# About the South's glorious past **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 7, 2020, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672 "2020-07-07T21:31:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2020, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/61 "2020-07-08T22:07:18Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > Personally I don’t get the regional pride thing. I come from Boston: cradle of the Revolution, and home to some kick-ass sports teams and some of the best universities in the world, but I had nothing to do with any of that. Why would I get pride out of it? Why does someone feel pride because of the accident of their birth? I suspect that in some cases the person in question doesn’t feel they have any notable accomplishments of their own. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2020, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/62 "2020-07-08T22:30:08Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > Personally I don’t get the regional pride thing. I come from Boston: cradle of the Revolution, and home to some kick-ass sports teams and some of the best universities in the world, but I had nothing to do with any of that. Why would I get pride out of it? Why does someone feel pride because of the accident of their birth? When a person identifies with a group or organization, they start to identify themselves with the group as a whole - as though the accomplishments of others in the group are their accomplishments. Like, if you’re a fan of a sports team, if they win, you win, and if they lose you feel the loss. Regional and national pride works the same way. (I’ve never experienced this effect myself, but it observably occurs.) ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2020, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/63 "2020-07-08T22:39:34Z")
I’ve always found it mildly amusing that Georgia, instead of simply reverting to their pre-1956 flag, ended up with something that is exactly the historic Stars & Bars + a state badge. > [@Jackmannii](#): > > and insistence that Southerners-are-ultra-friendly-and-sweet-not-like-you-damn-Yankees > [@Dangerosa](#): > > I sort of prefer the attitude of the East Coast, “we are assholes, but we are honest about it.” Or even the passive aggressiveness behind Minnesota Nice - where we know we aren’t actually nice, but civility is important. I’ve always found it curious, that affectation about being “genteel”, “easygoing”, “hospitable” – but ever with this underlying vibe of “and if you don’t properly appreciate that, you got yourself a fight”. But, yeah – disengage “Southern pride” from the _Confederacy_ and its symbols and you’ll go a long way towards turning down the heat. Heck, the longstanding put-down of the South as backwards and rife with ignorance and stagnation (which the OP complains about) is in great measure due to how, the place having gotten wrecked by that war and then held in underdevelopment by the insistence in keeping segregation and opression of a huge section of the workforce (notice AFTER desegregation a lot of the South has boomed), it was easy for outsiders, humans being natural assholes, to attribute it all to some sort of congenital yokelism. So Southerners should view those events as being highly responsible for making them look bad long afterwards. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2020, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/64 "2020-07-08T23:17:27Z")
and what made the north the melting pot it was was the great immigration waves aka “cheap labor” from about 1840 until the bigots got their way after ww1 The south didn’t need such immigration as it had the “white trash” and the freed slaves which the factory owners pitted against each other …heck it wasn’t until the what 70s when southern industries unionized? A relative of mine volunteered back in the late 70s/80s teaching poor kids how to read in places like seep Mississippi and Louisiana and faced opposition from the local growers and factory owners because "they didn’t need to know much beyond tractor driving and assembly work and all readin did was make them “uppity” and they’d realize they were being kept poor ignorant and hateful on purpose … ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/65 "2020-07-09T00:18:30Z")
DrDeth: “If (sweet tea is) made properly, it is great.” If that’s the way someone likes it and they prepare it or order it specifically when eating out, fine. Evil arises when the stuff becomes the default tea concoction and you have to warn the server to bring you iced tea without huge dollops of sugar added, to the point that a spoon will stand upright in the middle of the glass unsupported. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/66 "2020-07-09T01:36:36Z")
I’ve only spent a little time in the South (North Carolina). My husband’s family is there, although his dad was a Yankee and his mom was properly speaking a Virginian which as any native tidewater Virginian will testify, is way superior to merely being from the South. We used to visit regularly but forty years on, I no longer engage for activities I know by experience will be mostly unpleasant. I remain completely uncharmed by the South. I found the sicky-sweet two-facedness of the women kind of terrifying (what the hell do they really mean?), the climate unbreathable, the white culture so filled with smug denial about its privileges as to be nauseating. As a Californian, I was familiar with inner-city Black ghettos, but was shocked by the dire rural Black poverty of the south, which is essentially like that of a third-world country. As for “pride”, southern pride, professional sports team pride, civic pride, whatever pride, I have always found it to be just a form of aggressive idiot tribalism and therefore to be backed away from until I can safely turn and run. I don’t understand communal pride at all, apparently I’ve never experienced it. “Pride” that is composed of thinly veiled grievance for being defeated in an evil cause, is an emotion no one should cultivate, in my view. ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/67 "2020-07-09T01:47:52Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > The people who are thrilled about Morehead College are very rarely the people being referenced by the “Southern Pride” crowd. I assume you’re referring to Morehouse College, the historically black school in Atlanta, although there is a Morehead State University in Kentucky, which admitted its first African-American students in 1956. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/68 "2020-07-09T02:16:16Z")
Oh, good lord. Yes, you’re right. UNC-CH has a prestigious More **head** scholarship, and I think I’ve been confusing its name with More **house** College for decades now. ---
**Author:** ![thdudescar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thdudescar/32/4638_2.png) [@thdudescar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thdudescar)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/69 "2020-07-09T19:06:19Z")
Well, this went exactly as I expected. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/70 "2020-07-09T19:15:06Z")
So glad you’re not disappointed. We do try to please. Stick around. It’s an acquired taste. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/71 "2020-07-09T19:22:21Z")
> [@thdudescar](#): > > Well, this went exactly as I expected. How did you want it to go? ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/72 "2020-07-09T19:24:26Z")
More cowbell?? ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/73 "2020-07-09T22:14:43Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > And I’m from West Virginia–EVERYONE puts us down! New Jersey sees your put-downs and raises you by eleventy-billion. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/74 "2020-07-09T22:26:25Z")
> [@thdudescar](#): > > Well, this went exactly as I expected. So go ahead and define what southern pride means to you. Your OP only says that it’s a reaction to being looked down upon. Is that all it is? ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2020, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/75 "2020-07-10T00:46:34Z")
I graduated high school in New Orleans. That south enough for ya? ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2020, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/76 "2020-07-10T01:01:22Z")
And I lived south of Houston. Can’t get too much further south without breathing seawater. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2020, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/77 "2020-07-10T05:47:28Z")
I grew up in Chicago. There was no Midwestern Pride and no Midwestern flag. I moved to Massachusetts. There was no New England Pride or New England flag. I’ve lived out west most of my adult life. There’s no Western Pride and no western flag. There was no need. If Southerners want to stop the heat they take, they might start by shedding the symbols of mistaken ideals and identifying as Americans who live in the south instead of Southerners who happen to be American. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2020, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/78 "2020-07-10T11:15:00Z")
@ **nelliebly** just above. You win the thread. I too have lived all over the country. Only the former Confederacy has a notion of regional pride. Odd that. It _might_ be about time to quit licking that wound. They’ve kept it raw and inflamed for ~160 years now. Healing only begins when the licking ends. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2020, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/79 "2020-07-10T12:23:59Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > It astounds me that someone could think that the South doesn’t have an impressive history of food, music, art and literature to be proud of. Most of that only goes back to the early 20th Century only because we don’t have good records before then. Slaves didn’t write cookbooks or musical scores, but they made great food and music with what they had anyway, and passed it on to their children, who passed it on to the people alive today. Sure, there’s plenty of racist literature and minstrel shows to be ashamed of too. But that doesn’t mean everything associated with the South is racist. So “Southern Pride”, a phrase said by white people that is clearly referring to white southerners, is just taking credit for things that the non-citizens forced to live in the south did to make their lives better in between bouts of rape, back breaking labor, and torture? When white people wear “Southern pride” shirts, they’re referring not to the positives of the South’s glorious past made by people like them, but to what the heavily oppressed underclass of not-considered-people did? And if there’s such a tradition of art and literature, where is it exactly? I’ll grant that plantation houses were pretty architecture, but other than that where is it? The fact that Southern authors are a 20th century phenomenon, not part of the “Glorious Past” of the 19th century, and that many of them did their writing outside of or in spite of the culture in the south is pretty damning. And the fact that minstrel shows are so popular and well-known and are one of the few pieces of art to come entirely from the South’s glorious past is pretty damning. > [@](#): > > African American culture _is_ Southern culture. It isn’t separate from it. Secondly, the rest of the country was just as racist as the South, both historically, and today. Rodney King was in California. George Floyd was in Minneapolis. The state with the most lynchings is Indiana. African American culture IS EXPLICITLY NOT the Southern Culture referenced in “Southern Pride”. As I pointed out before, you don’t see black people waving banners and wearing T-shirts with “Southern Pride” on it, or writing songs about how proud they are of their history (as slaves) as part of “the South’s glorious past”. Black people really aren’t going to feel safe if they’re alone at night and a truck with “Southern Pride” painted on the hood pulls up to investigate. > [@](#): > > The main difference is the South always codified their racism in writing. What about the time in the South’s glorious past when the South fought a treasonous war to protect slavery and white supremacy? I think ‘codified their racism in writing’ is whitewashing that history a bit. ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2020, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672/80 "2020-07-10T13:30:12Z")
nelliebly pretty much nails it. The debate ends there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-souths-glorious-past/914672.md?page=5)