Date: Fri, 28 Oct 1994 12:45:54 -0400

From: PPATRICK[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GUVAX.BITNET

Subject: Re: The Southland



David Johns writes about how upsetting it is to be called a Yankee as

if he were something between an alien and an enemy, down there in

Waycross Ga.

Not to be unsympathetic, Dave, but you ARE an alien: someone

who comes from somewhere else, quite different. That's just a fact.

It's a little odd that people actually ask "Are you a Yankee?", cause

it should be pretty obvious from people's speech whether they are or not.

Also it's a little odd that feeling unwelcome makes you think

that people are treating you as socially inferior in status. I think

that's confusing two things. Not everyone who's made to feel unwelcome

can claim they're being "put down" in social-class terms; sometimes

people who represent a dominating, overwhelmingly prejudiced group

with a fine sense of its own superiority are unwelcome, too.

Not that I'm attributing such attitudes to you (seriously).

But there's plenty of evidence for anti-Southern prejudice, including

practically every college campus I've visited outside the South, so

it's hard to see that calling you a Yankee is going overboard with

hostility.

Besides, there ARE good Yankees! and no doubt you're one...

One indication of that might be a historical sense of guilt over the

historical mistreatment of Southerners, black and white, and a truly

sensitive person might well feel uncomfortable at having that feeling

constantly evoked. (There are also good halfbreeds, like me: Michigan

father, Georgia mother, who accused him and "his people" of

stealing the silverware up to a few years ago, when she got really angry...)

For what it's worth, there are worse things to be called!

--peter lumpkin patrick