October 11, 2002

The South

That phrase evokes different images for different people. Having spent my entire life in the south this is home to me, but over the last few years I have considered moving away. As a technology worker who through the web is aware of the opportunities in other parts of the country, I have at times felt that the south is behind the times and that I could move to another place that is more modern in terms of race relations, technology, education, and simply overall economic development.

In much the same way as Miami and New York are the benchmarks of how Hispanics (please excuse the term) will get along in mainstream America, black/white relations over the next generations will be determined in the south. The painful history of racism, war, and death which are washed over in other parts of America are clearly visible and even celebrated (and certainly debated) here. Living in the educated middle class here you have a sense of generations; you meet people who could live in very 'liberal' 'modern' places such as San Francisco and be comfortable, and you also deal with people who seem like they are from another time (anywhere from 1865 to 1960).

Being educated and living in the south offers a perspective that I would miss if I were to move.

For example, when I was in college I lived in a nice apartment complex near the edge of a rather small college town. Over the course of the year that I lived there I learned that this side of town used to be an old mill community named Princeton - this was further evidenced by the small rural church by the same name, a series of run-down shutgun-style houses and very large plantation home overlooking a dried-up factory below it on the river.

Our apartment backed up to the highway and there was only one residence that wasn't college apartments on the street. There was one black family that has lived there for generations as seen by the way the house is built into sections like my grandmothers house was. There is one main room on the house that had a custom aluminum roof, and other rooms were built off of it as the family expanded. The carpentry, plumbing and construction is done by the family piece-by-piece. The family did not have a car, a washer or dryer, or any money. On the other side of the interstate the road continues and there are dozens of families like them; their grandfathers or fathers worked at that mill and went to that church. Generations before that they were sharecroppers working that same land, and before that they were slaves.

The contrast was striking: on one side of the road a bitterly poor family with generations of no education, on the other college students with apartments and cars.

There are too many reminders like this in the South for you to ignore issues like affirmative action, class conflict, and oppression. Many see all the confederate flags, civil war fanaticism, black pride parades, and calls for reparations as reminders of a history that America should just forget; I see all these are strong influences that keep us debating, keep us trying to work out a future in which historical oppression doesn't mean that your family is doomed to a life that you don't want for them.

And this is why I will live my entire life here.

October 11, 2002 11:59 PM