Will the Real Southerns Please, just talk?

Some years ago, I went to a law program at Yale University to take two classes in Constitutional Law. Upon arrival, we played several getting to know you, ice breaking type, games; one of which was “Where are you from, based on your accent?”. This game was exciting and filled with very interesting processes of elimination to get to where people we from; everything from accent to syntax and word choice was taken into account to get people out (once someone told you where you were from, you could only guess, but not be asked). I was the last person left. I had people guessing all 50 states, even though you were only allowed to guess two. I had people asking me how I said certain words, but my accent was so flat, so indistinct, it took someone to ask me about my grades and for me to say “I make good grades” before it was found out, I’m southern. I was instantly told; everything about me screamed it was a lie. I was born at Moses H. Cone hospital, in Greensboro, North Carolina at 1:11pm on December 27th, 1988, was my response to being told I was lying. But I cam to the realization that I’m not lying but, I did have some internal questions I needed to look at to better answer the question I was asking myself “Why can’t people know I’m from the South? “ Instead of this question let’s try, complicating the issue further and taking about “Why I feel I need to cover up my Southern heritage?” The saying goes. “I’m American by birth and Southern by the Grace of God.” But in my personal experience, society’s negative response to the South has made it the last thing you want to represent.

Let’s look at some of societies positive thoughts on the south; The food is really good, everyone is extremely polite- better known as southern hospitality, a southern belle or a southern gentleman, is the way to go for a significant other, the weather is great and college football, lives here. Aside from these things, which many of them, themselves are highly questionable and enter the realm of objectification and it’s moral constructs with gender roles of southern men and woman and understanding southern culture, aside from all these things though, the for the most part has a very negative connotation with it. These are the things I for which I did not want to be associated; southern are slow, because they are so nice you can take advantage of them and they are pushovers, and also for the personal affect, my parents are both from up north and on a trip to visit my mom’s family in Connecticut, I was made fun of for my use of the world “draw-L-ing” instead of “drawing”. This moment in my life has stayed with me and slightly tainted my conversations with people since, but it still is another reason I do not embrace my “southern jargon”. It is hard enough to be a non- stereotypical black guy, in my mind, I could not even start to try to beat the odds if I was automatically written off, thus I discarded my southern robe, only dawning it when I need to seek refuge among like minded people- more southern.

Thus my continual forgery of identity; forgive me, but I'm gonna borrow this grouping again...