I think I might be prejudiced against the US south

[Buddy Glass]

28 years in Georgia and counting.

[ahungbunny]

i'm kind of okay with this

it's like...i hope that people take the step beyond this reaction, because i believe that they could potentially be surprised, but i also think that we deserve to have this on us

we deserve to be asked to prove ourselves

Don't really think it's appropriate for a person raised by Jewish liberals to refer to The South with "we".

this actually kind of upset me. are you saying that because i wasn't raised southern baptist by intolerant parents, i can't have a southern identity?

i grew up liberal and jewish in mississippi, but i moved through the school system there and have loved and hated it the way many others have

i know you grew up in the south and that you left and probably never want to return, but you have to understand that it is possible for someone to want to stay

I wrote a nice long argument but then I realized I don't actually care and it's all semantics anyway but I didn't mean to upset you.

[universe]

Sordid should write a Southern version of Ulysses.

[universe]

Y'allysses

[ahungbunny]

I'm also a big fan of the monolithic crosses you see every half hour when driving through the Appalachians

[sordid affair]

Sordid should write a Southern version of Ulysses.

i think it's been done

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/magazine/how-william-faulkner-tackled-race-and-freed-the-south-from-itself.html?pagewanted=all

i mean i could probably do better, right?

[universe]

I've read Absalom, Absalom, and I get the comparison, but I meant specifically about a Jewish person in the midst of a strong, bounded culture.

[universe]

Also, thanks for that article.

[fox]

univers it's ok if you skipped that class in school

[universe]

I read it for pleasure!

[addison]

the south is just america exaggerated. we have a terrible country, folks.

[fox]

I agree, however that a sordid memoir would be enjoyable

A Good Loom is Hard to Find

[addison]

when i was 8 or 9 i patted a boy's ass at baseball practice, don't know why, probably saw someone do it once, and i was immediately met with a chorus of FAGGOTTTTT, but i didn't know what that even meant.

[addison]

my dad didn't let me hang out with those kids, i remember them finding chewing tobacco (maybe the coach's) and chewing it like it was a regular thing

[mites]

sordid why do you identify as a southern

[addison]

i'm guessing she was "popular" in high school

[sordid affair]

sordid why do you identify as a southern

because my whole extended family is from louisiana and i grew up in mississippi and then lived in florida, georgia, and north carolina, and i like it here

we could poke (and probably have poked) holes in every single place

this is just mine, and i'm happy to continue figuring it out

[addison]

so what you're saying is you love your family

i mean i don't get why anyone would question your liking the south, as if 99% of the U.S. isn't filled with ignorant bigoted xenophobes

[Grover]

I see more confederate flags when I go to visit my family in Ohio.

yeah, my family moved from cincy to the florida panhandle when i was 12 and when we moved back to cincy three years later i remember being so excited that i was going to be rid of the giant truck driving, confederate flag loving, tobacco chewing rednecks. on my first day at my new high school i saw a line of gigantic trucks with confederate flags all over them in the parking lot and got mercilessly picked on by their drivers until the day i moved away for college.

i really hated the south when i lived there. i got called yankee all of the time. i've told this story on the board before, but when we moved into our new house the neighbors showed up on our doorstep with a poundcake and a invitation for dinner. while we were eating dinner the father of the house asked me if i was a nigger lover. i looked at my dad in despair and he just shook his head. the two sons and the daughter who were close to me in age told everyone at school that me and my family were stuck up so i had a reputation as a stuck up yankee before the first day of classes. to make things easier on myself i got into punk, started skateboarding, and grew my hair out. what a horrible handful of years.

[Grover]

but sweet tea is fucking delicious waldo you are high.

[mites]

sordid why do you identify as a southern

because my whole extended family is from louisiana and i grew up in mississippi and then lived in florida, georgia, and north carolina, and i like it here

we could poke (and probably have poked) holes in every single place

this is just mine, and i'm happy to continue figuring it out

well I guess I meant more like what are the things that you think are a part of your personality, or lifestyle, or taste or whatever that you kind of think of as southern?

I'm just curious cause I don't really feel much of a region identity

[sordid affair]

mites: i can be really bad at articulating that, but some of it is as simple as liking the food and the languid porch-sitting

a lot of it is wanting to see the continuing unfolding of civil rights

i feel like there's often an assumption that identifying with a place (whether it's a region or a country, maybe not as dangerous when it's a city) is inherently defensive or apologetic or backwards

this is my thing: unless you want to declare yourself fully and uncompromisingly a Citizen of the World (which i'm not denying as a possibility), you are from a place, and that place probably has both wonderful and terrible tendencies

but being "from a place" means dealing with all of that

[waldojeffers1]

Do people really hold these opinions? When I travel and tell people that I live in North Carolina they dislike me solely for that reason?

I wouldn't dislike you for that, and I do know people from NC who I like

but I would probably be wary of discussing certain things. and if you turned out to be cool I would probably be like, "it's a shame he had to grow up in NC"

granted NC is a far cry from Alabama/Mississippi

[husbands]

I hear people say that charlottesville is a bubble of the north surrounded by the south

I like that I can get cheerwine, cheap gas, and cigs (though I don't smoke now), but I dislike that I can't wear my heavy winter coat more than a couple days a year

[waldojeffers1]

also yeah central PA sucks

but it's telling that the usual way we describe it is either "Pennsyltucky" or by saying that "Pennsylvania is Philly and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between"

[universe]

also yeah central PA sucks

but it's telling that the usual way we describe it is either "Pennsyltucky" or by saying that "Pennsylvania is Philly and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between"

It's telling in that it represents a Northern habit to disavow our own shortcomings by Other-ing aspects of our regional culture that we find distasteful rather than acknowledging our own faults.

[addison]

that the continuing unfolding of civil rights exists in the south is only apparently a good thing

[addison]

Do people really hold these opinions? When I travel and tell people that I live in North Carolina they dislike me solely for that reason?

I wouldn't dislike you for that, and I do know people from NC who I like

but I would probably be wary of discussing certain things. and if you turned out to be cool I would probably be like, "it's a shame he had to grow up in NC"

yeah, this is bullshit. and pretty disappointing coming from you.

[waldojeffers1]

yea

[addison]

i hope you're being sincere (and not, oh it's addison!), because that's some grade a bullshit, waldo. and you're like the last boarder i'd complain about.