The Roots of Southern Identity

“The Roots of Southern Identity,” grounds the book within the larger context of regional identity and social identity before turning attention directly to the issues of southern identity and southern distinctiveness. This chapter also includes original analyses, highlighting the unique role that food and politics play in the southern landscape. The chapter argues that the South remains culturally and politically distinct and that the perception of distinctiveness is a particularly important component of southern identity. In addition, the chapter examines the complicated relationship between race and southern identity. The chapter also introduces “dark side of southern identity,” a phenomenon in which politicians play on southern identity of old to prime voters to support populist, exclusionary, and even racist candidates and policies. Drawing on the social identity literature, the chapter discusses the reasons someone decides to be a member of a regional group.

Signs of the South

This chapter presents the results of an analysis of business names, or topynms, throughout the South, supplemented with interviews with business owners. This analysis suggests that the Old South (represented by businesses named Dixie and labeled de-Confederatization) is declining and is restricted to a relatively small geographic portion of the Deep South. Indicators of the “New South” (represented by businesses with “southern” in the name and termed re-southernization), however, are on the rise. Taken together, this evidence demonstrates that a general concept of southern identity remains resilient and also that the nature of southern identity is changing—and will likely continue to change.

Talking with Southerners

This chapter relies on evidence from a series of focus groups. These focus groups allow us to explore southern identity in more detail and follow up on many of the themes that developed in earlier chapters. Focus-group participants included adult southerners from a variety of backgrounds—young and old, white and black, native and nonnative. The focus groups reveal many similarities about how blacks and whites think about regional identity and the South. Folkways—like hospitality, manners, pace of life, a connection to the land, and food—are key components of southern identity for both groups. Similar to chapter 3, however, this chapter identifies key differences in southern identity across the two groups. The most notable differences have to do with the ways whites and blacks talk about history, politics, and race relations.

Southern Identity by the Numbers

This chapter reviews the results of an original survey of southerners about the South and southern identity. Much of chapter 3 is focused on the answers to a single question that has been asked time and time again throughout the years: “Do you consider yourself a southerner, or not?” By examining these answers from a number of different angles, this chapter shows that geographic southerners have responded in the affirmative with surprising consistency. Answers to this question are also combined with demographic characteristics of survey respondents to provide a profile of people who are more or less likely to consider themselves southerners over time. One key finding of this investigation is that blacks and whites today are equally likely to identify as southerners. Though race does not predict southern identity, we discover that blacks hold different opinions than whites on issues related to important regional symbols. When considered as a whole, the answers to these survey questions suggest that people are constructing their own conceptions of what it means to be a southerner.

Introduction

Scholars and observers of the South have long predicted that southern identity would soon go the way of the dodo bird. In this chapter we discuss the reasons for this prediction and lay out the central argument of this book: despite the physical manifestations of modernization, people still find a reason to connect to the South and to identify as southerners.

Conclusion

The concluding chapter ties together key findings from previous chapters, highlights the book’s theoretical contributions, building on the social identity literature reviewed in chapter 1. The concluding chapter reinforces the idea that southern identity remains, but that the shape of twenty-first century southern identity is different from twentieth-century identity. The concluding chapter closes with a discussion of the future of southern identity and a prediction that regionalism and regional distinctiveness will only become more pronounced in an increasingly interconnected world.