Life in the South

My mom would be surprised if she was alive today.  She spent a large amount of her childhood growing up in the South.  For my part, as the heir to her life experience,  I was the victim of turnip greens and salt rising bread.  I have to admit, the okra grew on me.  While she had lived in the North since graduating from college if you listened carefully you could still hear that twang in her voice.  Her parents spent their last years in Louisiana and her brother still lives in Birmingham, Alabama.  Her son was a product of the North, literally.  I grew up in Alaska probably closer to Canadian than American.  Okay, Canadian with out the socialism surrounded by guns and anti-federalism.  Come to think of it, maybe I was the only socialist non-Canadian Canadian in the state.  Well, Canada aside today I call Columbia, South Carolina my home.

If my mother were alive today she would have been shocked but perhaps a little bit proud.  I am not sure why, maybe it's a Southern thing.  What I can say is that the longer I live here the more Northern I feel. When you live in a place typically overtime you become a part of it.  In my case, the longer I live here the more I feel alienated.  Oh there could be many reasons for this.  One of the largest is that I since I left Alaska the concept of 'home' has always be tenuous at best.  Maybe it is a result of the grass is always greener.  On the other hand, maybe it is something deeper.

South Carolina is a beautiful state and there are many positives to my life here.  Presently, the positives out weigh the negatives.  For this reason nearly 10 years ago we returned from living in South America and decided to raise our child here.  The climate is nice, there are mountains and sea nearby.  It is a cross roads for the East Coast.  No, my disenchantment has nothing to do with geography, it is really more to do with the human element.  The south has a reputation of friendliness and in many ways it is well deserved.  It is not uncommon to strike up a conversation with a stranger, an act nearly impossible in many large Northern cities.

Despite this friendliness there is a more insidious undercurrent of attitude among large segments of the population.  Take the expression, "Bless their heart."  Sounds so sweet but what it really means is they are about to kick you in the ass.  There is a feature of life here that while it weighs heavy, is healthy at some disturbed level.  When I moved here I realized that racism is alive and well.

When I was in college I had a black friend named Wes.  Wes was the son of a wealthy attorney and had family links in the south.   His family had the money to obtain for him the finest East Coast Ivy League education money could by.  Once I asked Wes if he would rather be black in the north or black in the South.  His answer, "In the South."  left an indelible mark.  My first reaction was one of shock.  He explained that in the South you knew who the racists were, in the North you could never tell.

The longer I live here the more I understand what Wes was saying.   This past weekend I took my Vespa out for a ride.  It was a beautiful spring day.  I pulled out from my subdivision in front of a small tan pickup truck and proceeded down a hill to a stop light.  As I waited for the signal to change an older man with a gray haired wife sitting next to him rolled down his window and shouted out at me.

"Hey scooter boy!"  His tone was angry and brisk.  Filled with Southern country twang.

I looked back in his direction.  "Excuse me?" I said, a bit shocked.

"If I had seen that Obama sticker on your scooter I woulda run yo ass over."  Is teeth were clinched.

I wanted to answer him with the hate he reflected.  I wanted to call attention to the racism in his eyes as his wife stared frozen, looking forward.  Yet, I knew in my heart, this was what he wanted.  Instead. I said calmly, "the president has done a lot for you, have a nice day and try not to be such an asshole." 

Segregation ended in the 1960's yet in the south, it was replaced with self segregation.   The churches are black and white.  The neighborhoods are largely black and white.  There are white counties and black counties.  Legislative districts are drawn to group the blacks together and preserve white legislative power.  Schools are white and black.  How else could you explain that the elementary school my child attended in a state that is 40% African American must have had only a handful of black students.

In the South the Civil War never ended.  It exists as an excuse for racist feeling.  The whites hide behind a guise of heritage when in truth heritage means nothing more then a mask for racism.  The president is the same way.  They hide behind political arguments and when those fail they erect walls of social arguments to mask the prejudice that still exits.   When Obama was running for president I was attending a gym and had a personal trainer.  Her name was Anna and she was the cutest little Southern college student you could imagine.  She was attending the University of South Carolina and being connected to the university scene I thought she might insight on how Obama was doing with that group of liberal radicals often called college students.  Anna looked at me shocked.  She whispered under her breath how she could never support a black man.  "Your not seriously voting for him are you?"

Racism often exists under the breath.  It dances off the tongue like the tattle-tails of a lover.  Eyes sweep from side to side to make sure no black person is within earshot.  When I placed an Obama sticker on my car during the election a nice black police officer I was working with told me I was crazy.  To live in such a white county with an Obama sticker, what was I thinking?  Is Democracy dead?

Yet what do I expect?  What should I expect?  This is a state where the Lieutenant Governor and now candidate for governor said that feeding poor people was like feeding stray dogs.  If you do it, they will just keep coming back.  The Governor, elected for his moral integrity and fiscal honesty fled the country for a liaison with his Argentinian mistress while claiming he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.  My Representative in Congress hurled an accusation at the President of the United States during his State of the Union Address yelling, "YOU LIE!" 

The other day I was walking at lunch in a nearby cemetery where a number of Civil War dead are buried.  The headstones all face toward the various flags of the Confederate States of America, no Stars and Stripes was anywhere to be found.  I thought the war ended and they lost.

There is a light in the South yet it is not among the racist dinosaurs.   Some of the finest people I have ever known here are black.  How they can be so nice hurts my brain.  Faced with such racism, how can they be so friendly, so sweet?  Often African Americans in the North tend to express the anger I would express yet in the south they seem to have come to terms with racism as a fact of life.   I think I find myself more vigilant then they are.  I want them to shout, I want to shout with them yet they seem to tell me to relax.  There voices say you can't change the world, just find a way to live with it.

There is a measure of Southern ignorance that is almost celebrated.  It is celebrated in the language, VI -AA-NA Sausage.  Excuse me, did you mean Vienna Sausage?  It is celebrated by closing the mind to thoughts and ideas.  It is celebrated by clinging to a conservative identity that has more to do with intolerance than ideology.   Slamming homosexuals or immigrants is always fair game.

The only thing I know for sure is that demographics will eventually change this region.  It is happening in the big cities of Atlanta, Charlotte an Raleigh Durham.  Liberal thought has a foothold and a tidal wave of immigration will substitute rural white with rural brown. 

There are times I want to run away or wish the South had just won the damn war.  If they had, they could live in their own ignorant world and leave the rest of us alone.  At the same time, I think living here has made me a better person.  It has awakened my thoughts and perceptions.  It has confronted me with my own racism  and let those demons fly free.  It has taught me what I miss and shown me how far we still have to go.  Each day I continue that journey but I will say one thing, California sure feels free.