of your southern “hospitality”. I will admit sometimes you can be nice Texas, but most of the time you are nosy and condescending. The line of questioning we northerners, or yankees (though I’m not from New York but whatever) get from you borders on rude, but the way you say it doesn’t sound rude in the beginning. The tone, the little “bless your heart”. You question us (foreigners from the north) as to why we are here? Why Texas? Even asking some of my family members “what are you?” in a way that in the beginning we think you are interested in our heritage. Later we realize that you are wondering what race we are, so that you can be racist behind our backs, or even to us if you felt brave enough that day, but we are white so I see the little disappointment in your eyes.. But this line of questioning brings me back to Derrida, because you ask the same question in different ways circling back around and around again checking for a lie in our logic. You do this Texas because you don’t trust foreigners, which is ridiculous because the land you own may not be foreign but the pale colonizers who conquered it are.
But it’s not just foreigners from other states you treat badly, there are foreigners from other countries you treat worse. You look at those who cross your southern border as less than, less than human. You treat them as such and then get angry that they are “stealing your jobs” yet I don’t see you cleaning bathrooms in rich peoples houses or constructing houses in new suburbs Texas. Many of the young children who cross your southern border feel the need to change and evolve and leave their culture, because of how they are treated. In We Refugees by Hannah Arendt, the author explains that “the less we are free to decide who we are or to live as we like, the more we try to put up a front, to hide the facts, and to play a role”. Those who cross your border at an early age Texas grow up with two different lives, the life they have with the parents that mimics the culture they were born into, the life they have outside of that, the role of “good citizen” they have to play in order to keep themselves safe from violence and ridicule. There is very little freedom for them to decide who they are, it is already done for them by the stereotypes given to them. Though across the state there are little pockets, pockets of where their culture is proudly displayed and towns and cities are made up of others just like them, who have been here when the land exchanged hands so many times or who have just crossed your border. These cultures are important to sustain, because they are pushed out of the larger southern Texas culture.
Texas I know that you were not born with these issues but were made from them. I know that your land has been conquered many times and that your borders were argued over for decades (but in all due respect you are too big, you need to be split up). I do know that you were made by those who settled from the north, who reached across land that still wasn’t their own and claimed it. There is a great literary device used in Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Aime Cesaire, the author writes “Death gallops in the prison like a white horse” and “death expires in a white pool of silence.” This personification of death and the use of the color white is significant. The first quote is used almost as if death is the hero of the story coming in on his white horse, this reminds me of how we came across the Native Land of Texas on our own horses thinking that we were going to be heroes to civilize the people there but weren’t heroes. In this metaphor we are death and foreshadow the death of Native People everywhere we go. As for the second part, the years went on and we conquered the land and people. We stay silent to atrocities that still happen to people of color in this land and it is our white silence that brings death.
Though you have these issues, you still are home to the people I love and I will stay within your borders. Not because I feel at home in them, but because the people I love make me feel at home. And you know hopefully this November you will be blue and we can work on changing some things together.
Yours bitterly,
Kim Tansey
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