Today we are going to do something a tad different. Its no secret to anyone who is a regular to my articles or any of my social media that I am from the Southern United States (Tennessee specifically). This can be seen by one of the first articles I’ve done as well. So what are we doing differently here? If you’ve looked around there have been references to this tweet going through various sites recently.
So obviously this is racist and bigoted, however this is also attacking a culture that whether we like it or not is an important and integral part of America as a whole. Now I know what you are thinking, “ALEX? Are you pulling identitarian bullshit on us now?” No, and if you asked me 5 years ago if I would be making this article I would have called you insane. However what I plan on doing here is taking the preconceptions of Southern culture and showing what is accurate and what is flat out wrong. Like everything else I’m Breaking the Narrative and showing everyone where idiots are screwing the pooch. Now that I’ve gotten my Hillbilly beastiality joke in Let’s Hammer This In!
So what are we going to use for our source on this? Is there some hateful fucked up article or some shitty blogpost full of inaccuracies? Close – we are fucking up a likely heavily moderated Wikipedia article. Why tear apart Wikipedia on this? Normally short of very rigidly defined fan wikias that only push confirmed canon out I stay FAR away from Wikipedia. Here is an exception, where Wikipedia specifically can be considered a viable source. In the case that it gives us the consensus on what the thoughts on the subject should be. Now to keep this article a reasonable length, we are mainly going on the base premises and the most talked about aspects of the states in this grouping. I may touch upon more individual states in separate articles.
So what do they identify as the ‘South’? Here is where they already goofed. Its to be suggested that the dark red is the “Modern South” the medium red is the “Often South” and striped red is “Maybe South”. This is where we hit our first literal red flag, I can’t think of a single southerner who considers Missouri anything other than part of the American Mid-West along side Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. Then while West Virginia could be acceptable to some including states like Maryland and Deleware are just outright insulting to anyone’s intelligence as they are typically lumped in with New England. So for the purposes of this article I’m going to include the most accepted view of what the Great American South is among those who actually live in it. That would be most of the states that went into the Confederacy during the Civil War, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Texas is usually considered to be part of the American Southwest and Oklahoma doesn’t typically carry a most of the same cultural traditions from my understanding.
They also with their first paragraphs here try to erase the control Southern Democrats had over the KKK and the more racist and slavery promoting aspects of the area in the past. Trying to paint the area as ‘generally socially conservative’ which considering our experiences with Wikipedia and Gamergate means ‘absolute evil’! Then waxing on about the “Antebellum” or Plantation Era which has been usually heavily misunderstood because of the influences of slavery. Which we go into in their short premise on History.
This will open up to a future article too, what we are doing today is dismantling three specific concepts. First that Southerners are ill-educated. In fact some of the country’s top universities are in the South such as my alma mater Murray State University (which I didn’t graduate from because of a single class), an Ivy League University. It takes some stiff requirements to become an Ivy League University much less get into one. Then you have University of Kentucky and University of Tennessee (Knoxville) which while not Ivy League themselves are still prominent centers of Computer Sciences and Medical Sciences respectively, not to mention that there are high rated grade schools all throughout the area. With this it’s shown that education and intelligence as a whole are very highly valued within the American South.
The second is about how the Southern culture is closed-minded and xenophobic. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, the most prominent Japanese Embassy in the US is in Nashville, which approves visas to Japan for its Japanese-English Teaching (JET) program among other large business ventures. Many derivative cultures are consistently made in the area. Then there is the fact that its not hard anywhere you go in these states to find peaceful pagan communities that don’t get attacked or harassed by various protestant Christians. In fact, when I lived there in the mid to late 00’s, on the city council of Murray Kentucky there was a Wiccan Priestess that took part and was considered an equal to a Southern Baptist preacher. Add in the broad examples of ethnic and diverse judiciary and I’ve seen absolutely no problems in representation in the South. Then there is the bit where Owensboro (a notably more Southern style city than Paducah) begged to pull the anime/video game convention OMG!Con to use their brand new convention center as their inaugural convention. If you ask me that is a bit open minded.
The third and final aspect today is about good old “Southern Racism”. To begin, they greatly minimize this to spread out into another article’s worth of debunking that I will likely do later. There is the idea that there is no separating racism from Southerner culture because ‘muh Confederacy.’ So yeah, we might tackle some things suspected by unironic users of the #NoConfederate tag and protesters against the Confederate Battle Flag. When I can get it I’ll post into the comments a picture of one of the men who raised me.
In his wedding photo with my mother he was wearing a Union uniform, he was from Jasper, Alabama and passed in 2010. The first thing he made sure to do when I first saw someone with a different skin color at the age of 5 was that they were normal. He didn’t say they were ‘wrong, sinful, or lesser’ – he called black people normal just like us. How is that for a mindfuck for ya? A, by his own words, ‘big redneck hick’ that considers black people ‘normal like white people.’ “But, but muh Southern Racism! Muh narrative! Muh need to hate on poor peasants!” That’s right social justice, a very nerdy grandson of a sharecropper just showed that the real bigots are out of touch coastal elitists from vastly overgrown and cancerous cities who can’t even begin to comprehend their excess.
Now I haven’t even touched half of this whole wikipedia article and I’ve driven three MASSIVE nails into it, even though I have no particular love for this area and am more than willing to move out of it. Look what you made me do, you freaking ideologues! You made an avid anime geek who some may consider a full blown weeb show some Southern Pride (Which was a decent restaurant before they closed it back in Reidland!) Next thing we know I’ll be making a Tennessee Orange 1969 Dodge Charger with the Rebel Flag on top and the General Lee decals, complete with an accurate to the show cockpit complete with woodgrain panels. Wait a second, I didn’t even have to look that up….how did I know that off the top of my head? What the fuck did I watch when I was a toddler? I think I need to split this up into multiple articles – next week, something different to break up this now apparent introspective into my psyche. Until then Please Remember to Game Freely!
- Breaking the Narrative Episode 124: Nice Try Kotaku! This Won’t Work Though! - July 8, 2019
- Breaking the Narrative Episode 123: We Shouldn’t Go Straight to Mars! How Anime Got Space Right! - July 1, 2019
- Breaking the Narrative Episode 122: You’re Reviewing What Now? The Dissenter Web Browser! - June 10, 2019
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