Takis Under the Desk

What Texas Students Know That Greg Abbott Doesn’t

I’ve had a few careers over the years. Staff writer at the Boston Globe and LA Times. Bestselling Novelist. And, now, I’m transitioning into a full-time English teacher, high school level. As I complete my teacher certification requirements, I’m working in the Austin, Texas, schools as an intern and sub, and learning a lot. This week, for instance, I’m filling in for a Spanish teacher at a dual immersion middle school. I see a lot in this job. But what I saw this week at this school stuck with me like a rock in my shoe. For what it’s worth, that rock is a diamond.

It was the start of the school day, and the announcements clicked on. That familiar robotic voice crackled through the PA system: “Please rise for the Pledges of Allegiance.” (In Texas, there are two: nation and state.)

One boy stood up. Just one. White. Blonde. Military backbone. Eyes narrowed with a kind of patriotic fury, his American flag T-shirt clinging to him like it was contractually obligated. And he shouted the pledge—shouted it like it was a woman who killed his dog for being disobedient.

All around him, silence. Twenty-five other kids stayed in their seats. Quiet. Calm. Munching Takis under the desk, checking their phones, barely glancing up other than to work on their contour game with a Sephora compact.

It wasn’t a protest. It wasn’t even defiance.

It was a collective shrug.

And that shrug? That’s the real Texas.

That’s the United States of America that Donald Trump and Greg Abbott are terrified of and think they can tantrum away with gerrymandering, voter suppression and a bunch of illegal and paranoid executive orders.

Spoiler alert: They can’t.

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The Loudest Voice in the Room of the United States Is No Longer the Majority

That one kid yelling the pledge wasn’t the enemy. He’s just the product. The living echo of a massive billionaire-funded out-of-touch media and political machine that churns out fear and flag-worship like it's still 2002. But the rest of the room—the brown kids, the bilingual kids, the ones whose parents clean this city and drive its buses and cook its food—their silence was loud.

They were making a decision.

And it’s a decision more and more young people are making: opting out of an antiquated American ritual that deliberately doesn’t and has never included them. Not because they hate this country—but because this country has made it clear it doesn’t love them, no matter how helpful, decent, kind and American they are.

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The Demographics Don’t Lie

Texas is not a white state. Not anymore.

• As of 2022, Latinos outnumber non-Hispanic white Texans for the first time in recorded history.
  (Texas Tribune)

• 28% of Texas public school students are classified as English learners—mostly Spanish speakers.
  (Texas Education Agency)

• An estimated 17.8% of Texas residents are foreign-born, and about 31% of students in higher education are either immigrants or the children of immigrants.
  (American Immigration Council)

These students are Texas.

But the pledge they’re asked to repeat daily? That thing was written when segregation was the law and the country was defining “liberty and justice” in the most exclusionary terms possible. Terms that looked like the only kid left standing today. Terms Donald Trump and Greg Abbott can’t stop sobbing into their cheeseburgers are gone and never coming back. They think it’s a “great replacement,” but that’s because they’re so stupid they don’t realize brown kids are normal human people, just like white ones.

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“Liberty and Justice for All” Has an Asterisk

These kids have watched governors like Greg Abbott militarize their border, strip their families of rights, defund and privatize their schools, and turn their cultures into punchlines. They’ve heard politicians say “bilingual” like it’s a slur. They’ve watched “diversity” and fairness be labeled a threat. They’ve watched a “news” and entertainment media industry conflate the terms “immigrant” “illegal” “Latino” and “crinimal,” and they know this is done with only one goal: to dehumanize them, their family, their friends.

And now, in school, they’re supposed to stand up and pledge allegiance to that noise?

No wonder they sit down.

When kids don’t participate in something, it doesn’t mean they’re apathetic. It means they’re perceptive. And these kids are watching everything. They see what’s being said about them. They know what’s being done to them at the highest levels of government. They hear the disdain, the dog whistles, the policies wrapped in red-white-and-blue rhetoric that always seem to cut their communities first.

They’re tired of being lied about, gossiped about, and blamed for everything by people who hate them, and this includes the mean girls in 5th period, and the governor. They know the truth: Migrants commit crimes at far lower rates than US-born folks, and people like Laura Ingram lie about it because they’re flat-out evil.

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Patriotism Isn’t Performance

I don’t think these students hate this country. I think they’re waiting for it to notice they’re just human beings who exist like everyone else.

They’re sitting out the pledge not because they’re ungrateful—but because they’re invisible in the very democracy they’re being told to adore.

And yet, they show up. Every day. They translate for their parents, study in their second language, laugh with their friends, and shoulder the weight of two worlds with incredible grace.

That’s patriotism too.

Maybe more than standing up and reciting a script someone else wrote.

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The Future Is Sitting Quietly in the Back of the Room

So let the loud kid shout the pledge. Let the flags fly. But don’t get it twisted. Just because this is what Hollywood and Fox News show you Texas is, does not mean it’s true. The kids munching Takis under their desks are the future of Texas. Trump wants to strip them of their citizenship and ship them somewhere else, but they are the vast majority now. He’s sh*tout of luck and all his ugly decrees will amount, to a larger version of that one boy screaming at the flag like that’ll erase his classmates. And these other kids? The sitting kids? They’re smarter than they’re given credit for. They’re watching. They’re voting soon. And they won’t forget who disrespected their families.

The Pledge says “liberty and justice for all.”

They’re not rude. They’re just waiting for the all part to mean something.

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So What Do We Do?

If you're tired of performative patriotism and policies that leave our kids out, here's your move:

✅ Support public schools.
They’re under attack. Fund them, fight for them, and stop pretending “school choice” isn’t code for segregation 2.0. + funneling taxpayer funds to the rich.

✅ Listen to the kids who sit out.
They’re not apathetic. They’re perceptive. And honestly? They’re smarter than half the legislature.

✅ Vote like your abuela raised you right.
Texas belongs to the students in this classroom—not the shouty old men in the State Capitol.

✅ Share this piece.
Send it to your teacher friends, your activist cousin, your neighbor who thinks banning books is somehow patriotic.

✅ And hey—
If you're into sharp cultural commentary, big feelings, hard truths, and hot chips under the desk...

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Because the revolution might not be televised—but it will be written down. In many languages. And probably with a glitter pen. With a side of Takis.