The GOP clown collage is coming to South Carolina, and then to Florida, and this will be the cue for media of all sorts, and Internet media as well, to begin its serious explanations of "The South" to the rest of the nation. I would like to do my part by offering up a series of negations and backgrounders.
To suggest that there are living stereotypes about the south is unnecessary. The stereotypes are not merely alive, but they're actually dominant if not predictive (more on that in the discussion of racism & at the end). If a character appears in a movie and has a southern accent, it loses fifteen points of IQ instantly (or it becomes a bigot or preacher). In literature, there is not merely Southern Literature, which is probably a fine thing, but there are expectations for what a Southern story should be (lots of sweaty repression, race relations, idiot-manchilds, one college educated one) (you reckon Katherine Anne Porter anticipated talk show summaries?). As for Southerners themselves, "they" are a whole host of things that we already know. There are honest discussions and less honest discussions of what the south is.
However, one thing we see in comment fields and web forums is that it is open season on the south. The use of blind stereotypes against the south is commonplace and forgiven among those who are otherwise more temperate. "They marry their cousins," "bunch of bigots," "why doesn't the south go ahead and secede for good this time" are the polite comments one meets. It is as if a geographic region were capable of making all persons living within it instantly identical in every respect and therefore easily judged and damned.
Here are my qualifications for what follows. A) I was born in Savannah, grew up in Atlanta, and have lived many, many places around the nation, including New York City, Baltimore, rural areas of North Carolina, and towns of 10,000. B) My family had the genius of arriving in America in the 1630's . . . in North Carolina. C) On the paternal side, they lived in the same fifty mile area of Georgia from 1780 - 1960. D) As the Quentin of the family, I had to be aware of wearing all of this as a name tag wherever I went. That forced me, no matter how much I preferred to focus on prosody or late Stuart England, to pay attention to the familiar claims and counter-claims. E) I have lived through the integration of schools, with a grandfather who was a rural school superintendent (and who integrated his county without so much as a raised voice), through the busing crisis (and I was a school boy in New Jersey at that point), through the New South, version 2.0, and the rise of the GOP South.
That said, I'm merely a witness. Before I go on to pop balloons, I'll tell you that I cannot tell you what the South is or Southerners are like. The reason I can't tell you that is the same reason that you cannot tell me what midwesterners are like, or what Black people think, or what Asians want, or what Latinos want. The premise is invalid. The reason stereotypes are destructive is that no one may speak for millions of people as if they had one mind.
Disclaimer for the querulous: These are personal observations and opinions. I may be wrong. I often am wrong. I look forward to learning.
Ok, over the bump and through the stuff.
WAS
Most of the ballyhooed heritage and legend of the antebellum south is deader than Marley's ghost. However, there are hangovers, flashbacks, atavisms, and curiosities that cannot be understood without at least an awareness of that past. Rather than reveling in it, I'll just hit some salient bits.
First, Jefferson Davis regarded the U.S. Civil War as a repeat of the English Civil War because he argued what the colonists themselves had argued: the northeastern states and the western states (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois) were settled by a different people than the mid-Atlantic and southern states. (In spite of finding a great site, I have still been unable to find a digital source of the letter Shelby Foote quotes in vol. 1 of The Civil War: A Narrative History, from Davis to Lincoln, where Davis reminds Lincoln that the Confederates were Cavaliers, Establishment Church, and the men of university education, while Lincoln's own barbarous people, as well as the money-clutching heathens of the north, were the Roundheads, the dissenters, the malcontents.) In fact, the people who settled -- way, way, way back when -- in the south and stayed there, did so because they expected to have a lot of land and get rich.
The people who settled in the rocky lands of the north were stock traders, merchants, sailors, investors. The people who came later and went inland were economic migrants from European oppression. In other words, the south was settled by people coming over to get rich off of farming and slaves (Jamestown), while the north was settled by religious and political losing sides (Mayflower, masses of Levellers and such who fled Cromwell in the 1650's, more masses that fled the Restoration of the Stuarts). The nation therefore had two foundation myths -- Roanoke/Jamestown and Plymouth Rock.
This is important because the two foundations reflected two sets of cultural assumptions and two attempts at "nation." The one was mercantile, manufacturing, and capitalist, and the other was paternalist and agrarian. Both are exploitative. It was logical that the one's aims went on to produce heavy machining and rapid capital fluctuations and the other chattel slavery and a sanctimonious lie about a spiritual grace to tradition. Although the material conditions of both areas have long ago changed, the cultural assumptions are still faintly perceptible specters.
Secondly, the south never developed its transportation system as completely as the north did, but it was about the same as the West (again, until after the Civil War, about the same as Ohio and Illinois). In other words, because its states were large (Georgia is the largest state east of the Mississippi), communication between areas was difficult, and so, moreso than in even Vermont, there were enormously isolated sections. The isolation meant a lack of central government effectiveness, lack of central church effectiveness (and an easy rise of evangelical movements through the structures of the "circuit riders"), lack of easy access to universities for some populations, and no single speech.
'TWEREN'T
1. The Southern Accent: I put this first only because it's an offense against the sensibilities.
There are at least fourteen southern dialects, each easily discernible from the other. (Dialectologists quarrel a bit (structuralists vs. field folk/historical folk), but I learned mine from Lee Pederson, who was the editor of the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States, and finding web guides is a bit difficult (I gotcher a link, but I don't like it that much).) Dialect develops, generally, with geographic isolation and social interaction. (Television and radio and movies have had next to no effect.) What generally happened was that the English and Scottish and Irish settlers came to America speaking their own form of English and kept it the way they had learned it, while the dialect in the motherland kept changing.
So, the folks who got the coastal lands (first wave of settlers in the south, the infamous tidewater) had the oldest form. The next wave got a bit farther inland (Piedmont) and had a slightly newer speech form, and then, a bit later, the Scots and Germans came in and tended to get the "bad" land by the mountains, and they had the newest form (if not a prior isolate). Now, furthermore, the rich folks who had plantations sent their kids to school in the UK, and so they came back with a Wordsworth accent. The slaves on the plantation spoke in a near facsimile of that, too. Therefore, Black Southern English and Plantation Southern were the closest together, and neither was the same as Tidewater or close to the Piedmont or within a mile of the mountain (Hillspar). That pattern, which is pretty logical, goes entirely out the window when you get to Florida and Louisiana, though.
The point is that anyone who does a Scarlett O'Hara accent is doing a poor imitation of a Plantation Southern prestige dialect. It stands out like a ball gown at a sock hop.
2. They marry their cousins down there, those hicks!
Geographic isolation, remember? In some areas of the Appalachians, the lack of access meant that cousin marriage was simply going to happen, legal or not. However, there is little evidence that any family or clan sought it or valued it. These people were expert livestock breeders, and they knew pretty well what would happen with lack of diversity. Currently, we have enormous problems with incest as a violent crime (not that GOP Congressmen believe it). Clan marriage occurs across the world, typically in areas with high geographic isolation or cultural isolation. It does not happen especially in the south. We got eHarmony now!
3. They're all fundamentalists!
The Creationist theme park is not in the south. Kentucky was a border state. While the Kentucky state legislature decided to give the thing state tax breaks and funding to help it get open (think of all the money the tourists would spend!), The Holy Land Experience is in Orlando, right near the secclarhummanist Disney. There are crucifixions twice a day there. Instead of sweating teens inside of rubber suits, there are Jesus look-alikes in weather-appropriate clothing. (Central Florida and South Florida are, of course, geographically in the south, but they are not southern. Demographically, their settlement got tipped over to transplants from the northern states and western states long ago. The "Miami" accent is quite close to the dialect heard on Long Island. Orlando's heteroglossic mix, on the other hand, has made it one of those anti-regional areas that cannot identify with a geographical past.)
Ken Ham's Creation Museum is pumped up by all the attention it gets. (The best walk through came from this guide, I thought.) However, even though the states with the greatest isolation have proven the greatest home for fundamentalist movements and evangelical movements, literalism is not evangelicalism, and fundamentalism is not bigotry.
In fact, it's a bit bigoted to assume that all fundamentalists are bigots. It's a very large group of people, and I joust with them frequently enough to know that generalizing is dangerous. If we deplore Anne Coulter screaming that "the liberals want to ruin America," then we should deplore ourselves for saying "the fundamentalists want" unless we mean something that's actually part of being a fundamentalist.
If you consult the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life map of where the evangelical churches have most participation, you will see that the densest concentration is in the very center (north to south) of the mainland U.S. and the south. The heaviest identifications are Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Oklahoma, and then California and Nevada are as heavily evangelical as the northeast, and Indiana is as evangelical as any of the old Confederate south.
4. They're racists.
Yes, southerners are racists.
Of course, every other group of Americans is racist as well, and probably to about the same degree. The question about racism is not "is there racism," but "how does it manifest itself?"
The U.S. south has a false historical sense that it creates for itself, and then it has a different false historical sense imposed upon it. No southerner may travel (or watch television) without being told, too often, that she or he is a racist, or at least that Bull Connor was a southerner. Martin Luther King was a southerner, too, and so was Ralph Abernathy, and so is the SPLC, but these things are presented to America, and to the south, as outside forces being fought by "the south." Instead of a narrative of one part of the south struggling against another part of the south to remedy past and present wrongs, the picture is of a horrible monster (the south) being taught another lesson by the civilized north, as the helpless victims (played by southern civil rights leaders) are pounded down.
The monster is real. It's just that the narrative and myth that emerged in mass culture gave southerners no purchase on their own struggle. It gave two choices: apology or defiance. Most took the path of apology, but some took the path of defiance. These are the people that the SPLC, and southern liberals, have to fight every day almost.
Overt groups like the Klan are rare in the south. They exist, but the greatest membership of the Klan has been Ohio and Michigan for a while. Instead, there are many, many "neo-Confederate" groups. They want a back door to racism. Because the narrative they've been given (and because they're doofuses) is "You're slave holding racists from the Civil War," they say, "Yep," and "The South was right," and "States riiiights." This tendency can show up in many, many forms. For example, one will run into segregated proms in various places. [Before you get all worked up, that particular place has stopped the practice.] The way they'll do it is by a "state's rights" method. They'll have a "private club" have a "dance" for the students, by invitation only. The club will only invite the white kids. Another club will invite only the Black students. (It is sometimes the case that there is a third prom for Other and Mixed.) See? No one's fighting or breaking the law! It's just the "natural order" of things. Like with like is all.
Racism in the sparsely populated south is generally not with bared teeth, as there is a premium on peace (temporized systems of social control, if you prefer). Instead, it is economic, polite, and ruthless. Sundown towns are one thing, but there were also instances of simply pricing out the "wrong people" or just not selling to "Them" in the first place. Now, that might seem illegal, but it's quite easy if you follow the "like with like" and "separate but equal" principle. Suppose there were a town where white businesses simply did not trust black employees to be cashiers? Nothing personal, you understand. No name calling.
Compare that to the north, and it's not a case of better or worse. I encountered more overt racism in the Bronx than I ever had in the rural south. I lived in the "respectable businessman" area of the borough, and older Italian men would walk through the neighborhood at night with baseball bats to make sure "No n-gg-rs" would come walking in. One told me, "They've all be smokin' that sh-t, smokin' that sh-t." I would encounter it on the subway, at the station, in the bodegas. It was not merely spoken, but spoken in anger. In Baltimore, white flight had created this line between County and City schools that was infuriating. It had also created a sense of siege inside the city among the African American politicians.
Nevertheless, when the primaries begin, we can look for correspondents buying "Maps of the Rednecks Homes" to get their interviews. Is this "the south?" Sure. It's a segment. The guys patrolling their neighborhood in the Bronx were a segment of New York. Extrapolating is dangerous.
5. They're polite and nice.
Not really. Southerners are no nicer than any other group outside of cities. This year, we've heard about "Minnesota nice." We've heard about how polite the Iowans are. We've heard about how nasty South Carolina politics is supposed to be (a function of the way the political machine works there; the same was true of Georgia, but not Alabama nor Florida, and it isn't true of Georgia anymore). These contradictions point to one thing, really: massive urban centers tend to encourage brusqueness. Smaller communities tend to encourage people to avoid conflict.
Southerners are generally more likely to avoid an explicit fight, but that doesn't mean they're not fighting. They'll insult, use passive aggression, and feint, but generally won't get into a yelling match.
6. They're so dumb! Name one smart southerner!
This would be my least favorite stereotype.
The American South has extraordinary universities. It also has poverty and Republicans at a higher rate than the northeast. These two do not help the primary and secondary schools very much. However, the south has generated at least as many of the nation's intellectuals as the more populated areas of the nation. Prior to the Civil War, the south had a lock on the presidency, for good and ill.
However, the very concept that people would be stupid in any part of the nation is itself stupid. IQ is spread out generally and evenly across the population, I'm afraid, and geniuses and dunces are going to appear with the times and places in random ways.
Is
The South hardly exists.
We speak of it, and our cultural assumptions function on those who live in the geography, but the mobility of people has eroded regionalism across the nation. Even the "new south" was a chimera. We do have the heritage of political organizations, like the old South Carolina machine, and we have the heritage of the N/S Georgia machines that fight every time there is an election and the N/S/panhandle Florida machines, and the N/S Alabama machines. These Depression-era organizations have mutated, and some cultural tensions hang on, but the idea that there is a "character of the people down there" is only true inasmuch as the idea itself has force.