Southern Pride?
April 9th, 2004 at 08:15 pm in RandomMy good friend Caitlin sent me a survey the other day about Southernism and asked if I would fill it out for her. But I figured I could do more then that for her, so I’ve posted the survey here for all to take. Just download the or jot down the questions and e-mail your answers back to me: Shyzer AT shyzer DOT com. Include your name and where you live so that I can compile the results I get into an e-mail back to Caitlin.
I’m sure she’d appreciate as many people taking the survey as possible, so if you’ve got just a few minutes of free time, please do. Thanks everybody.
Elisha http://robot-trouble.com/elisha
I’d fill it out but I don’t think I’m southern. I mean, I’m living in Missouri, but I am definitely not FROM Missouri.
Shipman
What were your answers?
Goob http://www.shyzer.com
Elisha, fill it out! You don’t have to be from the South to take it =) And Shipman, I have yet to fill it out completely. There is still one question that I am mulling over…
Angel http://www.temporary-sanity.com
I’m with Elisha, I may be in the South now, but I don’t have the Southern mentality. But, MO is not part of the south, it’s the Midwest. Anyway, living in the capital of the Confederacy I have a pretty low opinion of true Southerners. I am sick of seeing their damn flag, I thought it was customary to take down your flag after you lost the war. I mean these people re-create battles from a war they lost. It’s one thing id they’d won, but you LOST, move on! And Southern hospitality, what the hell is that? I am greeted by my servers with a blank stare and a shoulder shrug. No one smiles or holds doors. Kansas may be full of backward hicks, but atleast we have manners…..I will step down from my soapbox now.
Caitlin
this is why i’m sending the survey..the more people with the more ideas, the better…but to be honest so far i’ve gotten basically the same thing from every southerner that’s written back
Goob http://www.shyzer.com
Well hopefully the answers I send ya will be a little different…when do you want me to send them all to you anyways?
Shipman
Richmond is hardly the Southern city it once was. A few statues of Gen Lee does not a Southern city make. The flag is another thing. I don’t mind it so much in and of itself, but I think as a cultural symbol it has been far too abused by its so-called defenders even more so than those who hang it up beside a Nazi banner and burn it. Ever since rednecks and good ol boys took over in the 20s or so, this is the way it’s been. Huey P. Long and race politics (our venerable ex-old man included) were the beginning of the end. I’m glad to be a Southerner myself, but I’m ashamed to see the excuses we have made for ourselves and our general lack of sense/self respect in our dealings with America. I mean, I understand the old prejudices, and I still have some of them for better or worse–I know that they don’t apply to every case, and they’re not limited to just blacks–but that’s not grounds for passing laws saying a black man cannot share the same side of a restaurant with me. I believe that the slaves were freed in a bad manner and for the most part became political pawns/free votes for Republicans for many years. But how many rednecks or crackers were ready to govern themselves either? We’ve been lazy about adjusting after the war. Maybe it set us back 100 years, but we’re upset over the fever rather than the infection. Now that we’re cured of slavery, a lot of us haven’t wanted to move on, so they think plastering flags all over everything somehow shows them for true Southerners. If they had any sense of decency, they’d know that vulgarizing something behind which many good and brave men and boys died for their homes, for which many good wives, mothers and sisters lost their men, and for which the South suffered so much is no way of honoring the dead. They’d rather do this and fantasize about a free South than get to the actual work of building up our lost inheritance. Maybe one day South Carolina will see fit to separate itself from the Union again, which I still believe is perfectly legal, but which isn’t always wise and which more often than not is nothing more than demagoguery–like what Nietzsche thought of nationalists and W. B. Yeats thought of the Irish Nationalists, just a mean, base crowd not fit to decide the values of a society, who lack any idea of what culture is, and who should probably never have been invited into the political process.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to run so long, but I like soap boxes too. Feel free to delete it.
Goob http://www.shyzer.com
So long as it’s thought out, nothing gets deleted here Shipman