Reflections on the Inglorious History of the South and Finding Belonging In The Places We Call Home
Come sit a spell, why don't ya?
Sunrise over the Blue Ridge Parkway, NC. PC: Author
written on the unceded territory of the Cheraw people, that is present day Greensboro, NC.
Belonging. It’s something I talk about a lot in this newsletter. It’s something we all seek. Belonging is often evasive, particularly when you’re going through formative experiences and you can’t see the person you’re growing into but the fragments of self you’re tripping over on your journey to find your already whole self.
I left for university without looking back when I was 18. I’m a very bad decision-maker, but when I know what I want, I commit to that decision without any reservation. Going to college(university) was like this for me. I knew with all of my heart I wanted to leave my home state of North Carolina, positioned on the Southeast coast of the United States. I didn’t care where I landed as long as I left.
I didn’t hate home; I simply believed with an inexplicable conviction that there was something more beyond the suburban town I had grown up in.
I left everything I had ever known for a place I had only been to twice. Philadelphia, on the northeast coast of the United States, was to be my new home. I thought it I was so glamorous. (Almost) one ever left North Carolina for college. I was a pioneer.
This pioneer quickly discovered that she was just as unknown to her fellow Philadelphians as Philadelphia was to her.
North Carolina? Is everyone just a racist there?
You don’t have an accent.
Did you grow up in the middle of nowhere?
What are grits?
Belonging. We all seek it. North Carolina was not going to be the sticking point if I was to belong in this new foreign place. Over the years, I flew home often, living in Philadelphia long enough that it felt like going home no matter which way I was flying.
I also took the train down to visit my godparents in Northern Virginia quite a few times.
It was magical.
I would take the Acela train from bustling 30th Street Station down to Washington D.C., shuttled across the sprawling Chesapeake Bay between these sprawling centers of metropolitan life that couldn’t be more different. 30th Street Station was warm and bright and had one of those shuffling time boards. Click click click click click, it would run, announcing that my train had been delayed by 10 minutes.
Union Station was grey and cold, and home to Einstein’s Bagel Co., my go-to haven amongst the massive throngs of people that were simply unavoidable. It was also home to a flock of pigeons that guarded the door I would walk through to board the VRE, the Virginia Railway Express.
The VRE was home to the lost souls D.C. had claimed, shuttling government workers, tour guides, and military personnel to their homes in Northern Virginia where they could say they lived, even though we all knew if anyone asked where they lived, they would each say, “D.C.,” in a resigned tone.
As I rode the VRE, I would feel a thrill as we pulled up to Arlington National Cemetery. No, I’m not morbid- because it was the first stop in Virginia.
I was home. I may not have been in North Carolina, but I was back in a state that served sweet tea and grits. Every time I made this trek to the barely South, I was closer to my roots than I had been in ages.
Full moon over Minnesott Beach, on the Neuse River. PC: Author
Southern Stereotypes
I understand where people get the wrong ideas from. A lot of things that exist in the South, but are no longer and/or never were uniquely southern(the Confederate flag was definitely once uniquely southern) and are symbols of White Christian Nationalism include:
Confederate flags
”Jesus saves” or “abortion is murder” signs
Christian fundamentalism (Note: not all Christian fundamentalism. Rather, the preachers that get in the pulpit and use religion to drive a white nationalist political agenda. A fun phenomenon most commonly found in Christian fundamentalism.)
Additionally, things that are not uniquely southern but are often stereotyped as what southern culture is- not that these things aren’t a part of southern culture, but there is more nuance- include:
Cowboy boots and hats
Country music
Trucks
Sports like mudding and huntin’ and shootin’
While the second list of things is definitely more likely to be found in the South as opposed to other regions of the country, southern culture has been largely adopted by people outside of the region over the last few decades. People all over the country own trucks, go hunting, listen to “country” music, and even wear cowboy boots and hats- a style choice that originated out of the need to find better shoes to wear while riding a horse.
The Ugly History of The South
There is no denying the South- like the rest of the country- has a scarred history. Southern food arose from Black culture while slavery was still ongoing. The South fought to keep slaves. The Jim Crow South- that was this region of the country. You can’t talk about what it means to be southern without acknowledging the ways Black people and people of color have been erased, terrorized, and marginalized throughout history.
It’s worth noting that a catalyst of Southern culture is the fact that we simply have fewer urban areas and more land. A lot of that land is passed down generationally. Actually, 98% of it. 98% of farmers are white. Whose land was that originally? Native land. Then, Black people worked that land to make white landowners rich. Now, white people still profit while people of color are othered, particularly in smaller towns.
This is less pronounced in larger cities, such as Atlanta, Charlotte, and Raleigh, or even in suburban areas like my town, Greensboro. Alternative theory: the marginalization just looks different.
We have a lot of work to do. We, as in humanity. We, as a country. We, as a region.
What is Southern culture, then?
I can’t answer this question for anyone but myself, which is why it was so hard to write this in the first place.
Panthertown Falls, NC. PC: Author
Being Southern Means…
Running into 4 different people your mom’s friend’s friend knows at Target and having to talk to all of them. It means Cookout and accents you can’t understand. Sundays sitting on the porch and getting weird looks when you say, “no thanks, I don’t like iced tea.” It’s Canada geese and kudzu and “fixin to” and “here to yonder” and Cackalacky.
Being southern means saying, “ bless your heart,” often, walking slowly to get places, and running into someone that knew your grandfather at a farmer’s market. It means directions are “caddy-corner to the church down to the road” or “a skip, hop, and a jump”. It’s deviled eggs, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, hush puppies, and a whole. damn. pig. It’s listening to “Wagon Wheel” by Darius Rucker and climbing in the cab of a trusty truck.
It’s that time I had a patient and from the second he opened his mouth, I asked, are you from Virginia? and he said yes, because of course he did, because I could hear my grandmother in that accent as loud as day.
It’s saying hi to EVERYONE you pass and the Blue Ridge mountains and App-uh-latch-un, not app-uh-laysh-un. Appalachian. It’s college rivalries and Ocracoke island and gettin’ bit by skeeters and humidity trying to choke the life out of you in April and slippin’ into a drawl when you drink too much or say a certain word or talk to the right people.
It’s crepe myrtles and magnolias and azaleas and family reunions and visiting the gravestones of all of the dead relatives because it’s what you do. It’s trying to reconcile a rapidly modernizing world with little culture islands that are rapidly being lost as generation after generation passes- and yet, and yet, knowing in your bones that this land claimed you the day you were born, so what could ever truly be lost?
Belonging. We all seek it. My great-grandfather came here, to North Carolina when my great-grandmother was heavily pregnant with my grandfather. In a tiny house in Carthage- being southern means a lifetime of tiny towns you’ve never heard of, no matter how much you drive around your state- with snow blowing in the window, my grandfather came into this world.
The people who only once dreamed of me in their caravan with 2 children, about to be 3, one day 7, are the reason I am here. This land claimed them, and it claims me too because it is not just where I am from- it is where the people I am from are from.
It is the place of my deepest belonging.
Reflection Questions
What lands claim you? Where do you feel at home?
My lands are Mi’kma’ki, Acadia, the Maritimes, Atlantic Canada. Specifically New Brunswick, but also Nova Scotia- my life has been lived in both, and I have deep attachments here. It’s funny when you talk about some features of the south, like driving big trucks and saying hi to everyone, both are mandatory here. The land is important, but so is the proximity to water. The ocean and the river shapes us, here on the edge of Turtle Island.