Celina, Tx isn’t the friendly all-inclusive town it thinks it is

Not everyone looks back at his or her hometown with loving memory. Some people leave for college and try to avoid their hometown like the plague. Celina, Tx is one of those towns.

Recently, there was an article published about why Celina is a great place to grow up. Here’s a few reasons why that’s not the case for everyone.

Celina is a small, Texas town with a population of about 7,500. It is 74% white, there are churches on every block and the high school football team is the city’s claim to fame.

That last part is not an exaggeration. If you look Celina, Tx up on Wikipedia there is a section dedicated to high school sports.

On a typical Friday night, the town rallies around the varsity Celina High School football team at the sports stadium in town, decked out in the high school’s colors, bright orange and white, while shouting ‘Go Bobcats!’

Celina residents are proud of their small town, their churches, their traditions and their orange.

On the surface, Celina seems like a great place to raise a family. It’s a relatively safe town with a low crime rate, the commute to work is easy and it’s a cheap place to live.

However, if prospective residents dig a little deeper they find that it is not the faith and family-oriented town it likes to pretend to be.

To start with, the town is not as accepting as it likes to think it is. This is reflected in the ethnicity breakdown of the town. It can also be seen in the predominantly white city government. A lack of diversity is a huge sign that a town excludes people where it can.

This town also prides itself on its traditional Christian values. Many residents in Celina boast about how it’s a great place to raise a family surrounded by God-fearing people: claims were shattered when a recent report came out that Celina was the number five city in Texas with the most Ashley Madison accounts.

New residents in Celina will quickly learn that the town doesn’t necessarily practice what it preaches. Despite this new statistic reflecting the true heart of Celina, any family that doesn’t practice the same religion as the town can expect isolation.

For most residents in this town the churches are where the sense of community is formed and without conforming to the local religious practices it can be hard to form community ties.

Furthermore, Celina is only family-oriented if the family is a self-proclaimed Christian, white, middle class, heteronormative family. If a family falls outside this “traditional” idea of what an American family should be they are extremely vulnerable in Celina, especially considering there is no human rights commission.

Certain people enjoy their time in Celina, but it is important to note why it is that others don’t share the same experience. Instead of instantly getting defensive about the town it might be time for the small town of Celina, Tx to embrace change and other ways of life. Otherwise newcomers will continue to feel ostracized and excluded and that is not how Celina residents want to be perceived.

It is no longer feasible for Celina residents to resist the growth of their small town. Developers are buying up land in Celina left and right and the population is going to boom with it. It is the hope of people who have left Celina that the long-term residents in Celina won’t be so excluding of this inevitable wave of outsiders.

If the people of Celina can learn to accept new neighbors then the newcomers can learn to accept the loud, orange color.

Feature image: Nicolas Henderson // Flickr