Tuesday, April 27, 2010

The Red-Headed Stepchild

Why it is stylish to hate the South.
Are you puzzled and irritated by the  viciousness and falsity  of most of what is being published these days about the South and Southern history?   The beginning of all wisdom on this subject is to know that in American public discourse  and so-called scholarship there is usually no effort to understand the South, like any other human phenomenon, as it is.  Rather the South is raw material in a morality play about American, that is, about Northern righteousness.
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3 comments:

Julygirl said...

(The link to this post is broken), but having grown up in the South I also have a love/hate relationship with it, but still would have rather grown up there than anywhere else in the US other than the Maryland Chesapeake Bay area.

elena maria vidal said...

Thanks! It seems to be working now. You'll find the article interesting!

Julygirl said...

After reading some of the comments to this article I can agree that there is still much misguided thinking about the South...(1) Slavery was an AMERICAN thing, not just Southern. Southern whites hold no more guilt over slavery than the New England shippers who grew wealthy trading in slaves.
(2) The South does not have a monopoly on backwardness, high crime rate, low I.Q. or the worst literacy rates. Check out the statistics for these in our large midwestern cities, New England as well as areas of the Southwest and So. California. ALL of these are issues which we must resolve as Anericans not just Southerns.