Southern DU'ers: Tell me about the South

[rrneck]

11. Southern hospitality is real.

People will help you if you need help and, especially in rural areas, will readily pass the time of day.

Southern humor tends to be rather oblique and difficult to decipher. That's because of the native clannishness of southerners. There are a lot of "inside jokes". When you get to know people you may be invited, (without knowing it), to play "lets see how far we can push him before a real fight starts". If you play that game reasonably well you will be accepted.

Most southerners and just about every redneck is Scots Irish and it shows. The Scots Irish are suspicious of elites, fiercely loyal to those near them, and not afraid to fight for what they believe. And at whiles, as most of the other early settlers to the United States considered them, dirty, drunken and combative. Hey, nobody's perfect.

The typical southern diet consists of fried everything. If you like pork BBQ, you'll love the south.

I'm sure you're aware that the south is politically conservative. That won't keep you from making friends and getting along with people any more than a conservative in Manhattan would. As an unabashed liberal I spent a lot of time on a lot of loading docks and construction sites and got along just fine. The secret is to pull your weight and don't get in people's faces. It takes time to broach difficult subjects with most people, and the south is no different. Most ideological problems are really class problems, so you will probably find you have more in common with southerners than you think.

You're probably less likely to run across serious intellectual conversation in the south outside of the more intense urban areas. Between the influence of poverty and religion education is not the best. That doesn't mean people are stupid, it just means that intellectualism is not that prized. It won't do any good to flaunt the letters after your name unless you can show them you can do something with them.