GET ME REWRITE: If Texas is just 39.8% white, why are these 3 gomers in charge?

 

Demographics:  U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts

New York Times, 11/13/2023

Silhouetted against the predawn light of the West Texas sky, a group of oil field workers got ready for the tough job ahead on a September day — cleaning up a spill on a rig outside of Odessa — speaking a mix of English and Spanish. 

All 80 employees of their company, Premier Energy Services, are Hispanic, reflecting a shift that has slowly transformed Texas’ oil-rich western expanse. Where a roughneck — the grease-stained symbol of Texas’ economic identity — was once typically a white man hoping to strike black gold, the average oil field worker is now a Hispanic man who was born in Texas. 

“Growing up, my dad used to take me to work in the oil fields. It was a white man’s industry,” said a foreman, Alfredo Ramirez, 31, a third-generation Mexican American. “Today it is us Latinos.” 

Mark Matta, a city councilman in Odessa, chuckled as he described a television series about a Texas oil rig in which most of the workers were white. “That show flipped our reality,” he said.  [emphasis added]