Imma reup this because it matters. I’m not a southerner by any stretch, but I spend a good chunk of the year down here and have learned a lot. In the mid-’80s when I shared an apartment with [EB] (no longer on FB, good on him) he — who showed up as a pretty solid marxoid from Vicksburg MS — larned me about “yankee psychoanalytic bullsh*t” and what called “the South as Other,” a northern fantasy in which the south was all that the north imagined it wasn’t. What he taught me stuck, and ever since I’ve been prickly about the many lesser kinds of bigotry that are acceptable or even lauded: anti-southern, anti-Mormon, anti-’hillbilly,’ etc. It’s all crap, and it adds fuel to fires we need to GO OUT. Early on down here, a plumber came by: a gigantic sunburnt cracker-lookin’ dude, mega-pickup, the whole nine yards. We get to talking and I mention NYC; he says he had a hard time adjusting when he moved here too, from the Keys. I asked what was hardest, and he said “the racism.” I’m like 👀 👀 👀. He says, in a THICK accent, something like “Where I come from everyone’s everything, people from all over the Caribbean, and I really miss it.” THAT, and whoever the f- is driving this truck, are what we need more of. And it’s not like yankee-world is any great shakes when it comes to white supremacy, right? This ‘southern identity’ thing is mostly a sham concocted from the early ’70s on, and it’s far from monolithic. What, working-class southerners don’t want better lives for everyone around them? They don’t want job security, better healthcare, fairer housing, a solid education for the kids around them, and a dignified old age? Srsly f*ck off, OF COURSE THEY DO. But norms gonna norm, and — for lots of subtle reasons — southern cultures often discourage expressions of political beliefs, so you don’t hear those beliefs expressed on chatterbot social media. As a result, what you mostly see and hear are racist sh*ts who are acting out bullsh*t fantasies. Yes, those fantasies have very real dimensions, as well as deep roots and long reach; but the guy driving this pickup is far from alone. There are many, many people who you’d see and think “ruh-roh, it’s DELIVERANCE time” but who turn out to be, in many of their values, pretty solid working-class progressives. Chances are they won’t see much of the ‘content’ you lot produce, but…it matters. All of it. The trumperstickers and confederate flags, and even the thin-blue line flags have been disappearing down here. Let’s help usher them out. And note well where the most vicious counter-demonstrations are taking place, because it isn’t in the south. So next time you get the urge to pull some ‘southern cracker’ routine, find a better way to say whatever it is you have to say.