Take all those good things we like—food, music, whatever. It’s only “Southern” if you insist on creating a concept called “Southern” and mashing all the things you like into it. Some of it is from say the Appalachian region, which bleeds into non-Southern areas. Some of it is Carolina Coastal or Bayou or creole or West Texas or whatever, each of which leaves out most of the South. None of it is really “Southern.” The only thing that actually unifies the conceptual South is slavery, treason, and Jim Crow. All those admirable things can be defined in different ways. Or better yet, just “American,” because many of those things actually stretch into the North or Midwest or West, like Blues or Jazz or barbecue. The “South” is a dispensable concept. And no one need celebrate it. Celebrate New Orleans culture or American culture or Western culture if something needs celebrating. The South is unnecessary and we need nothing to represent it.
Clearly, like the rest of America, they haven’t, so they’d be celebrating a falsehood.
I wonder whether everybody’s actually talking about the same emotion.
Because, to me, pride in one’s own community is most definitely separable from denigration of other humans.
I have no problem whatsoever being proud of how I think my family or my community did or does something well, while simultaneously recognizing that others also do things well, and may do that same thing as well or even better than my group does.
If I think it’s great that my culture managed to make such great food out of what were at the time the cheapest ingredients, I don’t see any way in which that requires me to think either that mine was the only culture that did that (it obviously isn’t), or to think that a culture that made great food out of expensive ingredients didn’t also make great food.
If I praise jazz, that isn’t putting down Beethoven. Or vice versa. Why on earth should it be?
Yes, there are people whose sense of pride rests on putting somebody else down. But that type of pride isn’t the only thing the word means. I think the version that involves putting others down actually rests on insecurity, not on what I would call genuine pride. People who are confident that their pride’s on solid ground don’t need to put anybody else down to prove it.
Seriously? None of them? Not a single one?
Agreement. One can celebrate individuality as well as celebrate diversity. One can love Irish folk dancing, without having to apologize for The Troubles. We can focus on the good, and do our best to turn our backs on the bad.
(At the same time, “Never Forget.”)
Wasn’t it Winston Churchill who said that? 
As far as the Southern writers of literature prior to the 20th century, I can’t believe no one mentioned Mark Twain 
.
“Not as horrifically bad as it used to be” is nothing to be proud of.
To the extent that we as a society have progressed, there’s no justification for defining that progress as having happened in “the South.”