Having lived no further north than Tennessee, I'd say the way the media portrays the Deep South is completely accurate.
"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt." - Some guy with a snazzy hat.
Having lived no further north than South Carolina, I must say that it really all depends on location. For the majority of the American southeast, it's a perfectly accepting, modern place. I realize this whole article is most likely one (offensive) block of satire, but honestly? Who actually believes stereotypes?
"Who actually believes stereotypes?" Uh, you'd be very surprised these days
Kitsune Inferno. You clearly haven't lived everywhere in the south then (or you're a troll). Where I live, most of us don't even have the accent. Of course I live in the rare blue city in a red state.
This is not to say the stereotypes don't exist at all. But having lived in the south my entire life, I've never seen a gut bucket or anyone playing a jug outside of television and I've never been any place where you could wear overalls without a shirt without getting funny looks (helps that we know about sunburn and skin cancer down here just like the rest of you.) Even with a shirt you'd look out of place in overalls unless you're a mechanic or a farmer and most of us aren't.)
The cops are as reasonable as they are in most locations and (gasp) some of them actually are minorities (where I live, you'd have to discard a third of the potential workforce if you didn't want to hire African Americans and this white troper has had more than one black boss and several black coworkers in higher positions than himself.)
If you want to have a somewhat more accurate picture of the kind of color you'll encounter in the south, oddly, Talladega Nights is pretty accurate. Sad that a parody is more accurate than most serious works when it comes to depicting the south. You will find NASCAR fans, the occasional mullet, fried food, sweet tea (and I'll admit, I once thought of Applebees as fine dining and still prefer it to actual fine dining). You'll also find coffee shops and hipsters and even a commune here and there.
You will find plenty of restaurants that enforce the older stereotypes, but they're invoking them intentionally. Sonny's, Cracker Barrel, and local mom and pop restaurants in the same vein.
I used to live in one of those blue cites in a red state. I left due to the cities failing public schools, ever increasing tax rates, constant mismanage of public funds, inability to fix potholes and lack of understanding that you can't solve problems simply by throwing money at them. Also the mentally of certain voters of vote blue no matter who leading to leaders and representatives who were at best inept at worst corrupt cronyists who only cared about lining their own pockets and putting people their owed favors to in positions of power regardless of actual qualifications.
Edited by NessaEllenesse
Fungal Affliction Research Team
Can we add an alternate name for this trope: "Deep North". I am from Australia and the "Deep North" (Northern Queensland) plays Deep South traits straight, if with slightly less guns (click this link for more) and with poverty slightly ameliorated by social spending.
I understand that this page is mostly about media portrayals that Did Not Do The Research, but this article takes quite a while to make it apparent that it's about portrayals of the SOUTH, not the DEEP south. The deep south is Texas(I think), Georgia(sometimes South Carolina), and everything in between. And then, this article never mentions it explicitly.
I think its name should remain(to reflect ignorance/exaggeration), but there should be a note or something.
livingwill
Even though I have never lived south of Milwaukee I always thought this kind of thinking is little more than Anti-Southern bigotry. Whenever you paint an entire large group (and there are a LOT of White Southerners) as being only one way it is bigotry. If Sam Dondelson asked a similar question he asked President (then governor) Clinton to someone Black or Hispanic he would have been fired from ABC as a racist bigot. I have known a few people from the Deep South and none of them were ignorant, semi-literate hicks.
Edited by livingwill
Alright, in regards to the tripartite picture that's on the page (as the date of this posting, anyway): I recognize the bottom two parts, but where does that top third come from?
Just curious.
Lady Sheamus
As an African-American from the South (Louisiana - now living abroad but missing Southern culture VERY much) even I'M offended by these stereotypes. It's not NEARLY as bad as what's written here, and I've always been irritated by the hypocricy of people who act like racism/ignorance/etc in the U.S. only exist in the South. We have very kind, open, intelligent people and very friendly culture with the best food in the U.S., if not the world. If you love the place/culture then it's hard to take this topic as a joke/satire. I think it says more about the people who stereotype the supposed stereotypers. Ick!
こんにちは～！
ncfan: Okay, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, from the perspective of having never lived any further north than Virginia, having been born in South Carolina, having lived in North Carolina for ten years and currently living in Georgia, the way the media portrays the Deep South these days drives me absolutely nuts. Okay, true, where I live right now, I might as well have moved fifty years into the past, but not everything south of the Mason-Dixie line is the backwater.
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