re: Are people from Texas "Southerners"?

frickin New Mexico is horning in on our land in that tat!

I'd say the western line where the "The South" ends is somewhere from Texarkana, southwest to wrap around College Station, then back southeast towards the coast just outside of Houston's far western suburbs. DFW, Austin, and San Antonio are definitely not included within said line. A very small percentage of the Texas acreage. So if you are going off of how much of the Texas landmass is Southern, then no Texas is not The South as a whole. You have to specify east Texas.

DFW is not east Texas, especially since they self proclaim north Texas. Austin and San Antonio are central Texas hill country.

If you go off of the history books though, all of Texas is southern. One of the original 7 to sign the Confederate Constitution, is one of the original 7 stars on the Confederate flag, and shed blood for The South during the Civil War.

But these days, I just say you don't get into the real south until you get into east Texas. Coming from the west of course.

I relocated to Texas and I like it. It is funny how everyone out here asks me why I would move from Florida to Texas. I would really like to find a place that sells boiled peanuts or had some good collard greens. The South definitely does not extend to I-35.

I think Ray Wylie Hubbard said it best:
Screw you we're from Texas

On a side note my mom and that whole side of the family is from Louisiana and Alabama and I have lived in Alabama for a short time. I like both places.

Houston is NOT the South, only people from outside the South or people from Houston will ever say it is.

When more than half a city speaks English as a second language it is NOT Dixie!

As my user name suggests, I spent a year in the Golden Triangle. I'd argue for it being considered part of "The South"

As others mentioned, it is southern in the way that Louisiana is southern, whereas Longview, Kilgore, Nacogdoches are southern in the way Arkansas is southern. Different flavors, but East Texas is southern IMO.

I know this thread is an annoying rehashing of a silly debate, but I enjoy hearing about how people view different regions.

Well, Dallas is home to SOUTHERN Methodist University

Texas is easily a Southern state..

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Texas is not the South although there are a lot of cultural similarities. Dallas and Houston are huge sprawling metro areas with people from all over the country and all over the world. Houston i/m/o has a truley international aspect to it. In adddition to the Hispanic influence, there are a lot of Asians there and Dallas as well. Austin has more in common with Berkeley than it does with any other SEC college town with the exception of maybe Athens. Fort Worth feels very "Western" and after FW, civilization basically ends.

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Of course then there is Marshall and East Texas generally. If you were blindfolded and listening to the folks talk, you would swear you were in rural Alabama or Mississippi (and for a simple reason, that is where the folks who settled those areas came from), and you probably couldn't tell much of a cultural difference also.

Houston and Dallas are comparable to Atlanta, geographically southern, but not culturally because of the diversity of population origins. Atlanta has a large population of Northerners, Asians (Koreans, especially), and Hispanics that make it more "cosmopolitan" than most other cities in the South.

Folks can pretend otherwise all they want, but yes, large swaths of Texas are culturally Southern: look at religion, politics, food, values, history, etc.

Houston is definitely not the quintessential example of the south, but there are a lot of people with southern and Native Texan backgrounds living amongst the foreigners. Keep in mind that 50 years ago Houston was a swamp arse cow town until central AC and O&G got became prevalent.

According to your argument using 1st language to determine if its south or not, would part of South Louisiana be disqualified as southern?