I'm not surprised this happened in TX, or anywhere else in the south; but I won't be surprised if it happened in WA state, or Oregon, or New York, or anywhere else in the US either. I don't think there is a state in the country that hasn't seen a ratcheting up of security paranoia in the schools over the past 20 years, and there isn't a state in the country that hasn't had a ratcheting up in security paranoia over the past 15 years. Racism and xenophobia isn't confined to the South either.
Still, I don't have any problems implicating a certain strain of Texasness in this. The state's politics is afflicted with an ugly mix of retrograde white protestant religious fundamentalism, Texas-nationalism, fascism and who knows what else. Religious fundamentalists and reactionary "conservatives" have been twisting school curriculum to try and use their buying power to force their ideology into schools across the nation. They're one of many "red" states trying to keep "undesirables" from exercising their right to vote. Women, minorities, atheists, "liberals," LGBT, and whatnot are frequently sacrificed (figuratively and literally) to provide red meat to get the Republican base to the polls. There are, however, a hell of a lot of african-Americans, Mexicans, muslims, LGBT, Democrats, in the state, and their life isn't all hell -- I look forward to the inevitable day though when the retrograde shitbags loose to demographics. I hope they suffer a decade or two of their own medicine once the tables turn.
In the end, its hard to imagine that this kid's name and skin color didn't play a role in how things went down. The school and the cops both acted reprehensibly. The initial suspicion and arrest are bad enough. What really galls me though, is the way they doubled-down and tried to smear the kid further with vague insinuations and appeals to paranoia and racism to try and deflect attention from their overreaction. Its the same sort of evil cowardice that may end up with another likely innocent man being executed in two weeks (in Oklahoma, this time).
The kid is 14. I hope he can continue being a kid for a few more years.