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Racism in West Texas Is a Whole Different Level
Between Open Doors and Closed Circles
By Paramendra Kumar Bhagat
Racism in West Texas is not always loud. It doesn’t always shout slurs or slam doors. Often, it smiles, invites you in for dinner, hands you sweet tea—and then quietly decides not to add you on Facebook.
That paradox is what makes it fascinating, confusing, sometimes exhausting, and ultimately worth writing about.
I once lived in Kentucky. I have lived in New York City. I have lived across continents. But West Texas—places like Odessa and Midland—operates on a different cultural frequency altogether. Not better, not worse. Different. And difference, when left uninterrogated, can feel like exclusion.
This essay is not an indictment. It is a conversation starter.
The Long Shadow of History
West Texas carries history the way desert rock carries heat—quietly, persistently, long after the sun has set. Odessa, for instance, is often cited as one of the last cities in America to fully desegregate its schools, well into the latter half of the 20th century. Whether or not it was the last, it was certainly among the laggards. That matters. Social memory is sticky. It lingers in institutions, habits, and unspoken rules.
But history alone does not explain the present. People are not their grandparents’ ghosts.
Many of the people I know here are kind, generous, and sincere. "One of my closest friends goes back and forth to Chihuahua, Mexico, regularly," a local messaged. The oil economy itself—West Texas’s economic engine—has drawn in Nigerians, Mexicans, Indians, Venezuelans, and others from oil-producing regions across the globe. On paper, this is diversity.
In practice, diversity and integration are not the same thing.
The Home Invite–Facebook Paradox
Here is a small story that says more than a thousand op-eds.
In West Texas, people will invite you to their home—sometimes quickly, warmly, sincerely. But those same people may hesitate to connect with you online.
“I don’t know you that well,” they’ll say.
To a New Yorker, this feels upside down. In NYC, the rule is the opposite: We can be connected online forever, but you’re not coming to my apartment unless I’ve known you for years.
In West Texas, the home is private but physical; the social graph is emotional capital. Adding someone online is not casual. It is an investment. And locals, understandably, ask themselves a quiet question before investing:
Are you going to stay?
Emotional Real Estate in a Transient Economy
West Texas is an oil economy. Oil towns are boom-and-bust towns. People come. People leave. Entire neighborhoods turn over every few years.
Locals have learned—rationally, self-protectively—not to open up too fast. Why build deep bonds with someone who might be gone by the next drilling cycle?
So what can feel like racism is often something subtler: emotional risk management.
This does not make the experience easier for newcomers, especially immigrants and people of color. But it reframes the intent. Not everything that feels like rejection is rooted in hostility. Some of it is rooted in fatigue.
Carrying Your Homeland in Your Pocket
There is another layer here that is uniquely modern.
For people like me, India and Nepal are not places we “left behind.” They are second browser tabs that never close. Free calls. Video chats. Family WhatsApp groups. Cultural continuity on demand.
You can move to West Texas without emotionally migrating at all.
Many Indians here have structured their lives exactly that way: America is for work; home is elsewhere. Social lives remain fully Indian. That is a valid choice—but I find it terrifying.
I make it a point to meet locals. Actively. Intentionally. Even awkwardly. Because otherwise, you risk living in geographic exile while remaining socially untouched by the place you inhabit.
And that, too, can look like segregation—from the other side.
Micro-Grievances, Not Manifestos
The examples in my original short story were intentionally small. Minor. Almost petty.
Because that is how everyday alienation works—not through dramatic confrontations, but through tiny frictions. Church conversations that go quiet. Party invitations that come with invisible ceilings. Golf club small talk that never quite crosses into friendship.
These are not crimes. They are missed connections.
And the good news? They are fixable.
Most of these tensions dissolve with simple, open-minded conversations. With time. With repetition. With showing up again and again until familiarity replaces suspicion.
What’s Actually Beautiful About West Texas
It would be dishonest not to say this: there is a lot to love here.
Nature – The landscape is stark, humbling, and honest. The sky feels bigger than ambition.
Space – Physical and mental. You can breathe here. You can think.
Repeat Encounters – This isn’t a city of strangers passing like ships in fog. You will see the same people again. That makes real friendship possible.
Unexpected Diversity – Nigerians from oil regions. Mexicans with deep cross-border lives. South Asians navigating parallel worlds. The diversity is real—even if the mixing is incomplete.
West Texas is not a finished social project. It is a place still negotiating its identity.
Humanity Is a Trip
A friend summed it up perfectly during one of these exchanges: Humanity is a trip.
Indeed it is.
Racism here is not always hatred. Sometimes it is hesitation. Sometimes it is history. Sometimes it is fear of loss. Sometimes it is simply unfamiliarity waiting to be replaced by recognition.
The desert teaches patience. Rock formations are shaped by wind, not force.
Maybe cultures are too.
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