graphic by isa de leon
Despite what you think about our education, awareness, and understanding, we hear you when you say we deserve what’s coming to us over our screams for help. We hear you when you bash the places we’ve called home for decades. A place you’ve never even stepped foot in. We hear you when you say there’s no hope for us to thrive except to move.
I’m a Texan. A fact that I say to non-Texans and immediately get met with sympathy when I’m not looking for or needing it. I came out of the closet at thirteen years old in South Texas. I’ve spent many June nights at Texas pride events and marches. I love being a queer Texan, even if that seems unbelievable to people outside of my home state.
There are obvious problems with Texas. Our districts are gerrymandered beyond belief. The voter suppression of our Black and Brown communities is disheartening. The constant movement to places like Austin displaces residents who’ve never lived anywhere else and makes it expensive to even breathe. God forbid you find yourself houseless in Austin, where camping out for a concert thirty-six hours in advance is perfectly fine, but living in a tent isn’t. Around 3 million Texas adults read below a basic level, meaning their literacy levels are not sufficient enough to compare and contrast information, paraphrase, and make low-level inferences, and have a dismally low amount of libraries, about 3.2 for every 100,000 residents. For reference, there are an estimated 30 million people living in Texas. There are problems here just as there are anywhere, but that doesn’t make the state or its people worthless.
And yet, when we ask for help with abortion access, education reform, anti-trans legislation, you tell us that we are not worth the time or the energy. Do you think we don’t see that? Do you think we don’t see when you post things like, “Fuck Texas” or “They voted red. They deserve whatever happens?” So much of our daily lives are fueled by Southerners. Texas has 12.3% or 126 million acres of the United States’ total farmland. Things like cotton, beef, dairy, and crops such as corn, barley, and oats are some of Texas’s top exports. When NASA sent men into space, they were trained and sent from Houston. Even the notoriously Californian Whole Foods Market was started in Texas. We, as a country, have never been able to survive or grow without Texans.
So, why is it so easy to abandon our most vulnerable? How could you look at the 30,000 trans children here and not think that they’re worth saving? Or what about the 25,000 homeless people living on our streets? Or the 4.7 million migrants who’ve decided to make Texas their home? You come here for SXSW or ACL. You come here to party in South Padre Island during Spring Break and leave your trash on our beaches, injuring our wildlife and sending our sea turtles to the hospital. You go to Big Bend National Park and go home to tell your friends just how unbelievably beautiful it was. You love Texas otherwise, you wouldn’t keep coming here. So, why can’t you love Texans, too?
Not every Texan is a queer kid who’s grown up in the hill country like me. Trust me, I know. I’ve been the one spending my life explaining queer history and fearing for my safety, all while coming of age. My friends and I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of Texas, and we still choose to love it despite how often Texas legislators try to make us disappear because we have hope for the future of Texas. We have to. If we don’t, what are we doing all this work for? What is hard to understand is how people from other states could look at that hope and misunderstand it as something unworthy or downright idiotic.
We hear you when you bash the South. We hear you when you tell us we’re unworthy of help. We hear you when you’re silent about us freezing in our homes or our governor attacking our trans families. And yet, I still donated to NYC relief funds when COVID-19 ravaged the city. I still shed light on the fires that destroyed much of California. I still have sympathy when something awful happens in a state I’m not from. Because even though we see how you treat us, we are a product of Southern hospitality. So, we will send you flowers and condolences. We will talk about things affecting you and why people should care about them. We will stand with you when you need a little extra love and care. And when the time comes for you to do the same, we won’t expect anything in return. Because we hear you when you bash the South.