As I was growing up, I spent a fair amount of years living in Houston, Texas. I absolutely loved it. After I came home and began living in New Orleans, I found a trend among my friends and just the people around me: a good bit of them hated Texas.

“[They say] there’s no culture,” Kyle Lane said on the Houston Press. “I've spent a lot of time in places like New York City and various cities on the West Coast, and I like most of those places, but they're not the center of the universe.” I agree with this. The arts are a large part of Houston. When walking around downtown, I saw sculptures, murals, paintings, and statues. There is even a park that is dedicated to showing art installations to the public. Music is embraced by the people in Texas and I never felt like I was lacking in culture (and this is coming from a person who lives in New Orleans, a city full of culture). An anonymous writer for Angelfire writes, “Most Texans live in trailers.” What is this? I have not seen one trailer in Houston. I lived in a house and so does everyone I know in Houston.

While scouring the internet for other reasons people hate Texas, I came across a Facebook page called “I Hate Texas.” It’s a page that’s dedicated to… well… hating on Texas. After scrolling through it for about 40 minutes, I decided that it was one thing and one thing only: a propaganda. The page description states, “Texas. The land of the oil drillers, steers, and the people who have intercourse with steers. Nothing good has ever came from Texas, they wish to be their own independent country full of redneck retards and oil tycoons.” The only posts were posts of news pages that depicted Texas as this horrid state. The page owners and contributors did not even hint that the problems seen in the shared posts are problems all over the country.

They did not show the good; the achievements of students or any break throughs that Texas has made in science and engineering. They did not show that Universities like UT Austin discovered that Aspirin and Ibuprofen can lower the risk of breast cancer in over weight women or that scientist created a small radio wave circulator that doubled the range of usable bandwidth. They also did not show that Texas leads the nation as third in high school graduation rates at 88 percent. They only showed that some people in Texas were racists, murderers, and drunks.

Nickelodeon’s SpongeBobSquarePants also had something to say on the matter. The image below shows the conversation from the cartoon.

Here are a couple of statements from people that I talked to. I asked them the question “why do you hate Texas?” Agree or disagree, this is what they think:

“People hate Texas, one, because it is big enough to become its own state and, two, because Texans have so much pride, which I do not know where that comes from,” Darius said.

“The reasons I would hate Texas are the same reasons I hate LSU. They are just so rash and full of themselves. They think they are better than everyone else because of a location. Though, not all Texans are like this, just in general,” Ashley said.

“[I hate Texas] because, outside of Ohio, it is a bland America with a western twist and yet people from Texas treat it so exceptionally when it just is not,” Coryell said.

“The people there are ridiculous. They are loud, obnoxious and everything they do bothers me, like when we go to camps and there are big trucks that block everything. They’re just real obnoxious.” This person wanted to remain anonymous and will not be named.

So, why do people hate Texas? From the conversations that I had and all of the things that I read on the internet, it seems like people hate Texas because the people that reside in the state seem obnoxious, racist, unintelligent, stereotypical, and prideful. Is this true for everyone in Texas? I don’t think so. I also think that the characteristics listed can be found in people from all states, all countries and all continents. Maybe these thoughts of Texas are true and I have only seen the good crowd of people, but I believe that the hatred that people feel towards Texas is irrational and unjustified. There are small reasons and experiences that people have had, but are those experiences enough to justify applying those negative comments and feelings towards everyone that lives or comes from the state? No, I do not think so.