Why Such Animosity Towards Southerners?

I was born "up north", we moved to Georgia when I was 3. I joined the Air Force when I was 18. I was stationed. in the south my whole enlistment except for 6 months of school in Illinois. After I got out I moved to the bastion of northern liberalism, Conneticut. While living there I was asked frequently if we still married our cousins, laid around the yard a'la Hee Haw with hound dogs and wether or not I minded my co-workers of different races. After thinking about all the places I've been in the world and the effort I put into not being "The Ugly American", I believe I have it sorted out.
We in the south are a conqured people.Crack a history book on Reconstruction sometime.When outside interests came to make money after the war, they made good use of a type of mentality that is commonly seen on plantations.Paternalism keeps the downtrodden sevile because they live in fear of loosing their jobs.You live in a company house in a company town. Your food came from a company store. Nothing came to your town without say so from the company.This creates a culture of servitude. People that weren't able to find jobs in this tight-knit system could enlist in the military.The south has provided dis-proportionaly more troops than any other region.This was not enough to change our culture, so we had to start chasing jobs all over the country.When in Rome ,do as the Romans do and those that left ,left their culture. The ones that stayed are now told "We are Rome, do as we do. This is from the tolerant people that come here to save us from ourselves.

I live in the GA and it sucks- I've lived in several places, up to Canada and in Europe but this is my 'home'.....love the land and I'm used to the weather, but people tend to like ignorance here - any one smart or liberal is some sort of social suspect. The girls all get real stupid in their middle school years and the too many of the guys don't know how to stand in line for a movie without their hands in their pockets and their mouths open. It's better in the Southern cities, Atlanta is ok for the most part. Conform is the command of the average small town though.

The south did try to offer a graceful southern lady into the American conscience once,
but her husband was viciously shot down right in front of her,
...so... southern women pretty much got the message.


David Grouchy

OP, when I moved to the South, some people never let me forget that I was just a Yankee, and would never be welcome in their world. Other people showed me the deepest kindness of their heart.

The cultures are different, and this causes some animosity. If you move away from home, part of you will always feel like a stranger unless you take the time to change, and put down roots. But it is just foolish to expect others to change for you, as an outsider, no matter where you go.

Southerners have a deeply ingrained pride that Northerners will never give a damn about. Up North, people are so different and estranged from one another that they view many of their own neighbors as outsiders. Southerners always take this lack of respect and hostility personally.

Don't. It isn't personal.

On the flipside, the concept of the christian heart of America is exclusive of the West and North coasts, and whatever concentrated animosity you may sense beyond the normal callousness is because some of your neighbors are always telling us that your God rules our country. This makes us rather upset.

So thats it in a nutshell, pulling no punches. I have lived the Southern quality of life, been changed by it, and have memories and friends I will love forever. But despite coming to understand the South, I decided that home was worth all the negatives because after all, it was home, so I came back.

I would die for your right to live your life, independantly, as you see fit. I respect your differences and admire your better traits. But we don't agree on everything all the time, and feelings and trust are going to suffer for it. Thats what family is. I don't have to like everything about you, but I do love you and all other Americans as my brothers and sisters.

I always take insults with a grain of salt knowing that those doing the insults don't realize they are insulting themselves. Many of the people living in the Southern states are from elsewhere, some from the northern states, some from the western US, some from other countries. I remember in High School, a teacher asked the students to raise their hands if they or their parents were from other states, over half the class raised their hands. I myself have an accent that is a mix between Ohio and a southern drawl. I've lived in 4 different states and if you count several weeks in Hawaii and several weeks in Washington state, then maybe 6 states. There is no restriction stopping Americans from moving from state to state and there are tons of transplants from the rust belt up north. I even have a bunch of relatives up north and I'm sure they still think of the South and South Carolina as being hick country where most people don't have a clue. However I've found you got the same stupid people in all states. No one has a monopoly. It's just that the South seems to roll out and parade the stupid people instead of hiding them. It might be a backwards response to the insults we've so long heard.

There may be more poor and less educated people here as a result of being poor but labeling everyone from the South as being ignorant just shows how ignorant the person saying such a thing is. The people around here have a distrust and bad feelings about so called Yankees which in this region is slang for someone from the northern states. I believe that is a term surviving from the Civil War. I heard overseas Yankee means anyone from the US. Around the southern US, the word yankee is often spoken not so nicely about the insulting and distrustful people from northern states. Even though my parents are from northern states, I got accepted fast when I said I was born in a southern state. As if that means anything especially when I lived in several different states. I do believe some states have better education systems than other states. Where I live at now, they spent a ton of money on local school systems building new schools all over the place a few years ago. They raised my taxes up too which I didn't like. Other counties in SC didn't make the investments and in fact showed politicians the worst schools when they went through the area. Then if the politician gets elected, they talk about the worst school in SC as representing life in SC. The image gets reinforced.

Where I work at, there are many people from foreign countries. When I go to bars and clubs, I often meet people from foreign countries. One of my nieces married someone from France. I myself was friends with someone from Lebanon and somebody else from Morocco when I was in college. At bars and clubs I've met a number of Russian girls. I remember a girl from Brazil. I seem to be particularly drawn to Czech girls because they almost always seem to look pretty good to me. There are also a lot of Mexicans and Hispanics and people from a lot further south. It seems like the melting pot is growing here instead of getting smaller.

Originally posted by isthisreallife
I don't normally voice my own social opinions on ATS, I believe that opinions are like religion, best kept to oneself.

That being said, I have finally reached my threshold for putting up with a specific problem I notice on nearly every thread I read on politics/education/religion/etc. in America: the animosity towards Southerners I see from those of Northern, or Western origin.

Personally, I come from a family of extremely conservative south Alabama and south Mississippi lineage. However, I have lived in nearly every corner of the country. From my current home in Alabama, to one of the most progressive areas in the nation, Washington, DC, there are few areas I have not visited or lived in. It always shocks to hear the opinions of the residents of different areas. During my time in the nation's capital, I experienced a lot of insults due to my slight (and i emphasize slight ) southern drawl. People asked me if my school in South Carolina had plumbing, or was on wheels.

Now, jokes like these are pretty standard for anyone who grew up in the south and moved north or west of the Mason-Dixon. I don't normally think much of them. Hell, people I went to school with in SC and AL made fun of the countrier students the same as people in VA or CA made fun of me for my accent. This however, is not a pity party.

On the contrary, it is a serious issue in American culture, and on ATS in particular. Due to this websites far reaching audience, there are a wide variety of members. Those from the UK, from China, from America, from all corners of the globe. However, there seems to be a deep divide between those from America. Perhaps this is what it would've felt like to live in pre-Civil War times. Both sides of the Mason-Dixon have deep, deep feelings for each other, and not the good kind.

Northerners insult, degrade, and look down upon their fellow Americans in a way that is not only disgraceful, but is honestly, ignorant. Not only does the southeast have some of the best public high schools and universities in the nation, such as Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt, Alabama, South Carolina, Fairfax County Public Schools, Loudon County Public Schools, William and Mary, Duke, UNC, Elon, Belmont, etc. etc.

BUT

Our employment rates mirror those of some of the most progressive states, Alabama has an unemployment rate of 8.7%, while California's is at 11.3%. Arkansas' is at 8.0%, lower than some of the most liberal, and northern states (Connecticut, Rhode Island, Washington DC).

High school graduation, college attendance and graduation, personal freedoms and average quality of life match, or better, those of many, many states in the northeast.

My Point

I am not trying to push for a reverence of the south. In fact, I am not pushing against the northeast. I have many friends, and many family members that live up north, and I love many areas north of the Mason-Dixon.

I just think that it is absolutely disgusting for people, specifically Americans, to degrade the residents of the southeast just because of outdated, and completely false stereotypes that belong in the 1920's. If you have never lived here, please do not talk about how poor, uneducated, and backwards we are.

Unemployment by state
Cost of living by state

edit on 22-1-2012 by isthisreallife because: (no reason given)

Nobody in Southwest Virginia would have degraded you for your accent man, I was born in Manassas VA but shortly after my family moved to SW VA and every time we go and visit former friends of my parents in Northern Virginia we always get made light of in restaurants etc because of our deep accents (I admit I have a VERY deep southern accent) so I know how it goes up there in Northern VA.

Southern people are one of the last stereotypes that is acceptable to make fun of and its disgusting to me. We're not backwards, we # in regular toilets like the rest of the #ing ingrates that live in this country, and we can all read. This ignorance needs to be buried once and for all.

Originally posted by ghostsoldier
As an Australian with an eye for America (courtesy of cultural imperialism, YAY!!

) - my outsiders opinion is that the animosity towards "Southerners" stem from it's (generally speaking) archaic social conservatism, ie a failure to get with the times.

Except that many places in the south are more culturally and economically diverse than many of the other "progressive" states. Raleigh North Carolina is consistently listed in the top ten places to live by national publications. Colleges like Duke and Vanderbilt are consistently rated among the best in the country.

If you actually look at a list of the most segregated metropolitan areas only five of the top twenty-five are southern. I find it telling that those "progressive" or "with the times" havens like New York City and Chicago are in the top five. Newark, NJ comes in at number six.

Duke Medical Center in North Carolina is one of the top five hospitals in the country. Elon University and Clemson University have two of the most respected MBA programs in the country.

There may be a lot of "conservatives" in the south, but from looking at the evidence to call them archaic or backwards is less than honest. Raleigh, North Carolina was one of the last cities in the country to continue busing students in an effort to maintain diversity in the school systems. Many areas have elected openly gay persons to positions of local and regional government.

Most southern stereo types come from ignorance of the area and the contributions to American culture. Much of it comes from an active smear campaign before and after the civil war. Even more of it comes from the plight of those living in the Appalachian mountains until FDR started the Tennessee Valley Authority and other projects that brought electricity and plumbing to areas that were remote and environmentally hostile. Those stereo types have been picked up and perpetrated by main stream culture with little respect for truth.

reply to post by MikeNice81


Nice

Appalachia is a kick ass place to live in, been here for 20 of my 24 years

I'm from the south and have lived in the north for several years... my best advice to the OP would be, stop being such a puss, everyone makes fun of everyone different. It's all in good fun. And don't be a such a redneck, it's annoying.

reply to post by DarkKnight76


So, Arkansas is a lot like LA? I remember my friend came back from LA with a video and story I found remarkable. He said, "when I was in California my friend told me not to walk more than two blocks from the house. I asked why and he said, "to the west the Crips are fighting with the Asians, to the north the Mexicans and the Salvadorians are fighting it out, and to the east it is a free for all after midnight. If you go any where head south and be back before it gets late, or drive through as fast as possible."

The video showed that less than three blocks from his upper middle class home were houses with bars on the doors and windows, couches and recliners on the porches, apartment buildings with window unit air conditions dripping rust down the building, and cars on blocks in the street.

the irony in this thread overwhelms.......
People are pointing fingers at an entire region of the U.S. and calling them ignorant. How ignorant do you have to be to think in those terms? How shortsighted, closed minded and ignorant of the world around you, do you have to be to think such a thing?

All these posts about bad people, incest "beer and cigs and 12 children with 12 different fathers". They all live in trailer parks?

If you lived in the south then I'm sorry you or your parents were not successful enough to lift yourself out of those situations, and that you had to experience living like that. Having lived in the south, most of us typically don't even drive near those places. I'm sorry for your poverty of life.

Mostly I'm sorry for your poverty of thought.
Have a good day.

the south will rise again....

reply to post by BiffJordan


I'm not referring to insults. Hell, I dish them out just as much as any other guy. I find them hilarious.

What I'm talking about is the attitude of "we are better than you". I'm talking about a deeper problem in America, not insults based on my accent or where I am from. I'm not being a "puss".

Try and read what I post next time.

I'm pretty sure that region's need to cling to conservatism, religion, racism, xenophobia, and being dumber than rocks has something to do with it.

reply to post by isthisreallife


You scare TPTB, that is why they plant the seed in everyones mind that you are a bunch of ignorant hillbillies

You almost won the civil war which was about standing up for your rights and TPTB can't have that happen.

Originally posted by illuminatislave
I'm pretty sure that region's need to cling to conservatism, religion, racism, xenophobia, and being dumber than rocks has something to do with it.

wut? kan u tawlk a lil less citified? us por kuntry folk never learnt dem big words...dems from book learnin schools

Originally posted by illuminatislave
I'm pretty sure that region's need to cling to conservatism, religion, racism, xenophobia, and being dumber than rocks has something to do with it.

and me and mah cuzins dont thank the rock was book learned as much as stone cold steve austin so shuv dat in ur piepe and smok it

I am was born in the Great State of California. My grandmother, who raised me, lived for several years with her family in Huntsville, Alabama. Her father was a chemist with the Air Force at that time, before he worked for NASA.

Grandma would tell me about the socially stratified society she encountered there. The segregation of races was so intense that she didn't see black people there until the beginning of the Civil rights era, when the Woolworths' had it's first sit-in. I will say that the woman was a racist herself, but even she was shocked by the serious mistreatment of Americans wanting to be treated equally.

My brother now lives and works in Alabama as well. He was almost laughed out of his workplace because of his "Cali" boy accent. He was called a "n*gger-lover" and a "f*ggot lover" for being from LA. I guess the South still has some growing up to do.

media-1.web.britannica.com...

reply to post by NuminousCosmos


No just certain people in the South have some growing up to do. I'm sure that not everyone out west is exactly embracing every person that comes to live there but that doesn't mean the whole west has "growing up to do".

reply to post by isthisreallife

That being said, I have finally reached my threshold for putting up with a specific problem I notice on nearly every thread I read on politics/education/religion/etc. in America: the animosity towards Southerners I see from those of Northern, or Western origin.

Well I must be blind, then, because I don't see this nearly as often as you seem to.

Perhaps you are a little oversensitive?