BLAME it on Yankee ignorance. Look at it as a slight resurgence of that "Northern aggression," whose war by the same name still echoes sometimes here through the valleys in this vibrant land south of Maryland (you Northern Virginians, try as you might, are not technically excluded). Yes, the Yankees are still at it, determined to arrogantly perpetuate the stereotypes of those ignorant, racist, backward Southerners. While pernicious anti-Southern bias is nothing new, CBS has taken up the lead to bring humiliation of the South to a new low. "The Real Beverly Hillbillies" concept, currently under development by CBS, is simple: transplant a poor, rural, "hillbilly" family from its home in the backwoods to a Hollywood mansion. Slap on a reality-TV production crew and once the cameras roll, let the humiliation begin. CBS scouts have been sent exclusively to Southern states for their "hick hunt," and one can only imagine that if this despicable excuse for entertainment is allowed to air, we'll all be treated to yet more of the same old tired Southern stereotypes. But this isn't merely CBS's faux pas -- the offensive and ignorant prejudgments of the South permeate our whole culture. The South is constantly misrepresented, and it's time people understood that the prevalent anti-Dixie bias is irrational and ultimately undeserved.
The public is primarily fed two stereotypes about the South in our mass media: those of "Southern hospitality" and charm, and those of racism. The first -- although true -- remains a somewhat patronizing view of Southerners. The second is much more vicious. It's certainly true that racism has a long history in the South. But the stereotype of the South as inherently racist is as pernicious as it is founded on poor perspective. While the South may have a long history of racism, that history reflects the experience of our entire country. That until the Civil War slavery was a legal institution in the South but not in the North is far from proof that Southern racism was somehow (or continues to be) more malevolent or pervasive than that elsewhere. Abraham Lincoln himself, after all, was a "fashionable" racist with no interest in abolishing slavery on moral grounds. While the South bled under the boot of a radical and corrupt military "Reconstruction," Northern states gleefully enforced their own version of Jim Crow, including Eastern Europeans, the Irish and other immigrants as objects for oppression as well and profited from the vengeance they exacted from their Southern neighbors.
Let us remember that while many Southern states took part in "massive resistance" against integration after 1954, many Northern states and cities scrambled to find quieter political measures to keep minorities out of white schools while simultaneously decrying Southern "racism" and "defiance." By the early 1970s, Southern states were rightly forced into compliance by the federal government, and maintained far more integrated schools than most in the North or West (many continue to be so today). Boston and Detroit, in fact, were sites of massive protests against school integration and civil rights for blacks and were two of the last school systems to integrate, as late as 1974. Clearly, racism is not a characteristically Southern phenomenon. Our national culture is far too fluid for that -- racism has instead been a national disease and portraying it as a somehow more fundamental aspect of Southern culture than elsewhere is part and parcel of the historical anti-Southern prejudice borne by those who do not understand it.
But nowhere is this bias more harmful than in regarding the symbol of the South -- our flag. As the German flag has been associated with its anti-Semitic past, the Confederate flag has been too often misrepresented and defaced by racist groups to advance their abhorrent agendas. Unfortunately, some have actually bought into the notion that the Confederate flag does not symbolize Southern pride and identity, but instead that it somehow stands for one issue among very many that led to a war one hundred and forty years ago. Defining the South or the long-dead Confederacy by that single issue is myopic. If Southerners are prohibited from flying the flag of a nation that once supported an idea we now find morally abhorrent, how do we then justify raising the American flag? Clearly, no one is about to take issue with flying the stars and stripes -- although our flag has certainly stood for dubious causes from time to time (and continues to do so today).
Not only should Southern states have the right to include the Confederate symbol on their flags, but in fact they should -- a la Georgia and Mississippi. I am a proud Virginian, and more broadly, I'm proud to be Southern. What's more, I'm proud that my state was the capital of the Confederacy and that one of my great grandfathers fought (and died) in defense of Virginia against the invading Northern armies. The anti-Southern prejudice in our culture that CBS and others are so eager to exploit is degrading and unfair to our whole nation and downright insulting to a large part of it. I would tell my fellow Southerners to have the courage to defend their places of birth when they're assigned those insipid stereotypes of the South. The University is truly a crown jewel of Dixie, and we should be proud to accept the title. I know I am.
(Blair Reeves's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at breeves@cavalierdaily.com.)
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