Texas Identity Values-Based Research

• We care about Texas identity and allegiance because it is a source of power — in the democratic-civics sense, of course. Competitors for allegiance to, and identification with, Texas include but are not limited to: American identity, nation-of-origin identity, ethnic identity, religious identity, local identity, and beyond. Of course all these allegiances can and do properly coexist (especially Texan and American identities, which are necessarily complements to one another), but it matters a great deal which comes first, as that mediates and interprets all the others.
• In this historical moment, Texas’s unique history and sense of self are obviously impediments to the progressive / leftist agenda: it is no accident that the forces of liberty and conservatism tend to be strongly Texas-identified, while their antagonists explicitly seek to bring Texas into conformism with a national and therefore implicitly non-Texan leftist standard. Narrative control of what is and is not Texan, then, becomes the singular pivot upon which our future depends. (We should note that the regimes in, for example, California and Illinois rest upon the reverse arrangement, having successfully identified progressivism with their native sense of self.) We undertake this research because we wish to be the determinative institution on this definition.
• Texas is virtually the only state in which a superseding state identity and allegiance remains possible. It was once upon a time the norm for Americans to possess a singular and superior allegiance to their state — as illuminated in the first century of American independence — but this is no longer the case, and the effects on our civics, for those of us adhering to something like the Founders’ ideals, has been almost uniformly negative. This is the transcending importance of this work: in discerning how we understand and activate Texas identity, we offer pathways and possibilities for the same efforts in other states. We would argue that this is an indispensable prerequisite for the restoration of America at large.

One other note: this sort of research has never been undertaken before. Both left and right have a longstanding fixation on ideas and policies: neither have done well in incorporating the real fonts of identity, place and heritage, into their work. There is a great deal of Milton Friedman and not much Wendell Berry. There is a lot of discussion of the behavioral effects of a tax credit, and not much on the effects of seeing a flag or an ancestor’s grave. A proper understanding of a people requires both. To borrow from Churchill, we are not machinery of rational calculation: we are also sentiment and spirit.

This research shows the way toward that end. It was conducted in the second half of 2024 under the aegis of Anne Segal of The Frontier Lab, with whom we have worked many times, as a value-laddering exercise.

In undertaking this effort, we elected to focus upon four subsets of Texans, who in our (qualitative) judgment will play an outsized role in the shaping of the Texas future. They are, in no particular order:

• Mexican-Americans. We focused upon this cohort, as distinct from Hispanics writ large, as being most-likely to have deep roots in Texas. Recent immigrants aside, the historic Mexican-American population of Texas resolves into three major groups: the San Antonio-Nacogdoches settlement; the New-Mexico settlement mostly resident in and around El Paso; and the Nuevo-Santander settlement now resident south of the Nueces with its western terminus around Laredo. This last group has been driving the rightward shift in Hispanic voting in Texas since 2020 — but there are also significant counter-Texas historical grievances at hand that the apparatus of the left has tried to weaponize in the past decade. Investigating sources of Texan allegiance and identity here confronts the other side on a major persuasive / narrative battlefield.
• New Texans. We focused upon this cohort as having no direct rootedness in Texas, but nevertheless having made a choice to become Texan — and thereby, presumably, partake in the Texas inheritance. This is a test group for the transferability of Texas identity and allegiance, and also for understanding how its complementary nature versus American identity and allegiance can aid in that transference. Furthermore, we will garner some information here on how and whether new Texans can make Texas more or less itself.
• South-Asian Texans. We focused upon this group because the South-Asian population of Texas, mostly (but not solely) of Indian and Pakistani origin, and mostly (but not solely) Hindu and Muslim, has played an increasingly prominent role in the public life of significant Texas regions, most notably in the Dallas and Houston metropolitan areas. How does Texas identity and allegiance inform the sentiments and civics of populations who are not rooted in historic Texas by dint of history, ethnicity, or religion? This gives us a look, again, at the transference and attraction of Texas identity and allegiance in a population without even the American-identity complementarity of the New-Texan group.
• African-American Texans. We focused upon this group because of its sui-generis character, both in terms of history — the only cohort subjected across two centuries to both enslavement and then de jure segregation that persisted into living memory — and in terms of character now. The African-American Texans offer both a population with deep roots in the land — Texas, for example, has the largest population of black farmers of any state — and with ample reason for alienation from Texas identity and allegiance. This group gives us a look at whether Texan allegiance and identity is a thing sustained from within, or taken from without.

Our major findings follow:

• Texas history matters. The unique Texas experience of frontier, war, and revolution inform all groups, but especially the Mexican-American and South-Asian groups, who admire the Alamo and the Texas Revolution and derive personal meaning from it. Most dissociated from that historical moment are the African-Americans, followed by the New Texans. We can hypothesize that the former is a function of rational reaction to history, and the latter a simple lack of exposure to information. Nevertheless the pull and attraction of Texas history is obvious here: the Mexican-Americans, putatively (in the left’s telling) the losers of those fights, positively endorse it in tremendous numbers; and the South Asians do as well, which we hypothesize is attractive to them as a comprehensible narrative of rights and dignity. One final note here: the Alamo is the centerpiece of all else, and therefore is the hinge upon which all the rest turns. It must be defended.
• Texas delivers dignity, and dignity and tradition go hand in hand. We see this again and again across all cohorts: because Texas guarantees liberty, Texas is a place where the dignity of worship, the dignity of a way of life, the dignity of family and home, and the dignity of personal authority and respect, are all secured. We hypothesize that it is difficult to overstate the value of all this in what we might described as traditional-society cohorts, among whom the Mexican-Americans, the South Asians, and the rural and small-town elements of the African-Americans stand at the forefront. This provides a key to understanding why, for example, the South Asians — who as I wrote earlier “are not rooted in historic Texas by dint of history, ethnicity, or religion” — nonetheless find great value and place in Texas. It is because Texas secures what they are rooted in, and this therefore gives them grounding in Texas itself. (Look at their high Alamo-endorsement numbers for evidence.)
• Texas unites without erasing. We see this throughout the answers in the value laddering: Texas offers a distinct and nontransferable (outside of Texas) set of values that also allows for the multiplicity of cultures and folkways within Texas, with no contradiction between them. As such, though there is a generally defined and understood Texan-ness, it is incorporative and inclusive without requiring the sacrifice of any closely held value by the newcomer. More than this, it is generally protective of those values — a key point in understanding its power and attraction.
• Texas is true. Contrary to the variety of evident falsehoods demanded by left-progressivism now — on the nature of crime, on the nature of the border, on the nature of the sexes, and so on — Texas allows Texans to see clearly and to say so. This should not be understood in some narrow or parochial sense, as our side being more honest than the other: there are obviously significant disagreements between, say, a median voter in Fort Bend County and one in Starr County, each of them within our posited Texan cohorts here. What it does mean, however, is that Texas identity and allegiance is not by its nature exclusionary. You are not exiled from Texan-ness for heterodoxy — contrast with the civics of California as one will — and this has the seemingly paradoxical effect of solidifying the Texan orthodoxy. In Boydian terms, Texas aligns with Orientation and Observation exceedingly well.

There is a unique aspect of New Texans’ identification and allegiance to Texas, which we term here the exuberance of freedom. The experience of liberation is uniquely motivating and affecting to the New Texans, and they are conscious of it in ways the other three cohorts are not.

In short, Texas is where it’s safe to be who you want to be … Texas will defend your family, your faith, and your way of life … Texas makes you proud … and Texas is yours.