David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published May 11, 2004

There are plenty to blame for South's bad rep

We Southerners get a bad rap, and there's plenty of blame to go around. You can pin some of the fault on the national media. There's nothing they love better than a "oh-those-dumb-Southerners" story. Sometimes it seems the national media treats us Southerners as the embarrassing, obnoxious cousin who no one wants to sit next to at the family reunion, but since we're usually good for a laugh, they tolerate us for a sound bite or two.

We also can lay some of the blame on, of course, the people who make fun of Southerners simply because they're Southerners. We in the South think that anyone who makes fun of a Southerner must be a Northerner, but the truth is that people from all over the country make fun of us. It's not just the dastardly "Northerners." I've heard folks from California, New Mexico, Texas and even Alaska poke fun at us backward, uneducated, shoeless, gap-toothed, cousin-marrying Southerners. I'll bet there are people in Hawaii who make fun of us, too. It seems to be a national pastime, not just a Northern bias.

Lastly, and we should be completely honest about this, a fair portion of the blame for the South's bad reputation lies directly on our shoulders. For example, recent news stories (that darn media, again) about racial discrimination at Southern Cracker Barrel restaurants perpetuates the myth that we are more racist than anyone else in the country. A few dimwitted, small-minded restaurant employees make us all look bad by treating people whose skin is a particular color differently than other people. The South isn't any more racist than any other U.S. region. I've been North, South, East and West, there, here and there again throughout this great country, and I'm convinced that racism exists in relatively the same proportion. You'll find racists in Birmingham, Boston, Boise and Beverly Hills.

But racial discrimination in other parts of the country doesn't get the same media play that Southern racism does. Like I said, the national media loves the "oh-those-dumb-Southerners" stories, and it doesn't get much dumber than racism.

Some Southerners' insistence on flying the Confederate flag doesn't help either. A Confederate flag will get most reporters' attention in a big, big hurry. It's as polarizing a symbol as you'll ever see. Now I know that just because you fly a Confederate flag doesn't mean you're a cross-burning, sheet-wearing racist, but that's the message it represents to many, if not most, people in the United States. There are issues of historical remembrance and Southern pride at work, but the fact is that the flag's image has been hijacked by the creme de la creme of extreme racists -- skinheads, neo-Nazis and the like. The same thing happened to the swastika, which dates back thousands of years, long before Adolph gave up his paintbrush. It originally represented power, good luck, sun, life and strength, but that ended the moment the Nazis raised their flags and began goose-stepping down the Strasse.

And then there are our neighbors in Rhea County who voted to ban homosexuality, or was it same-sex marriage that they voted on? No one is quite sure which issue it was, not even the county commissioners who unanimously approved it and then did an about-face two days later. Stories like that will have people all over the fruited plain shaking their heads.

That's not the South I know. When I think of the South's best virtues, I think of a man, Sheriff Andy Taylor. Andy was polite, patient, determined, principled and dedicated to his community.

Andy would never have voted in favor of such a nonsensical measure. He's the most "live-and-let-live" character ever to come out of the South, and he's all ours. The true Southern gentleman is alive and well as long as "The Andy Griffith Show" runs in syndication.

And now Rhea County hosted its first-ever "Gay Day" over the weekend in an effort to get it forever linked with the notion of "cosmically ironic retribution." It's the sort of event that would have had Barney in a twist. Andy would have sat at his desk and grinned.

Is the South worthy of the jabs it receives? Sometimes, but not always. I'll take the heat for things that are our fault, but we're not as bad as some people make us out to be.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.