Oddly proud to be southern

The BBQ Pit
101

I grew up on a cattlefarm in one of the poorest counties in Alabama. The nearest library (20 miles away) had one book about gay life and it was written by Jerry Falwell. I probably know a tad more about coming out of the closet in Dixie than you do. I currently live in a small city that, 140 years ago today, was occupied by General Sherman’s right wing. I couldn’t be more openly gay if I lived with Harvey Fierstein and you would be amazed how little prejudice I’ve encountered. in part it’s because of changing attitudes and in part it’s because of… southern etiquette.

THAT is a condescending remark.

102

I’ve been all over the USA, although not quite in every state. There are beautiful parts everywhere; most people have their favorites. There are interesting parts and people everywhere, if you know where to look and can start a conversation with a stranger. Neither the South nor the North (or West or Middle) is perfect or irredeemable. It’s really not worth getting in a pissing match about.

103

I absolutely agree, and hope my last post didn’t come across as saying the South was purtier than everywhere else.

Daniel

104

Sampiro, I think I love you. But platonically, of course.

Personally, I hold high hopes for the South, and all of the country. Each generation seems to get less and less racist, if you look at my family, anyway. I have hopes that future generations will be even less racist than mine and my brother’s.

105

Say what you will about Americans - we are polite to a fault. Except in New York City.

106

Hey Shibb while I agree with your post and thoughts I must say “You ain’t in the South buddy.” In Florida the South ends approximately North of a line from Hernando County (Brooksville) to Marion County(Ocala) over to Flagler County (St. Augustine.) Tampa Bay, Central Florida and Southwest Florida are basically the Midwest, while South Florida (true urban South Florida) is the Northeast. Of course their are exceptions to this rule like the small pockets of "southerness"in inland southern Florida…a good example would be Arcadia in Desoto County.

I find a good rule to determine whether you are truly in the South is when you go out to eat and you order tea to drink. If you have to request UNSWEETENED tea because SWEET tea is the default choice…you are in the South. Now if you ask for tea and they ask you if you want it hot or iced, you are so far North you’ll need a parka even in the summer.

107

Oh yeah I forgot to ask you Sampiro, what county in Alabama did you grow up as a gay boy? I grew up as a gay boy in Pike County and boy was it tough. I find that I can really relate to what you say and here in Tallahassee I am open and out as a partnered gay man and find I have no trouble at all even with my super conservative redneck pubbies next door.

108

A dear friend of mine in college (which happened to be in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains) was in fact the first in her extended family to go to college. She held the top academic merit scholarship granted by the school. Her family was proud as they could be, although some thought her choice of major was foolish. Why on earth do you think Southern families wouldn’t approve of college aspirations? I’m sure poor families would be concerned about the cost, but that’s hardly limited to the South.

No, lynching was an ugly custom.

It snowed every winter when I was in school in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Unlike places farther north where I have wintered, it wasn’t too damn cold to go out and enjoy it either.

It’s not the North, but it’s not the South so it might as well be. :wink:

One of my grandmothers is originally from California, but was apparently considered a “Yankee” when she married and moved to a small town in the South. This was more than 50 years ago, and when I was growing up we wouldn’t have called Californians Yankees, but the term is sometimes used loosely to refer to anyone not Southern.

109

I grew up on the Elmore/Coosa county border (the county line passed through our farm, though we paid taxes only to Elmore due to a treaty of some sort). The nearest town was Rockford, county seat of Coosa county and about 13 miles away; it currently has a population of about 400 but wasn’t that big when I was growing up. (There was literally a building there which included the city hall, courthouse, jail… and a liquor store!)
My father occasionally taught at TSU in summers so I knew that part of Pike County pretty well.

110

Ellis Dee: It also allows no understanding when the shunned person was the sole voice of reason. This was not one such case, but there easily could be one. Say, for instance, a gay person came out of the closet. Or a child wanted to be the first person in her extended family to go to college.

I won’t touch the gay part, since folks infinitely more eloquent and knowledgable than I have already spoken, but I am greatly offended by the second part. Where in the world did you get the impression Southerners don’t value college education as highly (or more so) than any other people in the country? It certainly wasn’t from any of the Southerners I know.

I was born and raised in central Mississippi (my mama is from down on the Delta) and every member of my huge, Faulkner-esque extended family was supportive of me and my cousins going to college. Never once did I encounter any resistance and I most certainly was never shunned. Quite the opposite! We were always taught of the importance of continuing education. My granddaddy only ever finished 5th grade but me and every one of my cousins (except for the two who are 6 and 4, respectively) are college-educated.

What did you expect? All Southerners want their children to do is grow up and become sharecroppers? Or shoot coons, dip snuff, and screw their siblings? Or any number of other ugly stereotypes? Have you ever actually met a Southerner, or do you get all your information from reruns of Hee-Haw and Amos & Andy?

For the record, I have lived in Maryland and it is NOT Southern. Hell, Virginia didn’t feel Southern to me. It doesn’t feel like the South to me until you hit North Carolina.

111

I watched a road company version of Fiddler on the Roof last night and was thinking of this post. It’s always been one of my favorite plays anyway but I’ve always particularly loved this aspect:

*the first time you hear the song *Tradition, it’s a joyous upbeat funny and whimsical number in which it’s detailed how shared heritage and customs keep the cogs turning and allow everyone to know “who he is and what God expects him to do”.

Later, after Tevye has chosen the happiness of his older two daughters over local custom and perhaps even common sense (even breaking a solemn and well-danced agreement with a village leader for the first and paying for the second to go to a life of misery as the wife of an imprisoned Communist in Siberia), he refuses to accept his third daughter’s marriage even though her new husband is a good person, lives locally, cares for her greatly, etc., because the boy is Christian. As he literally turns his back on Chava and declares her dead to him the chorus of Tradition is heard again, the same tune but a different tempo and this time ominous, unforgiving, damning and totally devoid of joy.

That’s pretty much the case in the south or anywhere else where most of the people have a shared heritage. Our ways can constrain us and make us miserable but they can also give us joy and a sense of belonging. Learning to balance the two and when to join which version of the song is I suspect one of the things that life is about.

*Some non Southern related Fiddler trivia: the writers barely got funding when the play was new because nobody believed in it, stating that it would be great for JDL fundraisers but otherwise nobody would relate to a bunch of Russian Jews at the turn of the century. Of course it was funded and ran on B’way for several years and had several revivals (including the one now) and is one of the most produced plays by regional, college, high school and repertory theaters around the world.
When Stein & Bock (the writers) attended the first professional production of the play in Japan (featuring an all Japanese cast) the Japanese producers asked them in complete seriousness “This was actually a hit in America? How?” When the writers asked why it was so hard to believe Americans would like the play, the producers responded “Because it’s so… Japanese.”

112

Sampiro, that is so true! We are more alike than we think. And the differences that we have are, for the most part, to be understood and savored just as we would in a foreign culture.

Ellis Dee, our family has a cabin in the Adirondacks. It is unbelievably beautiful in the autumn. It’s hard to imagine so much uncluttered wilderness in New York State.

And we’ve driven Route 2 across Vermont and New Hampshire in the fall too. Every hill and curve presents yet another red barn surrounded by gold and orange produce and flowers and trees. Vermont looks like what I always thought America should look like.

And my favorite place on earth is the view of Penobscot Bay and Camden Harbor from the top of Mt. Battie in Maine.

I could name many other places that I treasure in New England and I don’t think that I would ever get tired of the snow even if it came every day.

But that doesn’t lessen the beauty of the special places in the South. I know a place where you can drive for 500 miles of fairly new road and never pass a store, a restaurant, an advertising billboard or a gas station – unless you take a sideroad. You will find just wildflowers, deer, a waterfall, the cabin of one of our nation’s heroes, and places of interest. And there is almost no traffic.

I know where to drive a couple of hours from my house to find the highest free fall waterfall in the United States – east of the Rockies.

I’ve seen the dunes on Ocracoke Island and the sugar white sand in Pensacola.

There is a coastal city with a historic heart made up of twenty (I think) squares – each a small park of fountains and statues and live oaks dripping with Spanish moss.

Here in Middle Tennessee we don’t have very many snows during the winter and only one or two of those is more than four inches deep. But the most incredible thing happens when it does snow. Everything stops. Schools close the moment snow starts to stick and most meetings are cancelled. The streets are quiet and people know that something special is happening. We watch it snow.

Right now outside my windows, the maple trees are still at their peak. It has been a long autumn here. Winter will last a little over 3 months. Spring in Tennessee is something special because the redbud and the dogwood bloom at the same time. That’s unusual. East Tennessee has so much dogwood that they have a festival.

There are things that I would change about both the South and the New England, but the physical beautiful of the land isn’t one of them.

So it seems a little silly to argue about which is the most beautiful.

113

Yes, when it comes to any bigot who feels comfortable comparing African-Americans to gorillas as an proof of evolution, I would hope that educated Southerners, and others, would give her racism and stupidity the negative feedback it deserves. The SDMB isn’t the only place we can fight ignorance.

By custom and tradition – what you call herd mentality because of *your customs and traditions – the person is treated cooly. Perhaps it is your custom to be “in your face” instead. That is your choice. It is not mine.

If the woman had been “the sole voice of reason,” there would have been no reason to treat her with coldness or to confront her either one. If the person had been a gay coming out of the closet or a child wanting to go to college, again, there is no reason to shun.

I will add that my mother and sister live in a small town of about 20,000 people in rural West Tennessee. The most famous product of that town is a much loved actress who has a Tony for her performance in a lead role on Broadway and at least one other nomination. She is very open about her homosexuality both in New York and in this small town. Just try to say an unkind word about her in that town and you will get the freeze out – not her.

Where did you get the notion that Southerners discourage education? That is weird!

114

The same is true of Jim Nabors in Sylacauga, AL (he’s not openly gay, perhaps, but he doesn’t really need to be), Fannie Flagg in her hometown of Irondale, AL and her sometime home of Fairhope, AL, and Michael Stipe in Athens, GA. Flannery O’Connor (the patron saint of the town where I currently lived) was very close friends with a writer/playwright who was openly lesbian in the 1950s (there has been speculation about Flannery’s own sexuality, but expert consensus is that she celibate first and whatever else a distant second). Helen Keller is something of an icon in north Alabama even though she was a zealous feminist (long before it was popular) and socialist (she named Lenin as the greatest man who in her opinion ever lived).

OTOH, Monroeville AL, while taking great pride in Harper Lee (who is gay but does not discuss it) doesn’t discuss her childhood friend and next door neighbor Truman Capote. Of course quite a few other gay authors (Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, etc.) despised him also (though most will grant his talent was one of a kind).

115

Okay, I see my comment was ignored, so I’ll try to make my serious point again. Was this Southern wank-fest really worth extending the audience of her comment (which you admitted in your OP was offensive) a million fold? “Hey everybody, listen to this horribly racist comment that we shunned. Aren’t we great?” Isn’t that a bit insensitively self-serving? You didn’t give any warning in your title, and I can garauntee you that at least one person didn’t want to be side-swiped with yet another horribly racist comment today. Couldn’t you have congradulated yourself a bit more tactfully?

116

Pizzabrat, it’s the Pit, you moron. If your sensitivities are so delicate, don’t read the threads.

117

Pizzabrat is still a tin-eared idiot. It’s comforting, in a way, that some things can be counted upon.

118

What exactly is missing in your life, my boy? While I am sure that the Admins and Mods appreciate your confidence in their impact, I don’t think a message on a [/rules of courtesy] and [/earth shattering importance] wing of a message board counts as magnifying something “a million fold”. As for not wanting “to be side swiped with another horribly racist comment”, I didn’t particularly want to be “side swiped” by the whining of a hypersensitive oxygen thief who needs to seek professional help for their hyperbole addiction, but I fancy I’ll live and have no visible scars and barely remember the incident when again we meet (probably over a dinner of oyster chowder and Arbor Mist Mixed Fruit Zinfandel at the employee diner of a Mom & Pop Country Music & Mafia Wax Museum somewhere in upstate Michigan).

119

Fine, fine. I’m the hypersensitive idiot. But can you remind me what you’re applauding yourself for, again? And please, no one has to be “hypersensitive” to be shaken at the comfort you people have with putting down others.

120

And I’m not “whining” - I wasn’t really hurt by anything, I’m just pointing out the glaring hypocrisy of your methods. You come in here to praise yourself and your bretheren for completely ignoring a person who made a rude comment, all while repeating it verbatim. Then, in the middle of the thread, which had been viewed over a thousand times (no hyperbole there), you say, the “the comment died in the room”. I can’t be the only one who sees the disconnect there. If you really cared about what you pretend to be championing in your OP, you wouldn’t casually be spreading the sentiment around in public. According to this thread, you treat the whole “racism is bad” thing like some abstract, hypothetical ideal that can just be used to make yourself look good.

The pit is a place to state complaints. Is it impossible to state a complaint in a tactful, sensible manner?