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

In My Humble Opinion
21

Valid point, but I doubt anyone here could convince me that there aren’t some serious problems with religious, cultural, and sometimes ethnic intolerance in some areas of Alabama and Mississippi. I’ve been around people that made me feel very uncomfortable and I’ve heard many horror stories about what goes on in some areas of those two states. In fact, I’ve lived in one of those two states for years.

However, it might be fair to point out that maybe I had the misfortune of being around the most intolerant people and I allowed those experiences with them to alter my perception of the entire region. Perhaps I’m focusing too much on the negatives and I’m describing my observations in a way that make them seem worse than they really are. Or maybe the intolerance and the general mindset of Alabama and Mississippi are really as unpleasant sometimes as I believe they are but the people who are part of the majority (Baptist, Conservative, Caucasian, and college-football fan) don’t notice and really have no reason to notice. As another poster pointed out, there are issues like literacy and life expectancy that can influence the beliefs and actions of a community—or the other way around.

If I’m wrong, I don’t mind finding out why I’m wrong and looking at the situation more objectively.

22

Having lived in the South my entire life, I’ve never experienced any sort of… well, whatever you’re expecting me to experience… because I don’t watch football, don’t go to church every Sunday, or voted Democrat.

The question you pose says more about you and your expectations than it does about the “South”.

23

Neither, I’m in Chillicothe. Halfway between Columbus and the Ohio/Kentucky border. Well okay, that could be taken as along the Ohio River, even if it is an hour’s drive from here. :slight_smile:

Cincinnatti’s even further away, though.

24

The south is definitely not some homogenous behemoth of a region, nor are the people here quite as hive-minded as you seem to think. Sure, there are religious nuts who live here, just as in other parts of the country. Ditto right wingers, bigots, etc. And yes, a great many Southerners enjoy a Saturday afternoon football game. But to paint everyone in such a huge region with that same broad brush is out and out wrong*.

Not everyone from New Jersey is a mobster or an over-tanned vapid Jersey Shore wannabe. Not everyone from Idaho is a skinhead. Not everyone in Texas is a cowboy. And not everyone from “The South,” however you define its boundaries, is a religious, ignorant, intolerant Republican.

Signed,

A beer-drinking, pickup truck-driving, football-loving, gun-owning, college educated, liberal atheist recycler who was born and raised in SE Georgia

*Even within a fairly small portion of the south, social customs vary pretty widely. I was very non-plussed when my first husband’s grandfather - from northern Alabama - asked whether any black people lived in my neighborhood. Of course I had black neighbors! And friends, teachers, bosses, etc.! Doesn’t everyone? And one of the most observant things I’ve ever heard about my own state: “In Atlanta, people ask what you do. In Macon, it’s ‘Where do you go to church?’ In Augusta, ‘Who are your people [family/lineage]?’ And in Savannah, ‘What would you like to drink?’”

25

I’ve had a woman tell me point blank that she did not like black people. One guy I deeply respect and has been nothing but kind to me and others told me once that he disapproved of interracial marriages. Another guy I worked with had the habit of actually talking about killing politicians he didn’t agree with. Yet another person suggested that if a gay person were hired to his company, that person should be pushed out or fired. I’ve heard very unkind of words about Muslims with one suggestion that the whole Middle East should be blown up so that all the sand would be turned into glass. People I knew on two different occasions suggested that America should set up machine gun turrets at the Mexican border.

Sure, these are separate instances made by different people but I heard all of these comments in the just the last five years. Added all together, it just seems ridiculous from the perspective of a laid-back guy like me who wouldn’t mind getting along with anybody.

26

What was that you were saying about closed mindedness?

Seriously, is there any state in the country that could escape that kind of scrutiny? You are doing some serious goal post moving here…

27

You meet thousands of people. I know plenty of people who would object to interracial marriages uses terms like “faggot” or “retard”, and this is liberal California! Plus a lot of those people could be using hyperbole (ie such as setting up machine turrets on the border)

28

The good, the bad, and the ugly in no particular order. (Long post, but the highlights will be sufficient unless you want to argue a point.)

If your car or motorcycle breaks down, someone will help you. If you are short a bit of change at the grocery, the person behind you in line will cover you without hesitation. Southerns smile and greet darn near everyone, and nearly every possible retail establishment feels safe and welcoming. If you move to the area, a quick game of Six Degrees of Separation will be played, and as soon as a Southerner finds a connection, you are in. A house fire, devastating car wreck, childhood illness, or any other catostrophic event results in immediate fund-raising activity. Churches as well as the Salvation Army and Red Cross open their doors to homeless and infirm during foul weather or power outages. Newspapers and radio stations provide free and frequent coverage of opportunities to help others. Churches and some school groups also sponsor regions all over the world, and in times of political unrest or famine, steps are taken to relocate world citizens here and make them feel at home. Consequently, there is a diverse ethnic population embedded all over the South. (Of course, conversion is expected in exchange for church charity, but it’s goodwill nonetheless.) A stranger may ask absolutely anyone for help or directions, and can expect a friendly, helpful response. Time moves slowly here, and everyone from the retired farmer to the the busiest professional is willing to stop and help. Southerners are genuinely nice, hospitable, and patient to lost strangers. And if you are receptive to it, you are likely to get a hug, whether you need one or not.

Some bad: strangers and acquaintances in the grocery line are likely to ask if you belong to a church, and if so, which one. If the answer is none, you will get the hard sell, and obligated to join the stranger’s congregation forthwith. There are no options such as agnostic, atheist, or disinterested. The default assumption is that everyone in the south is some flavor of Christian, alternatives are unthinkable. (Unthinkable. Need a stronger word here.) I find it best to go with the flow even if that means lying about my lack of interest in belonging to a church.

Many if not half of the cars and trucks on the road have NRA stickers, Friends of Coal stickers, or a whole cluster of smart-alecky anti-Democrat pro Palin/McCain/Bush/insert your outspoken- Conservative- here sticker. Because the tone of conservative propaganda is usually contrarian, I tend to avoid conversations with anyone sporting “Pry my gun from my cold, dead hands/One Big Ass Mistake America/Rebel flag” stickers. In my experience, outspoken southern conservatives can be ruthlessly unkind. But these people are easy to spot, and easy enough to avoid. Except in the long lines on election day. That is an ugly, ugly place to wait.

Sports? Yeah, lots of UT Vols orange around during football season, along with VA Tech and Kentucky basketball clothing and stickers. But this love for college sports generally reflects where the owner graduated, so no hostility there, just school pride. If anything, someone sporting collegiate apparel likely has some higher education, and that’s reassuring. It’s cool to have no interest in sports, but it is likely that strangers will ask where you attended college in an attempt to find common ground or razz you about your team.

There are several colleges in the region, and a few have very good reputations and diverse curriculum. Plenty of hope and charity around, and educated, enlightened folks, both religious and non. But if one is a transplant with no family or friend base in the South, it is usually necessary to attend cultural events such as live music, poetry readings, festivals, sporting events, fundraisers, etc in order to find charitable, open-minded people. Expecting open-minded behavior from random strangers in public is akin to playing social roulette.

It can be unpleasant here. There is a disturbing meth problem, an obscene obesity rate, an excessive number of young single parents with multiple children, and a heavy dependence on pharmaceuticals by a wide range of socio-economic classes. Children in impoverished families are often over-indulged as a twisted way of making up for the lack of material wealth. Consequently, stores, parks, and restaurants are often filled with wild little monkeys and questionable parenting practices. And parents with higher expectations and well-behaved children must coexist with kids that seem darn near feral, and that is a big source of frustration for my peers with families. And me, too, as it is difficult to see a movie or have a meal in peace. No matter where you go, someone within earshot is getting violently spanked, but only after the kid has trashed the place and ruined everyone’s day.

The preceding paragraph may be the most frustrating aspect of Southern life: sharing classrooms, cultural events, stores, parks, and restaurants with families who do not make conscientious parenting decisions. Class divisions are painfully obvious and the gulf is wide from either POV.

29

I’m a gay politically left-of-center atheist and I’ve lived 99% of my life in Alabama and Georgia. I may be other-than-normal but I’ve never felt I don’t belong and I’ve no shortage of other friends who don’t fit the stereotype.

Polls would bear you out that the south is more inclined to vote conservative, but there are plenty of people who do not and there are plenty of intelligent open-minded conservatives. Any number of famous examples (Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, Andrew Breitbart, the Sean Hannity/Glenn Beck/Bill O’Reilly trifecta at Fox, millions of Kool-Aid Mormons, etc.) certainly exist to prove the South doesn’t exist all of the high profile closed minded nutcases.

Of course a huge factor is the “where in the south are you talking about?” factor. Atlanta has a much closer resemblance to other big cities than it does to Milledgeville and Dahlonega and other “traditional” Georgia towns within a 100 mile radius. There are many areas of the south that are predominantly black and blacks tend to vote Democratic, though they also tend to be very church-o-centric. There’s a huge new (last couple of decades) population of foreign workers (legal and illegal) and transplanted northerners. South Florida has little in common with Panhandle Florida in demographics or politics, etc… We’re no more monolithic than most large regions and possibly much less so.

In any case, you can find people to like and dislike anywhere you go, at least in my limited experience and with the possible exception of Albany, Georgia.

30

My experience living in Georgia is that people are on-the-surface friendly without exception. What they actually think is anyone’s guess. You might find out 6 months from now that you totally pissed someone off, but they acted all fakey-nice to you at the time so you had no opportunity to make it right. I HATE fakey-nice bullshit, so the Southern hospitality thing just kind of rubs me the wrong way. Unfortunately, I’ll be moving back to Georgia in the next couple of years and then have to live there for the rest of my life. sigh. I would far rather live among people who said what they meant and felt.

31

This isn’t a uniquely Southern affectation; I’ve heard random hate speech everywhere I’ve been in the US, usually by conservative older citizens, who harbor a host of outdated ideas.

Can’t name a single instance of blatant racism or segregation in my entire life here. Interacial relationships are so very common that the beauty of any mixed-race child is practically universally agreed upon. For the last 20-30 years more and more migrant workers (restaurants, fars, and yard work) have made permanent homes here and are fitting in well. Some insular areas probably still harbor racist ideas, but by and large that issue is dwindling.

32

With regards to interracial relationships, I’ve known several people well- a couple of very close friends, most of them further removed- either in interracial relationships or who have bi-racial kids from a previous relationship, and I see people currently involved in them constantly on a daily basis. It’s really not a big thing to most people. You have stupid people and prejudice everywhere. (One of my closest friends is Italian and married to a black man and she said that in Italy people weren’t upset by his race but were by the fact he’s not Catholic; my boss was married to a man of Hawaiian-Chinese ancestry and said it was a MAJOR issue to the Hawaiian side of his family [who still hadn’t gotten over the Chinese marriage]), and one of my co-workers (who looks like Fred Flintstone and whose wife is black) swears that for every moment of prejudice he’s encountered in Alabama there were 10 in Chicago and D.C. when he lived in those places.

A bit off-topic, but one thing that irks me when people refer to the prejudice against interracial relationships is they act like it’s a “white thing” (i.e. that only white bigots have a problem with it). Some of the most prejudiced and most vocal people I’ve ever known- currently know for that matter- about interracial relationships were black female co-workers. Apparently the number of black men dating white women especially has become a major source of discontent to many black women.

Interracial isn’t the only “different from most” family that is far more prevalent than you’d think in the south. Families with two gay parentsare more common in the south than they are in most regions of the country.
Also, the power of cable TV and the Internet in bringing together people of like mind and as an outlet can’t be overestimated. It was a different landscape even in the mid 1990s here.

33

Nevertheless, I strongly advise you to continue repeating the experiment. For science.

34

So far as partisan alignment goes, if you look at this “Red-Blue” map broken down by county with shades of purple, you’ll see that the South is heavily red compared to the Northeast – but otherwise, in the South as everywhere else, the real division is between rural areas (red) and urban areas (blue).

35

That too is rather variable-after all the rural but Hispanic or black majority counties in the Deep South or the Southwest will go Democrat while a lot of heavily urbanized counties go GOP such as the OC here.

36

My disgust with Texas is well known here. However, I’ve spent a lot of time in Arkansas, specifically the northwest part of the state, and I’ve always found it to be very nice and accommodating. I’ve not actually lived there though, at least not as an adult.

37

Forget the people, the climate in the South is intolerable. I’ll gladly take my blizzards in exchange for the temps never breaking 100.

As noted, the political divide in the US is much more urban-rural than it is regional.

38

I was born in Atlanta, and lived there most of my life.
I have zero interest in football, and I am an atheist and a Democrat.
My grandmother always suggested that I go to church to find a “good girl” to marry.
But, not one other member of my friends and family have ever said anything about my interests or beliefs.

39

I don’t doubt that there’s some truth in the assertion that the small-town South is more religious, homogeneous, and conservative than the rest of the country on average. Some of us like it that way. I like living in my current hometown (Culpeper, VA., pop ~ 15,000) precisely because of those aspects of southern life and the culture that results from them. We have low crime, I feel safe walking anywhere in town at night, there are no strip clubs or porn shops, there are no bars that stay open late at night or anything else that makes noise which might wake me up. In addition there are the advantages that flow naturally from being a small town, such as less traffic and pollution. If I were to move to a big, left-leaning city such as Washington DC I would lose all of these advantages. Of course I would gain others, such as a more varied restaurant and music scene; overall I choose to have things the way they are here.

The horrors of small-town southern living, as some folks describe them, don’t faze me. I have never had anyone in a grocery line ask me about church attendance or anything else personal, but suppose it did happen–so what? You may complain that it’s hard to make friends if you don’t share a lot with other people, but isn’t that true by definition? Friendship generally arises from shared interests and opinions.

40

I vote for Gary, Indiana, if we’re taking votes.