To the Editor:
I would like to thank JP Nogues ’02 so immensely for the incredibly insightful column about Texans and Texas (“Hey Texas! Don’t mess with the rest of us!” 9/7). As a freshman from Texas, I can’t think of a more fantastic introduction to my new environment than with xenophobic rantings about my home state.
What I find even more shocking is that a seemingly reputable newspaper like the Yale Daily News would publish this nonsense. The column referred to pride in one’s homeland as a mass inferiority complex. That is all well and good, disparage Texas and have a good laugh, but what if remarkably narrow-minded and ignorant comments were directed against some other place?
If someone were to say similar things about the people of, say, Mexico, there would be outrage. Why, then, is similarly hateful speech directed against fellow Americans tolerated?
Furthermore, the one source for Nogues’ Texaphobia is not even Texan! As the column stated, he is from Cleveland, Ohio. Nogues could have at least found a real Texan before he wrote his column. Also, his remarks make it painfully obvious he has never even been to Texas.
One could have at least picked up a map to see that President George W. Bush’s ’68 ranch is several hundred miles from Midland, the location Nogues alleged for it. Will the next insightful column include geography lessons along with another hate lecture?
Pride is nothing to be ashamed of, and I feel truly sorry for Nogues if he feels a lack of adoration for the place he was born and raised. May he enjoy a long reign with a cardboard crown as king of New Haven.
Matthew A. Blomerth ’05
September 8, 2001