Southern Pride

A convoluted idea held by most southerners that depitcs the glory days of the Antebellum south and other traditions. Something that should not be honored and instead despised for it's radical racial and moral bias of a past generation. Something that leads to internal American conflict and strife between the people of America. Prevents the diffusion of culture. A cultural ideal built upon the advantageous use of human beings to promote the well-being of white anglo-saxon protestants. Something that promotes grandeos ideas of geographical and cultural superiority. Something that leads to a rift in learning and understanding others ideals and culture i.e. North/South. Something that contains more negative biased perspective than good beliefs. Something that
Southerner: Southern Pride is the ideal of a generation, Northerns will never understand!!

Northerner: Northerners will never understand because we weren't fighting against the UNION in the civil war. We don't look back and dwell on the glory days of a generation long passed like a depressed alcoholic has-been.
by thenorthernperspective November 28, 2010 — The Urban Dictionary

I lived in New Orleans for some years, late 60's early 70's, and it was also something that puzzled me when we got there.

I think it is probably just a case of extremely extreme ethnocentrism.

What I often wondered was what would have happened if the southern states had actually won. Would it have been possible for them to be even prouder than they are? :chin:

I grew up in an educated family in the Deep South, and was taught to be polite and respect others. No Southern Pride.

I was born and raised in NYC in 1960s-1970s. My father's family was from the Old South. I lived in Atlanta from 1996-2002 and again from 2016-2022, also spending long visits in the surrounding states and Virginia ("up south") as well. In the main, I suspect "Southern Pride" mostly comes from a regional legacy of feeling "undefeated" despite losing a catastrophic, futile (according even to Shelby Foote) secessionist-insurrectionist "civil war". The South has survived Lee's surrender at Appomattox in 1865; thus goes the mantra "The South will rise again" – fallen but not broken. No doubt an over-inflated sense of pride attempts to compensate for a very deep sense (conscious or not) of either shame or guilt for centuries of chattal slavery, apartheid-segregation and other forms of white-on-black terrorism. IMHO as a one-time "carpetbagger", for historical as well as many cultural reasons, I locate the American "heartland" (almost entirely) below the Mason-Dixon line and east of the muddy Mississippi River.

It's pathologically protracted case of the sulks; a spanked child plotting revenge for his humiliation. 20 years later, he comes home with an M16. We're not that far off....

Geographical or cultural pride is becoming an altogether opaque notion, and this is unfortunate. I am not from the South but I have no quarrel with "Southern Pride," nor do I see geographical/cultural pride as pathological. It's quite natural, human, and healthy. The true pathology may have more to do with universalizing everything and pretending that one has no roots.

The South has a certain character, and it is informed by sin, suffering, ostracization, and an imputed inferiority (as this thread demonstrates). That sort of thing tends to create a rich cultural identity. I have nothing against it.

The South has a certain character, and it is informed by sin, suffering, ostracization, and an imputed inferiority (as this thread demonstrates). — Leontiskos

Don't forget its rich and lucrative Black, Native and French culture. Gods know the antebellum aristocracy, in slavish imitation of English gentry, didn't contribute much flavour to southern anything.

:smirk:

The last bit of southern pride I recall before leaving the area for good was "GO BAMA !"

But when Charlayne Hunter Gault moved into a dorm room at the University of Georgia - I was in the USAF, far away, by then - a high school friend of mine wrote telling me about himself and perhaps a few others taking over a room or two on the same hall in order to protect her, not from fellow students or local rednecks, but state and local law enforcement.