The day after Donald Trump was elected president, Kayla Andrews begged her parents not to make her go to school. She was a high school senior in Dallas and she’d spent almost a whole semester in government class arguing with her fellow students about the historic nature of this election. She knew many of them didn’t feel the way she did.
But Andrews’ parents didn’t relent. She says the day became one of the worst of her life. “Everyone was so excited,” Andrews, who is Black, tells Teen Vogue. “I just remember being really angry and not having much to say. That day was just so painful, because it was like, ‘I really go to school with people who could care less about my well-being.’”
Since then, Andrews has moved to Washington, DC, to start at Howard University, moved back home at the onset of the pandemic halfway through her junior year, and returned to DC for her senior year, only to come back to Dallas after graduation. Through it all, one thing hasn’t changed: her general disappointment with the state of politics in Texas.
In the last year alone, elected officials in Texas have effectively banned abortion, restricted how teachers can talk about America’s history of racism in public schools, and deemed gender-affirming care for transgender children “child abuse.”
Living in Texas as a young adult has both solidified some things — Andrews still loves it there — and hardened others. Texas politics are still problematic. The ban on how race and racism can be discussed in schools is particularly troubling. “Why is there no thought of how this will impact communities of color?” the 23-year-old says. “I just don’t understand why we’re centering white people and how that’s not in itself considered racist.”
After the abortion ban passed, Andrews made a plan of action in case she ever needs to have the procedure. Though she says she gets side effects from the birth control pill, she also immediately got back on it when she learned her access to abortion would be restricted.
Andrews is certainly not alone in feeling disheartened and even disenfranchised by the policies enacted by the very state in which she lives. In fact, she’s one of many young people who reside — in large part because of family ties, finances, educational or job opportunities, or personal preferences — in states represented by politicians who target their very existence. Many queer and transgender people live in states that have passed legislation stigmatizing the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools or stopping transgender athletes from competing on the sports teams that align with their gender. Plenty of people with uteruses live in states that constantly threaten to take away access to abortion — and often do. The question is what do they do and where do they go when they either can’t leave or don’t want to.
Regional mannerisms and neighborliness can also mask bigotry. What makes a state like Texas so difficult, Andrews says, is that people are nice on the surface. But whenever she’s found herself in certain majority-white spaces that often go hand-in-hand with conservatism, she starts to feel that undercurrent of exclusion. Do you think I shouldn’t be here, she wonders?
Eighteen-year-old Fiona Lawrence knows the feeling. She too lives in the Dallas area, in the suburb of Frisco. While her family and friends' thoughts about politics are similar to hers, there are times when a student at her high school will say something homophobic and she’ll realize that not everyone agrees. “It feels like a punch in the face. I didn’t realize that was happening,” Lawrence says. “I feel that I surround myself with people like me so much that I forget I’m in a majorly red state.”
The abortion ban was another wake-up call. Lawrence was so frustrated that she decided to write a letter to her congressman, though she says she only got an automated response. She reasons it might have been because she was so passionate. “I don’t feel comfortable being forced into a situation where I’m a young person having a child, even if I might not want a child,” she tells Teen Vogue. “I just had a lot of things to say.”
Lawrence moved to Texas from California in her freshman year of high school. While she’s hoping to attend college out of state, she’s open to returning at some point. It just depends where life takes her.
Others make the transition to a state whose politics may feel less familiar in college. Ilana Drake, 19, knew Vanderbilt was the right choice because of the way being on campus made her feel, the academics, and the warmer weather. Yet she also knew the move from New York City’s Upper West Side to Nashville was going to be a transition. Even on the drive to move in, Drake started to get a sense of how different things would be. Her dad was double-masked and she wore a mask as they ordered takeout from restaurants. They were the anomaly.
In New York, Drake attended virtual school from the start of the pandemic. Vanderbilt was her first time at an in-person school since her junior year of high school. But that was not the universal experience. Not attending in-person school for 15 months became a fun fact Drake could share with classmates, she says.
Other political differences seemed to be woven into the very geography of her surroundings. One of Drake’s roommates comes from a city just outside of Nashville. Her friend’s neighborhood, Forrest Crossing, is named after a Confederate commander and the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. On a trip to this friend’s house, Drake was taken aback when she spotted an ad for a gun shop. “I’ve definitely seen a culture shift as well as a political shift,” she says.
Drake is now very concerned about a Texas-style abortion ban making its way through the Tennessee legislature. The proposed amendment would only allow abortions that prevent the deathor “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” of a pregnant person. Like the Texas law, residents would be able to sue anyone, for $10,000 or more, whom they believe provides an abortion or “aids and abets” someone accessing the care.
“I’m afraid,” Drake says. “I’m afraid of how that’s going to impact my peers, how that will impact people on my college campus, and how it will impact every citizen of Tennessee. Nashville is a blue dot in the middle of a red state, but my eyes have opened about the different politics and more conservative views in the southeastern United States.”
Others want to attack the system from the inside. Cody Ingle, 30, ended up in South Dakota almost by mistake. He graduated from college in Indiana, where he grew up, and got a job at a church, building on his degree in youth ministries and Biblical literature. That all changed when Ingle came out as gay and was forced to leave his position at the church. (Reached for comment by Teen Vogue, the lead pastor said: "When he made us aware of this lifestyle choice, there wasn’t even a formal dismissal. It was mutual, 'Hey, we're just not on the same page moving forward.’”)
“At first, there was this huge urge to just get away and get out and move somewhere that was essentially more accepting and open and welcoming,” Ingle says. “As I’ve stayed here and gotten involved in some of the advocacy work, that [feeling] has lessened more and more.”
An important piece of that work was organizing Sioux Falls’s first Pride Parade in 2019. Thousands of people lined the parade route downtown, Ingle recalls, and more than 50 floats representing local businesses participated in the parade. “It brought tears to my eyes,” Ingle says. “We felt so welcome. We didn’t expect that many people to show up.”
But advocacy work can often feel like one step forward, two steps back. Traditionally, Sioux Falls mayor will read a proclamation each year in honor of the city’s Pride Festival. Since Mayor Paul TenHaken’s election four years ago, he has declined to do so and sent a city council member in his place, according to Ingle. (The mayor did not respond to Teen Vogue's request for comment).
Having diverse viewpoints is one of the reasons why Ingle has decided to run for Sioux Falls city council, after running unsuccessfully for the state legislature in 2020. “It really stems from this idea that I think we need better voices on local platforms,” he says. “A lot of the time we focus on the federal level, but at the end of the day what’s affecting you in your day-to-day life are the local seats.”
The significance of this upcoming election is not lost on Ingle. If elected, he would be the first openly gay person ever to serve on the Sioux Falls city council, he says.
So maybe it’s a misconception to think that the best thing young people in these states can hope for is simply to leave. After all, many of them still love and have deep ties to the places they live. “I’ve always felt like part of my mission as a human is to fix some of the things that Texas does wrong,” Andrews says. “That’s because I love the state and I know people like me live here. Someone has to work to resolve some of those issues.”
