The stories that stuck with me from my first visit to Texas

Last week, I went on a reporting trip to Texas (courtesy of The Independent’s subscriber-led donations programme, which supports original reporting.) My purpose was to attend the seventh event on Nigel Farage’s oddly named American Comeback Tour, sponsored by a right-wing US organisation, called Freedom Works, usually affiliated with Republicans. It was my first trip to the Lone Star State – and perhaps, unfairly, I wasn’t expecting much.

When you live in New York, Americans from elsewhere in the States are quick to tell you how unfriendly it is. “Try living in London, love,” you often find yourself saying when Americans act shocked at how New Yorkers don’t talk to each other on the subway or rarely know their neighbours (in Brooklyn, we know our neighbours pretty well and even cat-sit for them, so I would say there’s a fair amount of exception to this rule.) They often want you to know that the rest of America is different; they have “southern hospitality”, after all.

“Southern hospitality” is what I expected when I went on my first American reporting trip in 2019 to Alabama, but it’s not what I got. In a small bed and breakfast with a crucifix on the door, the landlady shook her head about me travelling on my own and the people in the house across the street displayed a placard on their porch that read “PRAY TO END ABORTION”. For the most part, I was looked at with suspicion and a vague distrust. I had naively imagined an Alabama akin to the North Carolina described by a friend, where rural children would run out to the fields to gather fresh watermelons out of the ground while their fathers barbecued and everyone in the town was welcome. At the very least, I’d supposed, people would be starry-eyed about my British accent and want to ask about the Queen. No such luck, though. I was just another outsider they couldn’t wait to see the back of.