It seems every time there’s a discussion about the Confederate flag, someone will defend its use by saying it’s a symbol of “Southern pride.”
But Southern pride makes no sense to me. I don’t feel any Northern pride. I don’t know anyone who carries or displays a symbol of their Northern-ness.
To me it’s like me having pride I wear a size 11 shoe, or having pride that my wisdom teeth fit, or having pride that my parents were really poor when I was born.
What has it to do with me? Those of you who have Southern pride, what has it to do with you?
Hey there. Don’t lump us all in with the colors-waving yahoos. I’m very proud of my Southern heritage, and I think the Confederate flag ought to be put away for good.
But yeah, we value our heritage, if for no other reason than a lot of us are descended from the Scots-Irish that settled the South 400 years ago. Those are a prideful people.
My family has been in the Southern U.S. for literally 400 years until I somehow got sucked into moving away. There is a distinct Southern culture, several of them actually, and that is most of the explanation. If I drive from Boston into Virgina and beyond, I still feel a sigh of relief as I pass below Northern Virgina and I haven’t lived in the South for 13 years. It is like a Lite version of a different country excluding some very big exceptions. The people are generally very nice, the black influence increases dramatically, the food is different and usually great, and it generally gets hot as hell in the summer. The South has held a long-term lock on national politics for quite some time as well mainly because Southerners talk politics more than other parts of the country in my experience.
There is also a strong Irish, Scots Irish, and English influence in most of the South. The history of that leads us straight to a visible minority Redneck subculture in many places. That created a bold, blue collar, and hard drinking subculture who are generally rough around the edges but also fiercely proud of who the are. A lot of people in the South do still fight the Civil War in their heads, historical artifacts, and symbolism. That doesn’t include most people however.
In summary, the South has a lot to offer and the native population is proud of who they are, where they live, and their traditions. That is partially why so many people from other parts of the country are flocking to it.
There is a lot to be proud of the Confederacy for. Is a hero still a hero if what they stand for is morally corrupt? For everyone fighting in the Civil War, or most atleast, they grew up with slavery as a way of life. Yes, slavery is bad. But they fought and died for what they perceived as a direct threat of their freedom and the democracy the country had stood for. They fought with inferior supplies, infrastructure, clothing - everything. Yes, they were fighting for the freedom to take other peoples freedom, it’s easier to see that today. But General Pickett, General Lee, JEB Stuart, John Davis - there are memorials for these people for a reason.
That covers pride in the Confederacy. Pride in the South is for other reasons. Believe it or not, the South has culture. Tremendous culture. Food, traditions, morals, ways of life. A lot of people are proud of what they know and this obviously extends to the South.
That’s true. There’s not one single Southern culture. I grew up on the fringes of the South. Way out in West Texas, I never got a sense that people thought of themselves as Southerners. (Just trailer-trash Texans.) And we made regular and frequent trips to small-town northwestern Arkansas to visit my grandparents. There, too, I never got the sense of “Southern,” even though you did see the Confederate flag more often than in West Texas, where I can’t recall ever having seen it. In Arkansas, “hillbilly” culture seemed to be played up, mostly for the tourists, I suspect.
I suspect that what people think of when they hear about “Southern pride” is a small core area in the deep South, which ignores the diversity of the region.
As a native Southerner who has lived in the North, I think you guys have it, too, just in different guises. Michiganders are proud to be Michiganders, etc. It just isn’t as big a region as the South.
IANA Southerner but I lived in the South for a good part of my life, so I’ll take a shot.
The South (the real South, that is) is full of traditions - besides segregation - that go back to the earliest settlers. Granted, a lot of those traditions can also be found in other places, but Southerners like to believe they still live the traditions. It’s a whole Gone With the Wind thing.
Plus, there’s the unfortunate stereotype that people from other parts of the country may consider the slow-talking, easy-going Southerners to be little more than idiots.
Put the two together, and have some damn Yankee start talking about the Confederate flag and you can see why some people are going to be defensive.
The thing I don’t understand is why, when the south has centuries of history to look back on, “southern heritage” always seems to be about just five years.
I mean, I could easily say that Nazis of Germany were fighting for their freedom and the values of their country, and that the pisky Jews-burning-in-the-oven-stuff was just a forgettable downside. Should the Germans build memorials to Nazi generals to honor that history? Does everything in history have to be honored?
I know you aren’t belittling slavery. But when I drive down Monument Ave, which is a few miles worth of Confederate memorial, it’s hard not to think that Virginians as a group really would like us to think of the Confederacy as a heroic movement rather than something we should leave in the history books.
Agreed. These are all things you aren’t responsible for, and which you have no control over. So why would you be proud of them?
I doubt you’re going to get an answer to your question that makes any sense. People who are “proud” of their country or the local sports team or their state or whatever don’t understand that kind of question. In my experience, people who are all hepped up on those things have very little experience of anything different. It’s a kind of “us/them” mentality, a way of feeling better than other people. Otherwise, why would the feeling be described as “pride?”
The things I take pride in are the things I’m responsible for, my own accomplishments. I don’t understand regional or national pride at all.
Yeah, five years of getting their asses handed to them on a plate. You’d think they’d want to concentrate on something else. The problem is that only other thing they really have is a quite successful agrarian economy, only that was built with slave labor so that’s kind of out.
I guess I see your point. I’m thinking more along the lines of Hollywood Cemetery, because Monument Ave creeps me the fuck out, too. The difference is the Nazis declared Jews sucked and tried to kill them all, while slaves were the basis of the Southern economic system and without them, the South had no economy - they were boned. So their fight wasn’t only whether slavery is right, but was more of a struggle to maintain their way of life. Which is short sighted and dumb, in retrospect, but at the time it was a cause worth fighting for.
For the record, I’m not proud of those men. I think they were heroes for their cause, but I see no need to celebrate them. I’m merely saying I can see how some people might choose to, such as building giant creepy statues of 'um and naming bridges after them.
I think the problem is the people who are most vocal about being proud of their Southern heritage and the people who actually know what the South has to be proud about are two distinct, non-overlapping sets.
Southern music anyone? Rock and roll, jazz, gospel, blues, country–most if not all of American roots music–springs out of the beautiful amalgeam of African, Irish, and Scottish sounds that germinated in the South.
Southern food is also nothing to poo-poo. As well as Southern literature and folk art.
You don’t have to go back to the Civil War and slavery to find plenty of shitty things about the South. From the KKK to Jim Crow to George Wallace to David Duke… Not to mention the southern states (I’m looking at you, Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana) that are the traditional bottom feeders among states in terms of social welfare statistics.
