Now I am used to this bullshit notion often in NS that the Southern United States are filled with white racists and uneducated people.
Like Dubya?
Born in Connecticut, he was a member of Yale's elite Skull & Bones Society.
Sarah Palin?
Born in Idaho, raised in Alaska.
Michele Bachmann?
Oh that Iowan woman?
Southern Racism? Hey, you go to the south, you will find the opposite of your expectations. Unlike the north of the Mason Dixon line, the south is filled with Racial Diversity. Hell my local town is perhaps one of the most racially diverse and the top ten in the US and the town fifteen minutes away is in the top ten. We are also the center of the black belt, one of the areas with the most black people in the country, and even if we look at the historical racism and the current institutional racism. The cultural familiarity with minorities exists more in the American South than they do anywhere else. While other people in the US can talk about tolerance from a distance where they are surrounded by ethnically homogenous areas, they cannot truly claim that they have OVERCOME racism and taken the enormous strides that the American South has, despite our existing social problems.
Is it our ever intolerable accents? Pah, Our accents can vary from the standard American dialect, south midatlantic dialect, the African American Dialect, The Sweet Georgian accent, the French creole accents, and the ever melodious Carolinans. People call us xenophobic and immigrant unfriendly? We are the inventors of Southern Hospitality, which culturally demands spontaneous acts of hospitality regardless of the situation. They accuse us of twisted bankrupt morality, when most Southerners pride themselves in strong morals even if their conservatism tends to garner hateful glares from liberal thought (note: I am also a Social Liberal, but I can admit this is the case). Stepping away from conservatism though if you follow their practice with family orientation, friendliness, and people orientation vs task oriented behavior you see in the United States you would be hard pressed to find people who are more morally disciplined and concerned about their fellow man.
I am ashamed of how ignorant people are when they say we are uneducated, white, racist, morally bankrupt, xenophobic, socially stunted, and generally backwards. Southerners are actually unlikely to be so. If you are Liberal and despise social conservatism I can understand this, but I think that perhaps the view of the American south is ridiculously out of character and portrayed in NS, and I wonder why this is.
