I REMEMBER very distinctly a conversation I had back in Pittsburgh near the close of my senior year of high school with a teacher and fellow liberal. She asked me if I had chosen my college yet, since the acceptance letters thick and thin had arrived a week or so before. I told her that although I had yet to make a definite decision, I was beginning to lean towards Virginia, a dark horse candidate among the schools I had initially applied to but one that was making its way up my list as I learned more about its academic strengths and resources. At that statement she kind of rolled her eyes and said, "No, you don't want to go there." When I pressed for an explanation, she said something to the effect of, "You'll be fine until you open your mouth. Then you'll be lynched."
She was only joking, but there's truth in jest. Her sentiments were consistent with those of many of my other friends and relations, most of whom had never been south of the Mason and Dixon line except for the occasional trip to Disney World. To most of them the South, whether you were talking about Virginia or Alabama, was a bastion of close-minded conservatism. They envisioned a culture stuck in the aftermath of the Civil War, still sulking and pretending that The Civil Rights movement never happened; an inherently intolerant aberration that continues to resist the progress that has since flourished in the rest of the country.
Their view of Southern society followed the formula that the people might be nice enough to chat with, but deep down inside there was something fundamentally backwards. It was summed up nicely by my high school statistics teacher, who every time I mentioned I was coming to the University half-jokingly asked me if I had signed on yet with the local chapter of the Klu Klux Klan.
To be perfectly honest, I shared at least some of these concerns when I initially chose the University without knowing much about its people. I half expected to be the only blue-stater in a sea of red that would be suspiciously watching my every word. But after calling Charlottesville my home for the past two semesters, I can say with confidence that the narrow-mindedness I was told to expect on a grand scale simply never materialized. At least part of my initial concern came from my misunderstanding of the makeup of the University community.
With a third of its students coming from out of state and two thirds of those students coming from outside the South, the University is hardly the wholly Southernized school I expected it to be. Another contributing fact is that Virginia, especially the state's northern half from which the University draws most of its students, has become much more diverse than many other Southern states. With Washington, D.C. nearby and other urban centers drawing more varied residents to the state, the old stereotypes are quickly losing their relevance.
Now that is not to say that the University doesn't have a bit of Southern flair. A quick trip down Rugby Road on any given night will quickly remind an observer that the University doesn't entirely escape the reputation of being a Southern drinking school. But on the other hand, Southern hospitality abounds. I can sincerely say that on the whole the people here are more courteous and friendly than in most places you'll find in the North.
The point, however, is not that the University and Charlottesville aren't Southern but that they're not stereotypically Southern and this blanket image of Southern backwardness is itself fundamentally backward. All the nasty visions that seem to be conjured up in the minds of my fellow Yankees by the mention of any segment of the South clearly cannot be attributed to every portion of the region. Frankly, I can easily think of areas in my own state of Pennsylvania that fit the above negative descriptions far more accurately than any region of Virginia I've seen thus far.
Now that my first year has drawn to a close, I am happy to report that, as you might have surmised and contrary to my teacher's expectations, I have yet to be lynched. I can't say that I expect Virginia to make the transition to a blue state anytime soon, but as long as I'm free to rant about it, that's good enough for me.
A.J. Kornblith is a Cavalier Daily columnist. He can be reached at akornblith@cavalierdaily.com.
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