If you care to define the South as a poor, rural region with lousy race relations, that South survives only in geographical shreds and patches and most Southerners don't live there any more.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
While I've said that there are plenty of things I dislike about the South, I can be clear that there are things I love about the South.
I think we Southerners have talked a fair amount of malarkey about the mystique of being Southern.
I think we typically, as Northerners, stereotype what the South is in so many negative ways. We kind of forget all the beautiful things that they contribute to make this country a country.
The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.
I travel all the time, but when I come back to the South, I see such progress. In a real sense, a great deal of the South has been redeemed. People feel freer, more complete, more whole, because of what happened in the movement.
The misperception about the South is that everybody is racist, and all black people are victims, that what was prevalent in the '60s is only relegated to the South.
I had been to the South many times and I thought I knew what the South was, but not until you live with people and live through their lives do you know what it's really about.
It's the South that maintains the idea that they're different, which is interesting because nobody else really cares.
Racial segregation in the South not only separated the races, but it separated the South from the rest of the country.
There's no such thing as being too Southern.