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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] How to judge history, was Obama and religion
  • Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:37:45 EDT

Now as an unmitigated, unabated, unreconstruted Southerner (American by birth
and Southern by the grace of God), hewed from the very rock and digged from
the very pit ..... let me try to afford you a glimpse .....

Southerners, especially rural Southerners are the only free game left in the
world. Any sort of belittlement, stereo-type, or prejudice is fair game
toward Southerners when it would bring about rended garments and gnashing of
teeth
if applied to anyone else.

I wish people would listen to themselves sometimes, "The one thing I can't
tolerate is these intolerant Southerners." Eh? On blogger I was following
came to conference on world peace and mutual acceptance in Ashville. On
returning she posted pictures of some good ol' boys in a pickup and said in
her blog,
"These are the sort of people that keep us from having mutual acceptance in
the world!" Eh?

Cultures are subtle things, those in a culture are often no more aware of how
it works than they are aware of how their stomach digests food, but if it is
befouled, it affects them about the same way.

For example, if you were at the home of a Muslim friend and you reached to
take the proffered food or drink with your left hand, you wouldn't think a
thing
of it. But in Muslim culture it is a serious affront. No amount of
explanation can do away with the disgust it would create, even if understood
and
"tolerated".

The most idiotic thing I have to put up with in trying to explain this is
that people of other cultures will say, "Oh we do that too ... that's nothing
unique to the South", as if our culture doesn't exist at all. But that's a
bright mistake for anyone to make if they sojourn here.

Speech here is indirect. Directness is an affront. Someone visiting from
Ireland (with a similar indirectness) told how he was visiting an
acquaintence
in the North and when his host offered him a cup of tea, he said, "No thank
you" and was a bit shocked that he didn't get any tea! In the less-indirect
cultures, 'no' means 'no'. Not here. No might mean no but it might not.
You
have to know the difference.

If someone sells you something or you are paying them for work, you have to
offer them the money in a way that does not require them to look at it. To
fail to do so means you are displeased with them.

A fellow I knew well moved down here from upstate NY, and when he was first
here we had to got to the parking lot and separate him and the truck driver
whose rig was backed up to the loading dock. The Northerner had asked him if
he
would move the truck so another one could leave. The Southern truck driver
had replied "I don't care to." Words were forthcoming and it was with the
greatest difficulty we convinced the Northerner that "I don't care to" means
"I
don't mind doing it."

I could go on for volumes. When the Northerner speaks crisply and quickly,
it falls on Southern ears as someone who is angry and impatient. When the
Southerner lingers over the melody of the language, it falls on the Northern
ears
as someone who is dull or deceptive. The one cannot gainsay the viceral
reaction the other induces.

None of that is a problem, people are different and cultures are different.
But in the case of Southerners, it is perfectly PC to be pejorative in one's
conclusions and defend that position to the death. Once in an internet
discussion someone said they knew for a fact that Southern white men were
bigoted and
prejudiced against blacks. As a proof of this, she cited that in visiting a
constrution site, the white foreman had refered to a black worker as "boy."

I explained that in the South men of all ages refer to each other as 'boy'.
That very day I had pulled up to the rural convenience store and filled the
van with gas. When I went into store, as white as the day is long and
positively patriarchal in my appearance, the young man at the counter
jestured toward
me and told the cashier, "I'll pull up to the pump just as soon as this boy
moves his van."

Yet the vistor to the South was ademant, "*I* know what he meant!" We put
up with this sort of bias all the time.

By the bye, similar to 'boy' is the term of address 'honey'. Many an
prejudiced Northern woman have I heard say, "That damned dirty old man, how
dare he
call me, honey! He's trying to pick me up, he's trying to ..." Don't
flatter
yourself. People in the South call one another 'honey' all the time. It
sometimes is used woman to woman or man to man. As:

"I'm going to plant these potatoes today"
"Honey, the frost will get them!"

(This is what the 65 yo man at the produce stand where I bought the seed
potatoes told me, and belive me besides my mother, no one calls me 'honey' in
earnest).

James (the unreconstructed) </HTML>




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