“It’s No Glory”
So I created this blog for the exact purpose that was spread across the publication homepage, to tear down the stereotypes centered around the South. More specifically, to tear down the stereotypes that people from outside the South have created for us. While some of the stereotypes are just jackass ways of retelling a pastime and making it a ‘thing’ again, the idea that Southerners are in suffering because we are Southerners is some bullshit/ bullsugar/ blasphemous nonsense I’m tired of hearing. After reading Hip Hop Stole My Southern Black Boy, I was offended by the idea that the South was merely eavesdropping on real hip hop in other regions of the country like little girls at a bathroom door.
It’s no secret by now that the South is a separate, but it’s far from being a lesser entity. However, the notion that the South is behind everyone else has been an evolutionary tale for some time now. Personally, I think the idea that the South is inferior in any way, especially culturally, will never be proven. It’s a joke to me. That does not mean that they don’t categorize us differently, they actually attribute many of our actions and logic to the idea that Southerners are backwards.
Who are they, you ask? I guess you could say they are the Northerners who talk fast, walk fast, move abruptly, and live a fast life. They could also be the people that live in the Midwest; those determined to self-identify as separatists of their own when Northerners remind them they ain’t north of shit except the Mason-Dixon, yet Southerners view them as Northerners because they talk funny. They could even be some of the people currently parading around the West happy as shit on cloud nine after celebrating 4/20 legally and as a mass. They could be anyone, anyone who feels the need to remind the world that they’re not from the South, not knowing the South influenced where they’re from.
This brings me to my next point. Something I noticed in Kiese Laymon’s essay was the ugly truth many will never take the time to research, or simply have no desire to acknowledge… when it comes to many of the things in terms of culture, there lies Southern root. We literally invented the shit. Instead of boring you all with just another fact based research article on how this person founded this, or this music originated there, I felt like it was best to let Southerners speak for themselves. No use saying “the South got something to say” if we’re not listening to what they’re saying, right?
I asked a series of questions to each participant, all based on their experience with Southern life. Some of them were born and raised in the South, Memphis included, while some chose to leave the North and come to the South (suck on that). No participant is within the same age range, nor are two of the same gender and race intersectionally. These people don’t know each other, they don’t know you, all they know is what they have experienced as a taxpaying citizen in the South. And so it goes, I will not expose the race, class, gender, or sexuality of any of my participants just so you can pick and choose which statements to accept. I will say a base word, stemmed solely from one question I asked them, and list the exact statements they used.
Here we go…
Describe the South (in three words, if they could): “Idealic… I had a wonderful childhood” “Embracing” “Warm… if that is any different (from embracing)” — “Hospitable” “Friendly” “Caring? I don’t know a good word for it, I just know that in my experience with ____, he literally went out of his way. I had never had anybody do that…” — “It’s hard to describe… It’s conflicted”
When you think of music in the South, what do you hear/see/feel: “Hype. It has this kind of filth that only some rappers are willing to deliver, but the only rapper to really speak out about Ferguson can from a Southern State” — “The music scene was up and coming when I was coming up. I was a musician, so… it was perfect…” “Frank D.’s mentor, George Hunt, was big then (in the 80s, the time period in which the participant marks as the most remarkable period in the South)…” — “Music was a big part of the family. We had a nice stereo, records… soul music was something else. Elvis and blues is fine, but soul music was just… A lot of music was blues, but artists were also trying to break through the 50s and 60s and change their sound. They were trying to push through culture.” “There was also this undercurrent. Elvis took Black people’s music and became famous, but so many others had been working for it before him.” “Soul music was more about ownership… owning their sound… it became this sort of sexual revolution.”
What is the South like in terms of people/family?: “My grandparents were so different. On one side, they had lots of money. They were farmers. But they weren’t nice, they weren’t really kid friendly. On the other side, my grandmother was always just sort of adoring… loving. I was her favorite.” — “People were so different (from up North, ha!). It was homey. If you have a relationship with someone, you’re stuck somewhere or stuck away from home, people will go out of their way.” — “Mannerable. We have manners. We smile a lot, we say ‘yes ma’am, no ma’am, yes sir, and no sir’.”
One participant, we’ll call her June for namesake, said, “I walk slow, I talk slow, hell I like things slow. But I ain’t dumb. I just go at a leisurely pace.”
Now I don’t have to tell you what’s said about us country folk, or the dark clouds we’re believed to be lying under, but these testimonies should go to show that there is and always has been some good below the Mason-Dixon (and I don’t just mean our food). Yes, there are times that we can remember — and the participants attested to — when people weren’t sure of how to act when they saw a person of color. One participant never met a White person until she transferred schools for the third and fourth grade. On the other hand, another participant’s parents could vividly recall the reaction following the King assassination because the judge lived down the street. “Pop up schools” literally popped up overnight, she recalled, offering an alternative to the citizens against bussing their students to the closest school. The school did not even have to have a great rapport — and from her experiences drinking with her cheerleading supervisor at age 12, it wouldn’t have — because the opportunity seemed tremendous. Yes, half of the South could be represented by her church congregation when the minister chose to march with the sanitation workers, some in support and others in disgust, but so could half of the North.
Simply put, to understand the South you would have to live in it daily. Visits to Beale Street and Six Flags Atlanta could no you no more justice than now than an officer could at a protest these days (apparently). Just to prove that I’m not making this stuff up, I interviewed someone that’s lived in the South their entire life. Specifically, an African American male in Memphis, Tennessee, because if anyone would know about Southern culture I believe it would be those that are silenced the most right now.
Inspired by an excerpt from Kiese Laymon’s “Hip Hop Stole My Southern Black Boy”:
“We black Southerners, through life, love, and labor, are the generators and architects of American music, narrative, language, capital, and morality. That belongs to us… Eliminate the Great Migration of Southern black girls and boys and you have no Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cleveland, or New York City. Expunge the sorrow songs, gospel, and blues of the Deep South and we have no rock and roll, rhythm and blues, funk, or hip hop.” (Laymon 36)
