stunt_muppet

::nodnod:: Especially when so many of the problems with small-town and/or Southern culture are getting better. IDK, it's like looking at a smartass, dipshit teenager and thinking "They'll never amount to anything." It's an easy judgment to make, but how many of the people making that judgment used to be that teenager?

And idk, maybe Savannah is different, but when I look at Southern culture today I see a culture which arises from a mingling of races, not the segregation of them; African-Americans are a vital component of society down here. Continually presenting the Single Story of the "backwards white country folk" isn't just condemning them (the people who traditionally have privilege,) it's erasing an entire race. In some cases, people who criticize the South are perpetuating racism far more dangerously and insidiously than Southerners do.


And, hey, if they want to trot out the old chestnut that Southerners are still bitter about the "War of Northern Aggression," consider that the war and Reconstruction devastated the economy. Widespread poverty NEVER helps race relations, and it certainly isn't going to help a group of people recover from being forced to work for generations for no pay. I'm not saying the Union was wholly to blame, but neither was the Confederacy. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a clusterfuck from beginning to end, and things STILL aren't where they need to be. Isn't it possible that the people still "stuck" in the South have a better view of how far we have yet to go?




UMMMM OK I JUST VOMITED CIVIL RAGE ALL OVER YOUR JOURNAL. I'M SO SORRY. D: