What Foxx learned in the Lone Star State

Jamie Foxx is proud to be a Texan, said Xan Brooks in The Guardian (U.K.). The actor and singer has no illusions about his home state, where, he says, he experienced plenty of racism. In the mid-1980s, the then-teenage Foxx went to play piano for a rich white family in his hometown of Terrell. He’d been driven to the house by a black school friend, who was ordered to wait outside in the car until the performance was over. “I can’t have two niggers in my house at the same time,” the homeowner explained. Instead of embittering him, such experiences left Foxx with a cool-headed determination to make his way in the white world. “My grandmother worked as a housemaid all her life, and she taught me some truths. I learned those lessons in the South, and I did a pretty good job of it.” He learned, among other things, not to view all white people the same way. Foxx recently met former President George W. Bush in Dallas, and found he liked him despite their political differences. “Meeting those guys as just regular people outside of politics, you realize they’re great people. They’re just like me and you. There’s a difference between the man and his politics. That’s just the team they play for. But that Texas camaraderie: There’s nothing like it.”

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