The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Scott:

MK and Bill: For the record, I too am from the South. I grew up in Florida and Georgia, and have spent about half of my adult life in Texas (the other half was spent overseas).

MK: I probably took your remarks badly for precisely the reason Joy suggested—-it is very easy for liberals to feel ostracized in the South, and all that red state – blue state nonsense just worsened our sense of isolation. Moreover, Texas1, with the notable exception of Barbara Bush, has demonstrated the inadequacy of the stereotype by opening its arms to the folks from NO. Many are here in Austin, where the city’s response to them has reminded me of why I so love this place. For example: At about midnight on a Friday a week or two ago, a public service announcement crawled across the bottom of my TV screen. The Red Cross was asking for volunteers to help prepare the Convention Center for another group of several hundred people who were going to be arriving NO at 5 a.m. I spent about 20 minutes debating whether to shuck off my exhaustion and go help, then had my mind made up for me when another PSA made its way across the screen. It said, in effect, “Don’t come. We only needed 100 people and 400 have already turned up. Thanks.”

Patrick: My first reaction to your post was that you were right that there were worse kinds of Othering, and that I had succumbed to hyperbole. Now I'm less sure. Discourse fosters the mindsets that allow for really terrible actions. Pace. I'm not suggesting that I expect Mary Kay to start hunting her Southern kin, but discourse does play a significant role in creating and perpetuating cultures.

1 Yes, Texas is not really “the South.” It has a number of distinctive regions, and perhaps only East Texas can really be called “Southern.” But it does seem to get lumped in with the rest of the South in the national (and international) imagination.

Mary Kay,

I've enjoyed lurking here for some time, but your post requires a response because it's all too typical of "progressive" America's response to the South. Admittedly, the South is home to many racists. Unfortunately, so is the rest of the United States. Generalizations of the sort in your post are the worst kind of Othering. They posit a reified South that is White, homogeneous, and "nggr hating," thereby turning it into a convenient dumping ground for all the uncomfortable beliefs and behaviors that taint the rest of the nation as well. They let people say, "It's them, not us. We're not like that." But isn't that precisely what racists do to people of other ethnicities? Isn’t that precisely what you are accusing this supposedly homogeneous South of doing to people of color?

Understand that I am not excusing the despicable behavior of the authorities in Gretna. Not at all. I'm just pointing out that blanket generalizations about "the South" take us nowhere.

SW

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