# Why don't people like the south? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 18, 2017, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010 "2017-11-18T18:48:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/141 "2017-11-21T14:36:40Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > A damn yankee is anyone who moved down south after you did. Of course that’s everywhere. “A conservationist is a guy who built his cabin in the mountains last year.” etc. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/142 "2017-11-21T15:13:21Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > People don’t like the south because of Southerners. Up north here we don’t call ourselves Northerners, we just call ourselves Americans. That pretty much sums up the problem. Well said. I’m another who doesn’t like The South. The hot climate, the slow culture, and with the exception of a brief stay in Louisiana, the memories of time I’ve spent there with family and for work. The place is just not for me and so I don’t go there. ---
**Author:** ![Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Living_Well_Is_Best_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/143 "2017-11-21T18:00:02Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > and good universitys. Um ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/144 "2017-11-21T18:02:13Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > I grew up in California. > > We were all waiting for the Big One when the rest of the US would slide into the Atlantic and we’d have oceanfront land on both sides. 😃 To quote a notable sage: > [@Warren Zevon](#): > > And if California slides into the ocean > like the mystics and statistics say it will, > I predict this hotel will be standing > until I pay my bill. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/145 "2017-11-21T18:03:46Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > and good universitys. > [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](#): > > Um She meant collages. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/146 "2017-11-22T16:59:28Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > Well, we kinda HAD TO, didn’t we? It’s not like the heroes of the southern civil rights activism were going to come out of Vermont. > > Also, not sure we deserve credit for creating the heroes of the uprising against the very civil rights abuses that we created in the first place. Just a thought, but South Africans are pretty proud of Nelson Mandela, and that would be the same sort of thing, wouldn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/147 "2017-11-23T01:58:56Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Just a thought, but South Africans are pretty proud of Nelson Mandela, and that would be the same sort of thing, wouldn’t it? Is your average southerner proud of MLK or Rosa Parks? My in-laws, born and raised in the deep south, certainly were not. They had nothing good to say about either of them, nor anyone else who disrupted their southern way of life, not fellow southerners nor those ‘damn yankees’ who came down to agitate and freedom march. They were of upper middle class background for generations, and were proud that their ancestors had enough money to own slaves, and loved to recount stories of their grandfathers who were dedicated members of the Klan. They did not consider blacks to be fellow southerners, either. While black southerners may hold MLK and the like in high esteem, it’s been my lifelong impression that your average white southerner did not. The south is a lovely place, and I’ve met a lot of nice individuals there. I enjoy visiting. I also keep my mouth shut about national social issues there; a lot more firmly shut than I do up north. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/148 "2017-11-23T02:25:00Z")
Keep in mind that Maryland and New Jersey were slave states until the 13th amendment. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/149 "2017-11-23T02:55:51Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Keep in mind that Maryland and New Jersey were slave states until the 13th amendment. That’s good to know but what’s your point? Did you know NJ abolished the slave trade in 1804. Do you know how many slaves were left in NJ by 1860? It was [under 1000](https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1860a-10.pdf) and in 1865 the 13th amendment freed all 16 of the remaining slaves in NJ. Though that is not 100% accurate as some stayed effectively slaves due to apprenticeships. NJ had a shitty record with the KKK and the stupid German Bunds mostly in rural NW Jersey. This was in the period between \*Birth of the Nation \*and WWII. But overall New Jersey was Union in 1865, and here is a shock; those that supported civil rights actually outnumbered those opposed by the 1960s. Your post is hard to read in a good light, what was your point? Or are you repeating some tidbit a pro-confederate uncle said years ago? ETA: Seriously, this is bothering me. **carnivorousplant** , I’ve known you the entire time I’ve been on this board and like your postings. I hope I am completely misunderstanding your post. ---
**Author:** ![Lickety\_Split\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/67e7ee/32.png) [@Lickety\_Split\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lickety_Split_1)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/150 "2017-11-23T03:04:12Z")
> [@CastletonSnob](#): > > You don’t hear southerners talking about how much they dislike northerners. Actually I DO hear southerners speaking ill of Northern “Yankees” all the time, since I live in a large Southern city that has tripled in population over the past three decades. And the vast majority of our unwanted and unneeded immigrants have been from North of the Mason-Dixon Line. LOL. That said, ignorant people who really know little about the South will sometimes badmouth its denizens due to the fact they are gullible to ancient and archaic stereotypes, since that is easier for them to do than it is to actually do the research so they can discover otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/151 "2017-11-23T03:17:53Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Who’s “we”? Are you telling me that black Southerners can’t feel pride in Rosa Parks, that the local NAACP chapters and CORE and SCLC folks don’t get to take credit for one of the most successful nonviolent social movements in the history of our species? Or are you saying sure, but they’re not real Southerners? Or are you saying that credit or blame for individuals should be apportioned along racial lines? Or are you saying something else? > > From a mile away, what you’re saying looks reasonable; but when you zoom in, I think it betrays exactly the sort of unpleasant assumptions that plague so much analysis of our country, assumptions rooted in a white supremacist narrative. I’m kinda with **HMS** on this one. It’s not that MLK wasn’t a “real” Southerner or anything. It’s just that, well, you listed bad people who came from the South, and they were all racists. Then you listed good people from the South, and they were all people who were admired first and foremost for… resisting the endemic racism of the region. It’s a really good rebuttal against the argument, “Everyone from the South is an asshole,” but it’s not doing wonders for, “The South is kind of a shit-hole in general.” ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/152 "2017-11-23T03:35:11Z")
> [@Lickety\_Split](#): > > Actually I DO hear southerners speaking ill of Northern “Yankees” all the time, since I live in a large Southern city that has tripled in population over the past three decades. And the vast majority of our unwanted and unneeded immigrants have been from North of the Mason-Dixon Line. LOL. It’s not necessarily a southern thing. Some states like college football; the state sport of Nevada and Oregon is shit-talking about Californians. Probably Arizona, too. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/153 "2017-11-23T04:31:40Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I’m kinda with **HMS** on this one. It’s not that MLK wasn’t a “real” Southerner or anything. It’s just that, well, you listed bad people who came from the South, and they were all racists. Then you listed good people from the South, and they were all people who were admired first and foremost for… resisting the endemic racism of the region. > > It’s a really good rebuttal against the argument, “Everyone from the South is an asshole,” but it’s not doing wonders for, “The South is kind of a shit-hole in general.” Is our culture all kinds of fucked? Yes, yes it is. But it also produces heroes, is what I’m saying–and I’m pretty convinced that the South will fix its culture **in part** by recognizing and lauding our homegrown heroes. Folks from outside the region who treat the heroes as something apart from the South do Southern culture no favors, inasmuch as they feed the white supremacist narrative. The reason I listed those particular folk on both sides is because racism is the #1 fuckery in our culture. I could list other folks as well, but they wouldn’t be relevant to the point at hand. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/154 "2017-11-23T06:38:17Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I’m kinda with **HMS** on this one. It’s not that MLK wasn’t a “real” Southerner or anything. It’s just that, well, you listed bad people who came from the South, and they were all racists. Then you listed good people from the South, and they were all people who were admired first and foremost for… resisting the endemic racism of the region. Well, Bessie Smith was a singer, but what about Louis Armstrong, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote? Heck, Michael Dell. Jack Kilby, the guy who invented the integrated circuit. The frustrating thing when people think and talk about the south is that it’s always about slavery, the Civil War, and segregation. Slavery, the Civil War, and segregation happened, and it’s wrong to ignore that they happened and that their legacies still have an impact. But it’s equally wrong to assume that those are and were the only things that happened in the South. People think of the South and they think of ignorant hick racists. But the South has produced literature and art. Jazz, the Blues, Rock and Roll: all have southern roots. There are Southern schools among the best in the country… the UNC system, Virginia Tech, Rice, Emory. The “Silicon Prairie” near Dallas is one of the leading centers of electronics and computer research in the world. Huntsville, Alabama was a center for missile and rocketry work in the 1940s and 1950s, and now is a major biotechnology center. How come nobody thinks of that stuff when they think about the South? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/155 "2017-11-23T06:41:33Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > Is your average southerner proud of MLK or Rosa Parks? My in-laws, born and raised in the deep south, certainly were not. They had nothing good to say about either of them, nor anyone else who disrupted their southern way of life, not fellow southerners nor those ‘damn yankees’ who came down to agitate and freedom march. How old are your inlaws? Because there’s definitely generational differences in attitudes. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/156 "2017-11-23T13:22:06Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > How come nobody thinks of that stuff when they think about the South? Because so many Southerners have chosen to wrap up their Southern identity with the Confederacy and white supremacist symbolism. ---
**Author:** ![ZonexandScout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zonexandscout/32/544_2.png) [@ZonexandScout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZonexandScout)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/157 "2017-11-23T14:12:25Z")
I’m going to defer to my wife, who retired from CT and moved here to NC about ten years ago. (Disclaimer: I’m from CT myself, but I’ve been down here almost 40 years and have a huge set of native-NC in-laws.) She says: 1. Many people are so friendly, saying “Hi!” (actually, many of them say “Hey!”) when they walk by, even if they have no idea who you are. YMMV, depending on where you are and what you look like, I’m sure. 2. She looks around in the grocery store at 10:00P and sees that we are the only white people there. Not at all unusual, except that this was never the case in her CT township. 3. Guns. I don’t have to say much about this. It’s just the culture, and a huge contrast to CT. 4. In our area of NC, there are still four distinct seasons. She loves the weather and the relative lack of snow. She doesn’t like the fact that there are so few snowplows when it does snow. 5. Very few insects, but some huge roaches and beetles. The various flies and mosquitoes were a much bigger problem in CT. 6. She was surprised at the number of concerts, shows, and museums. Of course, they can’t touch NY or some other areas, but she thought she would have to make do with Mule Days and the Hollerin’ Contest. Her biggest complaint? Pine pollen. Can’t leave the windows open until the first big rain after pollen season. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/158 "2017-11-23T15:01:00Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Because so many Southerners have chosen to wrap up their Southern identity with the Confederacy and white supremacist symbolism. How much time do you think the average Southerner actually spends thinking about the Confederacy and white supremacy? I’m a Civil War buff who used Jefferson Davis Highway and whose opthamologist was across the street from Robert E. Lee’s boyhood home, and even I didn’t spend much time thinking about it. The amount of people who seriously care about this issue on either side is minimal. ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/159 "2017-11-23T15:10:43Z")
Then why not proactively remove those statues or rename those buildings when people point out that they were put up to remind Negroes in the age of Jim Crow that the Confederacy was still revered in that town? You know, if it’s so unimportant to Southern Identity? ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010/160 "2017-11-23T15:13:38Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > How old are your inlaws? Because there’s definitely generational differences in attitudes. They were born in the early 1930’s. But I’ve heard my wife’s cousins (who were born and raised in the south, unlike my wife and her sibs) say the same sort of things. That generation was born in the late 50’s and 60’s. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-people-like-the-south/802010.md?page=9)