[QUOTE=Dave Hartwick]
First, you continue to ignore the cites. They’re grim. *
[/QUOTE]
True. I haven’t even looked at them. I’ve years of experience as a government documents research specialist, frankly I could probably find some that made those look good, but quantitative surveys don’t tell you everything any more than anecdotes do.
What irks me in these threads— well, among the things that irk me in these threads— is
1- The notion that “The South” is all one thing
2- The notion that “The South” can be quantified and qualified without even being broken down
3- The notion that what’s true for one or five people must be indicative of something much more major
and, most of all,
4- The notion that people who live in “The South” shouldn’t be offended at being told how backwards and provincial we are
If a thread were started entitled “Are _____ really as bad as their stereotype?”, with ____ filled with gays, blacks, Jews, Muslims, Asians, etc., I doubt there’s a single person here who’s been around any of those groups who wouldn’t have anecdotes about every negative stereotype being represented. Quite true ones at that, and probably multiple ones. I certainly would- I’ve met the negative members of all of those groups. For pretty much any group I haven’t had negative run ins with, I probably know somebody who has.
BUT, such a thread would, if not closed down altogether, be called- with some reason- homophobic or racist or whatever adjective applied. There would be any number of responses from people saying “OF COURSE you’ve known _____’s who are the negative stereotype, you’re talking about a group that has many millions of members! There’s also _____ and _____ and _____ (exceptions to said stereotype/proof that personal anecdotes and sweeping generalizations are ultimately meaningless).
Asking a qualitative assessment of the southern United States is asking a similar question about a group of people that’s bigger than (but inclusive of members of) all of those groups. One could argue that the geographical region itself is part of the question, but it’s the most minor part and everybody knows about the geography of it, though even that is very diverse: in most places summer is hot as hell and moister than a tweengirl in a Jonas Brothers dressing room, in other places summers are mild but winters are harsh, in some places you can drive hours in any direction without seeing a good sized hill and in others it’s mountains, in some places it’s more than halfway to rain forest and in other’s it’s more than halfway to desert, some places the worst problems are tornadoes and in others it’s hurricanes (not to say you can’t have both), in some it’s floods and in other’s it’s droughts. The South as a region is not just one thing.
BUT, I don’t think anybody’s really talking about the region itself (i.e. what would be there if all the people jumped into a vortex) or its ecoystems (certainly the most diverse in the contiguous U.S., among the most diverse in the world). Mostly you’re talking about the south’s people and the things that are created by people (economics, politics, norms, mores, etc.), and the people are way more diverse than the ecosystems. No one person’s experience, for that matter no one scientific or amateur survey, will give you a realistic snapshot of “the South”.
EXCLUDING border states and everything south of the Florida panhandle and military personnel who are stationed here, the South is home to more than 70 million people. That is more than 1/5 of the entire population of the United States. Texas alone is home to 1/3 of those.
There is NOTHING you can say, most certainly not an anecdote that happened to somebody else to begin with, that really reflects on an entire region. For that matter, your experience in small town in Mississippi is likely different from somebody living in a small college town in Virginia which is different from somebody living in the D.C. metro area of Virginia or somebody living in a big city. Somebody who lives in New Orleans would have a different experience than somebody in Charlotte or Atlanta or Fort Worth, and somebody who is living in one region of Fort Worth would probably have a different experience than somebody living in another region of Fort Worth and somebody who lived here in 1994 would have a different experience than somebody who lives here now. It’s an inherently flawed question.
If you want to know “Is East Texas (or South Alabama, or the Nashville metro area, or Boone, NC) the worst place to live, it’s an easier to answer question. And there will still be disagreement. Economic surveys don’t really mean that much without more info, such as “What field of work are you in? How much education do you have? How much money do you have?” City B might be hell on Earth to some people who can’t find a job, but if you have an in demand credential you might breeze right in, and while the earnings may not be in City K what they are in where you live now this could well be offset by the cost of living- the 2BR condo you sell there might buy a 4BR house with a pool in City K.
Then there’s the factor of “what the people are like”. Again, it depends on what people you work with or socialize with. Personally, I think if you are a Fundamentalist Christian with 8 children who believes the world is 6,000 years old, you probably are going to fit right in to some places in Arkansas BUT if you move to Queens in NYC you can probably find people there who will also accept you and a church that shares your beliefs. If you’re an interracial gay couple with an interest in origami then you might have an easier to find social group in Provincetown BUT with a bit of digging you’ll find somebody to hang with in Birmingham. You will find people you like and people you can’t stand anywhere you go, and with the Internet (“the nerd Israel” to quote Sarah Vowell) it’s easier to do this now than it ever has before.
I’m a gay atheist- two things that historically aren’t that popular in the south- but I’ve no desire to leave the south because this is where the people I love are (some of whom are gay, some of whom are atheist, most of whom are neither) and currently being within an easy drive of them is more important to me than whether the person who’s scanning my coupons at the grocery store will get my joke about Proust or whether the next door neighbor is likely to share my political views or whether a co-worker is likely to have seen the same movies I have. Your mileage may vary, and, if they do then, to quote Don Corleone,
