Here is what you have to understand about Texas. First, it is growing. It added 4.2 million residents between 2000 and 2010, and another four million in the last decade for a growth rate of almost 40 percent — double that of the country as a whole.

But even more striking is what all those new Texans look like. Since 2010, over 95 percent of them have been people of color.

People outside Texas often believe that the state is almost monolithically white, rural and conservative. In fact, less than 40 percent of Texans are white non-Hispanics. For every new white resident that Texas welcomed over the past decade, there have been three Black residents, three Asians, three people with multiracial backgrounds and 11 Hispanics. Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and Houston also have large L.G.B.T.Q. populations (as a percentage of their residents).

The conservative members of the Texas Legislature might be threatened by diverse cities, but most Texans aren’t afraid of them, because 90 percent of them live in or around them. Almost 70 percent of Texans are from the Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin or San Antonio metros. Almost all of the state’s population growth over the last decade occurred in its metros, which grew 18 percent as compared with less than 1 percent for the state’s rural areas.