What We Like About The South

Before we get to the actual point of this post, the Sports Desk insists on pointing out that the AP sportswriters overcame their groupthink and did the right thing yesterday, moving the Georgia Bulldogs up to the No. 2 spot on the college football Top 25 list, passing the Clemson Tigers and putting the Dogs right behind the archrival Alabama Crimson Tide.  We're No. 2, baby!  

Also, the Weather Desk notes that the first drop of Florence rainfall has yet to fall on the Atlanta area.

But with all that out of the way, today the Politics Desk noticed an article in the New York Times discussing several new publications and webzines that cover the so-called New South, beyond the NRA and NASCAR stereotypes.  The forums discuss progressive politics, cuisine other than biscuits-and-gravy and sweet tea, and southern art and literature.  Which is all fine and good, but what interested us more were the reader comments that followed the article.

Even though the author pointed out that stereotypes many outside of the South have about this region are often outdated and obsolete, and that predisposition against the South and of Southerners is one of the last remaining non-taboo prejudices, the fine readers of the Journal of Record couldn't help but pile their antipathy onto the South.  "Nice try," someone wrote from Portland, Oregon, but they've met people from the South, and found them to be close-minded and bigoted.  The commenter ought to educate him- or herself about the history of formerly "whites only" Portland before passing judgement on the bigotry of other areas.      

The South "is still an enclave for racists of the white persuasion and people who do not value diversity, education, change, etc.," someone else wrote, effectively profiling everyone who lives in one quarter of the nation with the same outdated brush.  "I traveled through the South four years ago," someone else wrote, adding that they'll never go back again.  Even though a few commenters pointed out that "stereotype" is just another word for prejudice, the primarily non-Southern commenters kept on stereotyping and demeaning the South, raising the question of who the real bigots were here.

We've lived in Georgia since 1981, and to be sure, we've heard more racist comments and seen more intolerance that we care for, but then again our tolerance for that sort of thing is pretty low.  But we've seen just as much racism when we lived in the North, too.  When we were a young child, we attended an all-white parochial school on Long Island and during a field trip to the Bronx Zoo, the kids reacted to the sight of crowds of black schoolchildren enjoying their field day at the zoo by pointing out the windows and screaming "Negro! Negro!" (we'll use the word "Negro" rather than the far more deplorable epithet that was actually used).  What we still don't understand to this day is why the teachers and chaperones didn't try and stop us.  By the way, the parochial school teachers and chaperones were all nuns.

In the early 70s when we attended High School in Northern New Jersey, we were told we had to leave a party because we had arrived with a friend of ours who just so happened to be black. We were told we had to "get the Negro out of there" (the epithet substitution continues).  "You're blowing our minds, dude," they said.  That's never happened to us in the South.

Later in the 70s, we moved to Boston, possibly the most racist city in America, and during a court-ordered school desegregation, saw white adults throwing rocks and bricks and hurling racial epithets at school buses full of terrified black schoolchildren.  

In the 1980s, we (briefly) dated a woman in upstate New York who after several drinks predicted that one day the Negros will elect a Negro President, who will pass a law forcing white women to marry Negro men.  "I don't know what particular date they have in mind," she opined,"But you wait and see, that day will come."

These, of course, are random observations based on the non-scientific polling of our one singular experience, but we are yet to be convinced that racism and intolerance exists in only one part of the country and doesn't exist in others.  All of America, a nation founded on the twin atrocities of African slavery and native genocide, still has a lot of collective karma to be worked out, and although we've come a long way, there's still a lot of progress to be made.

Another problem with painting all of the South with the same brush is that the area is simply so large and diverse, no single set of characteristics could ever define it.  Georgia alone is large enough that one could fit all on the six New England states inside of it, except for a portion of the northern Maine wilderness.  The area extending from Virginia down to Florida, and extending westward to Louisiana and Arkansas (we'll leave Texas and Oklahoma out, thank you) is almost as large as New England, the mid-Atlantic, and most of the northern mid-West combined, an area that no one would try to characterize with a single sweeping generalization (other than the derogatory Southern term, "Yankees").

Whatever else you think about the South, we'll tell you this: here in Atlanta, we can take you on a short walking tour starting at the Nelson Mandela memorial in Piedmont Park, and then walk along the Freedom Park Trail to a sculptural tribute to our congressman, the civil-rights icon John Lewis, and from there over to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, and then back around to the Martin Luther King Jr. Birthplace and National Historic Center.   Did you just feel that?  That was your predisposed attitude about the South just changing a little bit. And just wait until you see just how hard the Blue Wave hits the Southern states this November to really shake up your misconceptions.

And hey, our deeply divisive and racist so-called "President," the white supremacist Donald Pumpernickel, is from New York City, y'all, not Montgomery or Tallahassee or Macon or Baton Rouge or anywhere from the South for that matter. Down here, our millionaires typically tend to be more like philanthropists Ted Turner and Jimmy Carter.

But as we were saying, we've lived in the South for some 35 years now, occasionally leaving briefly and then just as quickly returning.  We like it here, we like the weather and we like the food and we like the diverse music and arts and we like the natural beauty of the area. We've told people for literally decades now that we moved here from Massachusetts thinking that the sun rose and set over the Boston Basin, but some combination of the weather, country music, Southern women, and barbeque kept us from ever returning, or at least staying away for long.

Also, the South has got to be one of the most beautiful areas we've ever seen.  Like a doting grandparent, we keep pictures of the beauty on our cell phone, sharing the pics with anyone interested or who can't persuade us to stop.  Here's a picture out our front door in the wintertime (and proving we do indeed enjoy four seasons down here):

      

And here's the view out a back window in the spring:

The Georgia coast on a summer sunset:

And in mid-afternoon:

An autumn afternoon in Athens:

Here's a random graveyard in South Georgia:

Or closer to home, Atlantic Station, just a mile or so south of here:

And Midtown:

Nightlife:

Here's Knoxville on a weekday morning:

Kudzu grows on everything:

In fact, nature's always trying to reclaim everything:

And tries to get a foothold wherever she can:

We could go on and on, and besides, you've probably seen many if not most of these pictures before.  Now, before you start sending us pictures of wherever it is you're from, we'll be the first to admit that there's beauty everywhere if you know where - and how - to look for it and that this isn't a competition.  

Our point here is that the South is a fine and wonderful place to live, and if you're mind is open and not trapped by your own prejudices and preconceived notions of what the South is or isn't, it's a wonderful place to live. 

And we don't need approval or validation of some bigoted Yankees for our opinion, thank you very much.