The Culture Divide Is Killing Southerners
The distaste that red states have for “fake news” has deeper roots than just ideological differences. In the southeast, where most students are living in low-income households, many conservative families resent the “liberal elite” — who have never had to question where their next meal is coming from, who have never had to put in a hard day’s work, and most importantly, who don’t have to worry about what the hell they’re going to do if their kids get sick — but it’s not doing them any good.
Since 1999, mortality rates have been on the decline in every region that isn’t the south. While researchers have speculated the cause (and pointed to opioid overdose), they’d do better to take a trip to Arkansas or Mississippi and ask someone about healthcare.
They’d learn that many southerners share skepticism for “establishment” rules and ideas. One might say “well, there’s an exception to every rule,” and mean it as it applies to everything from laws against theft to the guidelines of a healthy lifestyle. But it’s not skepticism that’s putting them below the ground — it’s the way authority figures react to their questions.
A student in a southern elementary school may hear a lesson about why it’s wrong to steal and ask, “but what if your family will die if you don’t steal?” Rather than address the moral ambiguity that people like Clint Eastwood to the Nolan brothers have spent their careers exploring, authority figures in the south tend to take the “zero tolerance” approach. This denial of a world that they may experience every day of their lives can easily turn a skeptical mind into one that fully distrusts authority altogether.
Later in her life, that same skeptical student may listen to a primary care provider (if she can find one in the region with the fewest providers per capita) explain that her blood sugar is very high and that she has to change her lifestyle and eating habits. It’s possible she’ll remember the lesson on diabetes in ninth grade health class, when the basketball coach popped in a video cassette from the 70s because the district couldn’t afford another instructor or new equipment, while he finished up varsity ball-handling drills.
She learned early-on that authority figures use fear to maintain order. Either in the back of her mind or out loud, she’ll recall someone she trusted more than the doctor she doesn’t know or the out-of-date video — her uncle who ate dessert before dinner every damn night and lived to be a hundred — and that will be that.
Outside of election season, most people don’t give the south much thought. Southerners, though, feel the divide in their hearts when they watch the news or talk about current events. It comes from a place of envy — why do they think they’re so much better than us?
If there was no truth in the question, it wouldn’t rile as much, but it comes from contempt — contempt for those who don’t have hunger, sickness, and death lurking around the corner. If we care not to overlook one of the largest health crises in the modern world, it won’t be finger-wagging, but addressing disparities at their source — diet, education, and access to capable health professionals — that will lead to policy-based solutions.
