Dixie Risen? A Look Back at the South in the Modern American Mind

Dixie Risen?

A Look Back at the South in the Modern American Mind

BBQ Song

Moving from North Carolina to Kansas revealed my unexplored Southerness

This was not good. Midwesterners had negative feelings about the South, but they liked to hear me say “y’all”

LSU seemed to be the place to explore this, way behind the Magnolia Curtain

Pete Shortridge had conducted a national survey about the Mid-West, I aped that survey with one about the Deep South at LSU

Peter Applebome’s 1996 book, Dixie Rising…spurred the survey and subsequent number crunching at UNCW

A nation-wide captive audience of freshmen Geography students were shamelessly used

John Shelton Reed, Professor of Sociology at UNC, inveterate South watcher, egged me on

Fred Kniffen, Cultural Geography at LSU, ditto

Colleagues, friends or professors in 37 states who had never heard of me, graciously took class time from their students to answer the survey questions and draw the Deep South on a map

Aided and abetted by Harry Smith, UNCW Mathematics, who wrote code so I could analyze the graphic part of the survey, I scanned a sample of the thousands received

The idea was to make sample composites of the perceived location of the Deep South from other regions

The intriguing thing about Pete’s work was that the Midwest moved, depending on who drew it.

The location of the Deep South was not as hard to pin down as the Midwest had been for Pete, although some students included Southern California and Arizona!

Two of Pete’s maps

Nearly universal confusion reigned between the South and the Deep South

The South is Dixie

The Deep South IS the domain of kudzu, cotton, Bubbas, Baptists, and bugs, and is a sub-region of Dixie

The survey respondents perceived the South and the Deep South (basically undifferentiated) as the domain of racists, heat and humidity, obesity, incest, willful ignorance, the radical right, and bugs

South

Deep South

Dixie, Wiki

Not the best idea I ever had

My image of the South had been mostly positive before moving to Kansas

(Glib photo montage)

Friendliness

Fashion

Food

World’s largest frying pan, Rose Hill, NC

Fishing

Agriculture

Religion

Lost Cause

Music

Wilber Zelinsky, John Shelton Reed, and other South watchers had explored the South using digital phone books.

I aped that too

There’s a lot of Dixie and a lot of Bubba in Texas, but is it the Deep South?

Back to the survey

The responses were put into categories:

Nationally, the survey showed…

Alarmingly, many of the respondents listed negative characteristics

The number one Deep Southern negative characteristic was racism

1940s, Tarboro, NC

1950s

1990s, Knoxville, TN

1991, Charleston, SC

1993, Greensboro, NC

1993, Wilmington, NC

1993, Wilmington, NC

Back to the survey

Although, heat, humidity, bugs appeared nearly as often.

I toyed with names for the article from the responses:

Bubba, Baptists, Bugs, and Bass

Rednecks, White Trash, and Blue Laws

Gump, Grits, and Guns

Hogs, Humidity, Hospitality, and Jesse Helms

There were also a lot of references to ignorance and in-breeding

Poverty, obesity, mosquitoes, cock roaches, pot holes, road kill, okra, and chitlins were also mentioned.

Very few remarked on Applebome’s notion that the South was leading the nation politically, spiritually or economically.

A sample of comments:

The South is backwards, a lot of crazy Republicans and very religious people.

It’s hot and the people are very slow,

physically and mentally.

Not much high culture or value of education.

Narrow mindedness and refusal to accept change.

All that kindness of strangers crap, lots of rebellious bastards still resentful that they lost the Civil War.

Deliverance: My conceptions of the South come mostly from the media. There’s no way in hell I would ever go there.

KEEP PADDLING,

I HEAR BANJOES!

Finally, from Montana:

I lived in Tennessee and Kentucky, so I know. But when the South is brought up, most people think it’s full of rednecks and racists. One asked me if we had cars there, assuming that I rode a horse or tractor to school. They also think people date their relatives. My personal thought is that it’s very scenic and beautiful.

Results and Conclusion:Nothing conclusive

However, perceptions of the South, Deep or extended, are strong. Positive within the region, and usually negative from outside.

And, the South is most interesting to Southerners.

We’re fascinated with us!

I forgot to mention Yankees!