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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

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>