Southern Identity

There's a great article in our local paper (and available on MSNBC here ) about what it means to be a Southerner today. A few highlights:

''The South is a region of irony,'' says Bill Ferris, co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. ''It's both un-American and deeply American.''

This kind of sums up my own observations of the region:

[It is] sometimes contradictory: In a region that once tried to break away from the Union, people are generally considered more patriotic than the rest of Americans; in a place where blacks were oppressed for hundreds of years, poll after poll shows them identifying themselves as ''Southern'' even more often than whites do.

The article goes on to both expose, validate and invalidate many stereotypes of the South. Are we more "military"? Yes, we do enlist more - but is that economics? Is it the Bible Belt? As a region, Midwesterners attend church more. Close extended families and traditional values:

Six of the states in the top 10 for highest divorce rates are in the South. And the Census Bureau recently reported that the South is home to 7 of the top 10 states with the highest percentages of out-of-wedlock births. (The Census counts Delaware and Maryland as Southern states.)

And as for the rest:

States with the highest percentage of households without indoor plumbing? Six of the top 10 are in the West and Northeast. And while you can marry your first cousin in Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island, it's legally taboo in Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia.

It's a fascinating read!