Is the South the worst region in America to live in?

Is it just my imagination or does the South have the highest percentage of self-righteous and close-minded people in America? I think many other people have noticed this as well because the South has well-known stereotypes that correlate with this assertion.

And when I say the South, I’m of course referring to most of the former Confederate states such as Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Texas—particularly in the small and medium sized towns.

As a prime example, one-sidedness seems to be a huge trend in the Southern states—especially in Alabama and Mississippi. You HAVE to choose a football team to show your support for, you HAVE to choose the dominant political party (Republican), and you HAVE to be a church-going Christian. If you are not at least one of these things, you’re going to have a harder time than most getting the majority of people to like you. If you’re not particularly enthusiastic about any of these three things or you share different views, you will likely have no chance of joining the “good ol’ boy network” of the South. In fact, some people will even go out of their way to chastise you or make your life a little harder if they find out that you have a different opinion from them in any of these areas.

For this reason, should the South be considered the worst region in America to live in?

Given that millions of people choose to live in the South, it’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it?

Sure, the opinion may be considered subjective but that doesn’t make the South any better for an average American who wants to have the freedom to choose whether or not to get involved in football, support the Republican party, or go to a church every Sunday without being given a harder time because of it.

There are a lot of Democrats in the South, although certainly not a majority. Can’t you coexist with people who aren’t exactly like you? If you can only be happy if everyone around you is like you, then you’re guilty of the same thing you’re accusing Southerners of.

I actually lived in the South for 5 years (considerably more if you count Kentucky which I don’t) and no one forced me to choose up sides in football, go to church or vote Republican. So my anecdote obviously trumps any that the OP can offer.

The people I knew there including neighbors and co-workers were as tolerable as anywhere I’ve lived. It was occasionally off-putting to hear certain people (mostly of the letter-writing and Internet-posting persuasion) who constantly insisted that Southerners are by God the friendliest, kindest and most neighborly of Americans, to the point that you thought they’d kick your ass if you didn’t agree. But I didn’t run into any of them in person.

Aside from fire ants and wretchedly hot summers, it was pretty nice in southeast Texas and I’d consider living there again, assuming climate change doesn’t turn it into the Gobi Desert.

As for worst part of America in which to live, it’s all relative. Any region that contains Erie, PA for example qualifies for consideration as the worst in which to live, weatherwise.

For what it’s worth, my opinion after spending a year in South Carolina is that I would rather live poor away from the south than live rich in it. I’ve been all over this country, and there’s nowhere I feel more like I don’t belong.

You have some interesting anecdotes, and since you’re new here, you might think that is sufficient to make your case in this forum. It isn’t. Just so you know.

Having lived in Texas and Mississippi, I cannot recall anyone pressuring me (other than my grandma to be a good christian) to pick a football team, be a christian, or to be a Republican.

One thing about southern hospitality; these days the young women mostly think it means to welcome a stranger with sex. Had a lot of fun down there.

How do you characterise a huge region like the American South as homogenous?
Each state is different-there is a huge difference between South Mississippi, and Eastern Virginia.
It is a region that has changed greatly, in the past 30 years.
And there are regions (like South Florida) that resemble NYC.
I agree though-I would not be comfortable living in a rural part of the South-I would not fit in.

Yes, it is just your imagination.

The irony, it burns.

I’m willing to admit that I could be wrong or I started off with a bad premise. As someone who’s lived in the South for years, maybe I focused on things that I shouldn’t have with this post.

However, if there’s not any truth in my original post, how did the South get it’s stereotypes (made by some people who have lived there) that it is more religious, conservative, and homogenous? If that stereotype is unfair, could it be realistically said that the South as a whole is less religious, less conservative, more diverse, and more accepting of different cultures than other parts of America?

I question whether the stereotype started with Southerners, but even if it did, I question that “closed mindedness” is part of it.

Tennessee is so full of right-wing nuts & screwballs that you can’t swing a cat without clobbering one in the face with a cat.

I grew up in Texas. My mother and all her friends were liberal, recycling-before-it-was-cool, organic granola, Sierra Club types. My experiences are nothing at all like you are describing.

I agree that the OP’s post isn’t really worth much as far as actual debating is concerned. Although there are actual meaningful issues that could be brought up, things like literacy, life expectancy, etc, which actual meaningful data exists for, which could probably be used to generate some meaningful and objective comparisons. It wouldn’t shock me, for instance, if one could argue fairly persuasively and fact-basedly that, say, people in Vermont are happier on average than people in Mississippi (although, heck, maybe the opposite is true). But even then, that’s not really demonstrating causality, and has wandered away from the point that the OP was trying to make.

This is anecdotal evidence granted, but I’ve lived in coastal North Carolina for 13 years and in southern Ohio for almost as long. I’ve found that North Carolina is by far the more open-minded and liberal of the two places. I have never been to a place as fundamentalist or as far-right-wing as southern Ohio. Imagine if someone took every bad stereotype of Christian fundamentalists, from Jack Chick to Fred Phelps, and stuck them in one region. That’s southern Ohio. North Carolina is Berkeley, California compared to where I live now.

Thing is, North Carolina is generally considered a Southern state. Ohio almost never is. I guess what I’m saying is that the attitudes the OP is describing are by no means limited to the South.

Oo, can you tell us where in southern Ohio? Couldn’t be Athens, they’re too open-minded and/or drunk to qualify. I’m betting somewhere along the Ohio River or one of the weirder Cincinnati suburbs.

When we moved to the South back in '72 (I was a kid then), it was to a small town.

MANY of the people were insular. Many of them were EXTREMELY nosy and pushy about religion and politics. I was just a kid. I was bullied so badly for four years that I eventually had to switch schools. Our local county judge was reselling confiscated alcohol for personal profit - political corruption was rampant.

When we moved to another southern state in 1979, the locals weren’t so stressed about the religion thing (though it was still very prevalent, our family never felt a need to actually join a church there), but racism was much more common (quote from one of my classmates: “Do you hate black people yet? Don’t worry, you will”). Plus it was incredibly hot, humid and just generally uncomfortable. I moved West in 1990, and never looked back.

Yankee girls say, “You may.” Southern girls say, Y’all may."