I know that cva doesn’t speak for the south but I’m sure that there are a few a-holes that hold similar sentiments. Bigoted, small-minded, crass, and cruel - one can find them anywhere. They tend to stick out because they’re usually the sawed-off runts with the big mouths.
I got a good taste of cva’s southern hospitality while living in the south. My dad was involved with the space program in the early 60’s. As a consequence we moved around a good bit, including New Orleans, Orlando, and Huntsville. I was very young, and ignorant of the cultural sub-current in the south. Dad was busy figuring out how to put men on the moon so we were forced to fend for ourselves. I had two older brothers who weren’t keen on the idea of anyone bullying me around so they taught me how to fight.
It’s human nature to be wary of people you don’t know - I get that - but this was the first time I was witness to ostracism merely because of where you were born. Right wrong or indifferent, there it was and I had to deal with it. I fought a lot and kicked a lot of ass - all pointlessly, but out of immediate necessity. I fought them because they attacked me.
Eventually I established myself, and found ways to blend in, but I never forgot my initiation. Ironically, I went through a similar experience when my family moved back to Washington. By then I was familiar with the telltales and got down to business straightaway.
My point is that, when I moved into an area I found that people were hostile towards me and even at war with me - even when I wasn’t at war with them (until I was). There were elements within the antebellum south that spent their days agitating and inciting resentment and hatred toward everything and everyone northern. They highlighted the differences between us instead of looking at the commonalities. They were the ones that inspired otherwise indifferent farmers to put down their plows and take up arms. And a lot of them were happy to watch from the sidelines as others spilled their blood.
Thankfully people like cva are relatively few.
Thanks for a nice post.
K-12 I went to 13 different schools in 8 cities, North, South, East & West, always the new kid, usually the youngest & smallest, today we'd call me a "nerd", never very sociable.
But I was never bullied, never mistreated anywhere except for once in the 8th grade and there's a moral to the story worth remembering.
In South San Francisco -- somebody must have put another kid up to provoking me, because he had no other reason, but for weeks & weeks he sought me out to insult & challenge me to fight him.
And I have brothers too (!) and we did plenty of rough-housing (when parents not looking) so I was not in the least afraid of this kid, but had been taught not to get into fights.
Finally I agreed to meet him and we had a "fight".
But here's the funny part: the very second I touched him, he immediately turned from bully to victim and for the rest of the year I heard nothing from him except what a bully I am.
So where have we seen that story writ large?
“It’s human nature to be wary of people you don’t know - I get that - but this was the first time I was witness to ostracism merely because of where you were born. Right wrong or indifferent, there it was and I had to deal with it.”
I thought it was probably something like that.