When I was younger, one of the worst things I could be as a southern child was noticeably southern. As a Black woman from the south, I found myself conditioned out of my southern drawl as early as elementary school. I was convinced that saying “ain’t” in a conversation could cost me a job. My mom would always say that I wasn’t “fixin” to do anything, but “going to.” Losing my connection to my home was a small price I had to pay in order to be successful later in life.
“You don’t have an accent” was a compliment. “You don’t sound like you’re from the South” was the mark of good home training and a respectable upbringing. Now that I’m older, I live with the constant inner struggle of feeling the need to code-switch in social and professional contexts, as if a twang or a drawl is the decider of my intelligence.
So when I moved to California to study marine biology, I wasn’t anticipating Californians to act like I’ve been saved. The most common response I got from telling people I’m from Texas was “I’m sorry,” as if I’d lost the geographic lottery. Those who are born and raised in California can’t fathom living outside of the Golden State, but tend to think less of southerners who have the same mindset about the places they call home.
It’s ironic that the South is stereotyped as a haven for the uneducated, because while California has a reputation of progressive values and great education, I’ve never met so many people who are so casually ignorant about systemic issues outside of their California bubble.
The more the South is treated as lesser than more affluent states, the more it reinforces the anti-intellectualism that is so prevalent in the South. No conservative southerner will want to progress or become educated when all of those pursuits are associated with people who look down on them.
Billionaire hedge funds and conservative think tanks funding genocide and engineering America’s backslide into fascism aren’t hillbillies from Tennessee. They originate from old-money families from the East Coast and legacy graduates from Ivy Leagues. Peter Thiel — the conservative billionaire who mentored J.D. Vance — went to Stanford. Vance himself went to Yale. The authors of Project 2025 all went to elite private universities, such as Harvard or Georgetown University, and have billions of dollars to invest in facism. And yet, old-money is romanticized as so-called “quiet luxury,” while southern life is considered rock bottom.
Having an honest conversation about the issues that exist in the South feels like I’m dishing out a free supply of ammunition. Instead of talking about these issues, the response I usually get is “yeah well, that’s Texas” from people who will probably never set foot in southern state lines.
Oftentimes, the issues that do exist in the South, such as the high rates of poverty, poor education and healthcare, are only brought up as a weapon against those who were born and raised in the southern states.
But now that we’re speeding into a recession and the price of almost everything has skyrocketed, it’s clear that there’s nothing funny about people being so utterly failed by their governments. It seems like people justify taking pleasure in the poverty of the South with the attitude that southern people “deserve it” since they voted for the Republican politicians who are responsible for it.
Truthfully, Republicans win in areas with high poverty and low education because they only have to win once. Once a conservative Republican is in office, they can ensure education stays underfunded, districts stay gerrymandered and southern people stay fearful of progression.
The culture and customs in the South are difficult to understand for people who have never lived there. Everyone knows about “southern hospitality,” but there’s a lot more context to southern politeness that many people often neglect.
Southern communities place a lot more emphasis on collectivism than other regions in the United States. Much of the South’s economy relies on agriculture, creating tight-knit farming communities. Most southern states lie in Tornado Alley or in hurricane prone regions, with some states, such as Louisiana, Florida, Texas and the Carolinas, being at risk for both.
It’s impossible to live without trust in the local community when your entire home and livelihood could be destroyed within one hour in November. This idea is even more prevalent in southern Black communities, where being strong and unified was the only way many had a chance of surviving through slavery and the era of Jim Crow.
The South tends to have a strong culture of self-reliance, not only because of the shame associated with needing government assistance, but in response to a long history of being failed by their government in times of crisis. From the devastation in New Orleans after Katrina, to half of Texas losing power during a winter storm in 2021, southern self-reliance is not just a matter of pride, it’s a matter of survival.
Texans have a reputation for having strong state pride, with a history unlike any other state. Standing as a sovereign nation for eight years before being annexed by the U.S. in 1845, not only does Texas subscribe to the southern culture of self-reliance, they have the history to back it up.
This culture of self-reliance and strong state pride creates the perfect breeding ground for the anti-intellectualism that permeates many southern states. Many southern communities often associate higher education with elitism and condescension. The rich Ivy League graduates — the ones who write you off as soon as they hear your accent or make fun of the poverty in the South — talk about southern states like they’re a separate country. Republican politicians often weaponize classism against the South by associating higher education and progressive policies with this idea of a shadowy “elite” who wants to exploit southern people they don’t even respect.
When you make a joke out of the institutional problems that permeate the South, it isn’t done out of concern for inequality; it’s just an easy justification for your superiority complex. You’re only comfortable talking about institutional problems in the South because you’ve convinced yourself that this can’t happen to you. The disdain for southern people just further proves that people would much rather blame problems on those of lower class standing, rather than the billionaires who created and financed the problem in the first place.
Believing that southern states are incapable of change is the very logic that keeps Republican policies in office. When you shrug your shoulders at the lack of civil rights and think “that’s just what goes on down there,” you are buying into the same ideas of the Confederacy. By claiming that the South is irredeemably bigoted, you are rejecting the idea that it could be anything else. You are falling into the belief system that people and institutions cannot change. You can’t claim to be against systems of bigotry if you don’t think they can be fought.
To me, southern culture is about the folk music of the Appalachian mountains, the jazz of the Louisiana French Quarter. It’s about soul food and sweet tea at family barbecues, football tailgates, lightning bugs in the fall, snow cones and the buzz of cicadas in the summer. The South is so much more than its painful history and seemingly endless struggles for equality.
Fascism relies on the belief that working towards change is futile. By accepting the idea that Republicans will always win in the South, rural counties will always be red and marginalized communities will never be safe, you are doing the very thing Republicans want.
In order for southern states to truly progress, we need to let go of the Antebellum idea that the south exists separately from America, and that southern people are illegitimate actors within the broader national landscape.
Every time someone conflates racism with southern culture, a Confederate gets its Klan hood. Every time someone casts the South aside, they are dismissing the generations of work done by marginalized groups who fought for equality in their communities.
America is flavorless without the seasoning of southern culture. But bless your heart, what would y’all know about that?
