Posted on 10/13/2007 4:48:31 PM PDT by Congressman Billybob
Anybody remember “That’s What I Like about the South”? How about Phil Harris, who had a hit with that ditty in 1947? Let’s not always see the same hands. The point is I like the South. Born and raised here. Have relatives all over. But some folks actually fear the South. That got me thinking.
Last week staffers from the House Homeland Security Committee came to the Bank of America NASCAR race in Concord, North Carolina. It was a fact-finding trip about “public health-preparedness at mass gatherings.” Organizers of the trip advised the staffers to get vaccinated before they went – for hepatitis, tetanus, diphtheria and influenza.
The Democratic staffers took the shots. The Republicans didn’t. The local Congressman, Robin Hayes, wrote a blistering letter to the Chairman of the Committee asking “why the heck the committee feels that immunizations are needed to travel to my hometown?”
Whoever made this suggestion fears the South. Did they think we were going to bite the visitors? Force them to drink swamp water, or worse, moonshine? Did they think that Southerners are a lesser breed, like the inhabitants of a third-world country? Dumb as dirt, and contagious with every known disease including housemaid’s knee?
This incredibly stupid approach to the South caused a substantial reaction from members of the Highlands Writers Group at our meeting just after the story broke. Several of our group are doctors. Most are published authors. One with ample credits is a well-established travel writer from New Orleans.
I won’t give her name because she didn’t ask to be dragged into this spat. But she told this story. When she first began as a free-lance travel writer, she would send offers to cover events in her home town, New Orleans, and editors in New York would respond “if they wanted to cover that event, they would send a staff member down.”
Once she broke through and became published, she found that her inquiry letters were being dismissed because her return address was in Mississippi. And “everyone in New York knows that everyone in Mississippi is, at best, a functional illiterate.”
My fiancee had a similar experience when she told her co-workers at the bank in New York where she then worked, that she was leaving to move to North Carolina. “I hope you like NASCAR.” And, “You’ll miss indoor plumbing.” And generally referring to Southern males, including me, as knuckle-dragging uni-brows.
I’ve almost always lived in the South, but have traveled and worked across the country. I’ve never experienced anti-Southern bigotry. On reflection, there are two reasons why not. One is my accent. It’s from Baltimore, Bal-mer as the natives call it. My mother’s family is from Birmingham, Alabama, and have accents you can spread on toast. But my father and all of my classmates spoke Balmerese, so I did, too.
The other reason I didn’t experience anti-Southern bigotry is that most people I’ve worked with over the years either knew me or had direct experience with my work (law and journalism) before we met. Everyone who’s ever experienced bigotry on any basis, knows that personal knowledge is the antidote for bias.
The bottom line is, there’s still a great deal of anti-Southern bias. Southerners are as intelligent, and more sociable, more hospitable, and more dedicated to culture, food and music, than any other population group in the nation. So, what explains the bias?
It may be fear of Southerners as a political group. The national importance of the South as a political block has been growing steadily in recent decades. Census data explain why. The South and the West are roughly tied in top growth rates.
That means more Congressmen for the South, and more Electoral College votes. It means the national press will pay attention to the results in the South Carolina presidential primary, as a barometer of “how the South might go” in the 2008 election. But sadly, many of the press will be like the ignorant advisers who told staffers to get shots before coming to visit my state.
They will assume that we are a pack of Forrest Gumps, stumbling through life with marginal intelligence. Therefore, how we vote in national elections is merely an obstacle to get over or around, rather than in indicator of how pragmatic voters with a good dollop of common sense, figure out the candidates.
So, here’s my offer: I challenge the New York Times to send a reporter chosen at random, to spend a month here on our mountaintop in the Blue Ridge. We will take him/her everywhere we go, to meet everyone we know in this small town. We’ll feed and water that reporter handsomely. Most of all, that reporter will come away with a real knowledge of real people in the South.
It could be an eye-opening experience.
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About the Author: John Armor practiced in the US Supreme Court for 33 years. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu He lives in the 11th District of North Carolina.
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Thank you!!!!!!
Being one who was born and raised in the South I take these references with a grain of salt. They are almost as witty as some of the euphemisms we use to refer to our Yankee neighbors living in the fridged north. We have always laughed at our Yankee cousins and sometimes embellished some of their foolish beliefs.
I personally couldn’t give a sh-t what people think of the South. I don’t have anything to explain to them and hope they stay home.
I don’t believe I said you were Jewish.
Oh dang! I forgot about Mr. Shelby! He made the entire 11 hours of Ken Burns’ Civil War series SO enjoyable! I do believe Martin Sheen fashioned the accent he used for Robert E. Lee in Gettysburg after Shelby!
Yes, I think they are afraid of the South and I am not real sure I want to change that.
“can ride the stud horse and I’ll ride the mare (in season).”
Wise guy. Very funny.....
You sure as blazes assumed I was a damnyankee full of anti-Southern prejudice and thought you had to set me straight!
I've lived "white trash" poverty, sister, and nobody cares about those poor folks--not conservatives who are wedded to social Darwinism and not liberals who assume that poor whites are uncivilized barbarians who skin people alive who are "different" (or hang them from lampposts, I forget which).
Sorry I jumped down your throat, but the assumptions in your post just came from nowhere to me!
John / Billybob
You gotta purty mouf...
;)
I have yet to hear an F1 driver tell the world that he was in over his head and Daddy, who bought him a seat, is out a load of cash.
Try as I might, I can’t see any downside to “Fear of Southerners”.
There just isn’t any downside that I can identify....
LOL
I live in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee and the only place I ever lived where I didn't have indoor plumbing was in Minnesota.
Well, considering the south isn't really the south anymore - except geographically. Most people in the south nowadays are transplants from the northeast who come down and build ugly houses on the sides of once forested-mountainsides, dilute the culture and dialect, and make southern states more liberal as they constantly talk about how they did things up north as if anybody asked them to come down in the first place, let alone bring their flawed wisdom.
Sounds exactly like Tennessee! LOL
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