Suburban homogenization spreads like kudzu from the urban taproots of places like Nashville, Atlanta, and Greenville. Attracted by cheap land and low taxes, refugees from the West Coast and the Mid Atlantic flood into rural towns. Big Business exerts influence and demands on political and social life entirely at odds with local custom and sentiments. The worst aspects of a perverted America increasingly appear in the least likely of places championed by twenty somethings whose ancestors fought bravely, barefooted, and hungry to defend their homes and freedom from invaders.
It would seem that Southern distinctiveness will soon be a thing of the past. Yet, in their 2017 study, The Resilience of Southern Identity: Why the South Still Matters in the Minds of its People, political scientists Christopher Cooper and Gibbs Knotts don’t think that it’s likely to happen anytime soon.
In their estimation, in spite of drastic political, racial, and cultural changes, the importance of Southern identity still plays a surprisingly important role in sustaining regional identification.
Cooper and Knotts studied every Southern city with more than 50,000 people (218 in total) and following the same criteria used in a similar study done 40 years earlier, surveyed businesses about the names of their companies and why they chose them. The authors then conducted focus groups with Southerners asking them to define what it means to have a Southern identity.
Like the study 40 years earlier, while the number of “Dixie” businesses had declined significantly, the number of “Southern” businesses remained strong. The authors concluded that people were distancing from the “Old South” but still believed it important to retain a Southern identity.
Across businesses and demographics (race, age, and socioeconomic) they found a “strong belief” that folkways, food, hospitality, family, and manners were still defining hallmarks of the South. The research showed that participants believed that in the past White Southerners were the only ones that could be considered truly Southern but felt as long as the South kept the “best of the past and embraced the future,” the South was open to anyone.
For Identity Dixie readers, the Cooper and Knotts study would mostly be interpreted in a negative way. The Old South is not coming back and the trajectory seems to be that the New South will be a diverse, tolerant, cynically commercialized, diluted, and plastic version. But the study does seem to prove that the South has an indelible character, something that we can build on.
The fate of Dixie is in the hands of a small vanguard. A Dixie worthy of the name and identity won’t happen through a single grand gesture. It will happen through countless small acts of defiance, attractive and joyful celebration, and being prepared to share the truth whenever you have the chance.
‘Cause down in Alabama, you can run, but you sure can’t hide.
The only way to carry the true Old South into the future is to form a town, similar to what has been done with Orania, South Africa. The New South is incorrigible, and we few in the vanguard cannot exist spread out in the American Wasteland forever.
Agree … but I’d add, “many towns.” This would take planning. Also someone like Padraig should create a book and video teaching and rallying the ignorant southern dwellers. The sheeple have no teachers.
Southerners are living in a movie, an alternate universe cinematic. We all know this is not right, and you are very accurate, small acts of defiance, along with a poorly written Yankee script, will turn our people homeward.
Southern is a weaker form of Dixie for identity purposes. That’s why it is still in common use while Dixie has faded out as a business name. Even yanks will come down here and name a business “Southern”. if they want to curry favor with locals they may even claim to be “Southern at heart” or some similar platitude.
Yes…the commercialized use of Southern is concerning. Just as Black Rifle Coffee grifted and exploited their target audience, “Southern” is in danger of doing the same. The difference though (I hope) is that there is still a depth of identity to what it means to be a Southerner. Even with the vape shop drone class I see way too many of, they seem to be wanting to be left alone rather than reject the Old South or support the Left. Once again, the Vanguard needs to be making the attractive case for Dixie.