What Makes Someone a Texan? [Video]

This essay is part of the Ultimate Texas Celebrity Bracket. Read them all—and cast your vote!—here.

When I think about what makes a Texan, I am reminded of the 1964 Supreme Court case Jacobellis v. Ohio, when Justice Potter Stewart tried to define pornography and wrote, “I know it when I see it.” As a staff writer at this state’s national magazine, where I have worked for a decade, determining who and what counts as “one of us” is part of my job. And I am well suited to the task: I was born and raised here, and all branches of my Texan family tree are several generations long.

My first sip of the proverbial Texas Kool-Aid was when I absorbed Big Red through my mother’s umbilical cord. I grew up believing we were special—chosen, even—and that there is no grocery store better than H-E-B, no mountain range more beautiful …