Talk:Texas

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Texas article.
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Good article Texas was a nominee for good article, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.


Peer review Texas received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.
To-do list for Texas: edit · history · watch · refresh
  • Expand the lead section with three paragraphs (See the Houston article for example)
  • Summarize and trim many sections of the article
    • Convert religion section into prose
  • Insert more references
  • Improve article to featured article standards
  • Nominate article for peer review
  • Nominate article at Wikipedia:Good articles
  • Create Criticism Section?
  • Review and critique claims about factors supposedly causing economic growth in Texas such as relatively low taxes and lack of regulation.
  • Review comment that the economic impact of immigrant labor is a 'darker note'.
  • Create a new Sports subpage?
The current Texan Collaboration of the Month is Marshall, Texas.
Every month, a different Texas-related topic, stub or non-existent article is picked.
Please read the nomination text and improve the article any way you can.

Contents

[edit] Midnight Coogan

Fair to say "Tex" is a generic term for "cowboy" or "Westerner" in Eastern U.S.? Trekphiler (talk) 07:46, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

uuhhh...I'm a Texan and "Tex", at least the only way I've heard it, is used in a more provocative manner than just a casual name, like "smooth move Slick"..."Nice one Tex". (I know it's not the best examples but that's always the way I've used the word.)Prussian725 (talk) 17:33, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
I won't disagree it's used that way; I do wonder if it's not used more broadly than just Texans, tho (as the film ref indicates...). TREKphiler hit me ♠ 12:00, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
It might be.Prussian725 (talk) 20:45, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Citations Needed

[edit] Geography

  • The upper Texas Panhandle is similar to the Midwestern United States and the South Plains parts of West Texas, is a blend of South and Southwest.
    • Don't know much about TX geographyOldag07 (talk) 15:45, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Texas Almanac divides Texas into four physical geographical regions: Gulf Coastal Plains, Interior Lowlands, Great Plains, and The Basin and Range Province.
    • Can not findat all in AlmanacOldag07 (talk) 15:45, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Geology

  • This orogenic crest is today buried beneath the Dallas—Waco—Austin—San Antonio trend. During this time E. Texas was a region of high mountains and shallow seas covered W. Texas.[citation needed]
    • Very unfamilar with GeologyOldag07 (talk) 15:45, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
  • At the start of its formation, the incipient Gulf of Mexico basin was restricted and seawater often evaporated completely to form thick evaporite deposits of Jurassic age. These salt deposits have buoyantly risen up through the passive margin sediments to form salt dome diapirs, commonly found in East Texas, along the Gulf coast.
  • Texas has no volcanoes and few earthquakes, being situated far from an active plate tectonic boundary

[edit] Climate

  • Climatologists divide Texas into three main zones: the humid subtropical climate (Koppen Cfa) of the eastern half of Texas, the temperate semi-arid (Koppen BSk) steppe climate of the northwestern part, including the Panhandle, and the subtropical steppe climate (nearly an arid desert climate, Koppen BSh) of the southern parts of West Texas, particularly around El Paso.
  • Tornadoes in Texas generally occur between the months of April–July.

[edit] Demographics

  • As of 2004, the state has 3.5 million foreign-born residents (15.6 percent of the state population), of which an estimated 1.2 million are illegal aliens. More than one-third of the foreign-born population in Texas and 5.4 percent of the total state population comes from illegal immigration.

[edit] Racial group and ethinic origins

  • Mexican (25.3%)
  • Much of the population of east, central, and north Texas have a white Protestant heritage, primarily descended from ancestors from Great Britain and Ireland.
  • African Americans, who historically made up one-third of the state population during the 19th century, are concentrated in the parts of East Texas where the cotton plantation culture was most prominent before the American Civil War, as well as in Dallas and Houston.
  • After the European revolutions of 1848, German, Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, Czech and French immigration grew, and continued until World War I.
  • German settlements formed in frontier Texas, particularly in Fredericksburg and New Braunfels.
  • Immigrants (including illegal aliens)—primarily from far southern Mexico and Central America, contribute heavily to the state's growth.
  • The influx of immigration is partially responsible for the state's having a young population compared relative to the rest of the United States.

[edit] Politics

[edit] Judicial System

  • Texas Game Wardens—law enforcement officers employed by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department—are given the same level of authority as standard law enforcement officers.

[edit] Politics

  • After the 1960s, Conservative Democrats in Texas began to endorse Republican presidential candidates.
  • Scholars attribute the change to the success of Nixon's Southern Strategy. In 1978, Texas Republicans elected their first post-reconstruction governor and in 2003 they gained control of the state legislature.
  • Dallas remains approximately split. In the southwest part of the state, particularly in El Paso, Democrats are strong.

[edit] Adminisrative Divisions

  • County elections are partisan.
  • Municipal elections in Texas are nonpartisan.

[edit] Economy

  • Texas's growth can be attributed to the availability of jobs, the low cost of housing, the lack of a personal state income tax, high quality of education, low taxation and limited regulation of business, a central geographic location, a limited government, favorable weather, and abundant natural resources.
  • On another note, the economic impact of illegal immigration is significant but difficult to estimate.

[edit] Energy

  • Since 2002, Texas deregulated its electric service with mixed results.
  • In 2006, for the fifth year in a row, Texas led the nation in export revenues. Texas exports for 2006 totaled $150.8 billion, which is $22.1 billion more than 2005 and represents a 17.2 percent increase.

[edit] Culture

[edit] Arts

  • The name Deep Ellum is derived from local people pronouncing "Deep Elm" as "Deep Ellum". Artists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter, and Bessie Smith played in early Deep Ellum clubs like The Harlem and The Palace.

[edit] Sports

  • As described the book Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream, high school football is a major part of Texas culture.
  • Municipal elections in Texas are nonpartisan.
  • Other popular sports in Texas include golf, fishing, auto racing and lacrosse.

[edit] Education

[edit] Colleges and Universities

  • There are 181 colleges, universities and dozens of other institutions engaged in the research and development of Texas within five different university systems.
    • Very difficult to get an exact numberOldag07 (talk) 15:46, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
I re-worded the El Paso sentence and threw a few election results to back it up; it isn't perfect, but it should work for now. As many areas along the river seem to be more Democratic than El Paso, the 'especially El Paso' part didn't really work. I'm not sure about how to approach the Geology section, as I too know very little about this. I did see some references in Geology of Texas, and I think the Texas Almanac has a section about this, so maybe just cut the section down a bit, re-word and put a few refs in there for now, and that should be good. As to the other unsourced statements, I was thinking that, while important things like illegal immigration should be kept and sourced, many of the above statements, like the one about Municipal elections or the Deep Ellum thing, could probably just be cut. I looked for refs for some of these, and came up empty. It would be OK to have these if they were cited, but they're not, and as such they are holding back any chance of the article's promotion. AlexiusHoratius (talk) 05:19, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 134%

I don't get it... 69.8% white, 11.6% black, 3.3% Asians, 13% other racial groups, 35.7% hispanic and latino... that makes about 134%, or I am miising some great logical thing here... care to explain? nem13

Hispanic is not considered a race by the census. The other numbers add up to the 98.3% of the population which identified as of one race; people who identified as two or more races comprised the remainder of the sample. You can visit the cite given for more information. Kuru talk 13:59, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
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