Southern Stereotypes

For many years African Americans have been judged and stereotype based on their appearance. African American women have been stereotyped as women that are angry, loud, argumentative, entitled, and hypersexual. More simply, people tend to associate African American women with negative stereotypes. Although women experience stereotypes women that have lighter skin tend to have more privileges. Women with light skin tend to be more attractive, sophisticated, and successful.

The South fought the American Civil War as a movement to separate themselves from the Union and establish its own national citizenship. As a result of their resounding loss, Southerners chose to focus their energies on maintaining their individual ethnic group which sets them apart from the rest of the nation. According to John Shelton Reed, author of The Enduring South, “The three functional characteristics of an ethnic group are that: It serves psychologically as a source of group identification; it provides a pattern network of groups; and it refracts the national cultural patterns of behavior and values through the prism of its own cultural heritage.” Reed allows his readers to grasp the intensity in which Southerners met, and still meet today, all three of the functional characteristics of an ethnic group. Throughout his book, Reed purposes to enlighten the reader that Southern-ness is attained by three different measures: birth, achievement, or unwilling thrust (such as the African Americans who were brought to America under duress). The Enduring South exposes the element of Southern identity as pride in its heritage, culture, customs, and ideals.

The Southern States of the United States of America have been victims of perceptions and stereotypes that tend to describe them as different from the rest of the United States, especially in terms of culture. These portray the South as rural, uneducated, conservative, racist, and violent. While there are varied opinions on these perceptions this paper will seek to look at whether the South is rural, racist and violent. It is true that incidents of gruesome violence have occurred in the Southern states. Similarly, these states have a significant population of rural dwellers, as well as an expansive amount of underdeveloped territory. However, it is important to note that these occurrences are not autonomous to the southern states but are also characteristic of other states outside the southern region. At the same time, the prosperity, racial tolerance, quality education, etc. observed in states outside the South are equally observed in Southern states. Therefore, the position held in this paper is that the collective generalization or notion that the south is rural, violent and racist needs revisions.

Born in California and raised in the deep south, I grew up in two conflicting societies. The cultural geography of both areas differs on a magnitude of levels and complicated my development into the cultures around me, however in retrospect influenced me to be a multidimensional and considerate person. At a young age my parents introduced me to progressive values. During the developmental toddler stages, I immersed myself in two different cultures: what I experienced at school and what I experienced at home. Charleston, South Carolina embodies small-town society though the Greater Charleston Area expands rapidly each year, pulling migrants, including my family, to the growing city. The overwhelmingly conservative views of Traditional Charleston

Stereotypes are all over Speak the novel and in the real world life. You may not

If you have ever watched a tv show or movie about the south that makes the people out to be uneducated, poor farmers and you believe all of it to be true then you have fell victim to the media’s stereotyping of the south. As we would say in the south, “We ain’t nothing like that,” at least not all of us anyway. The south is a community, within the United States, that have many beliefs and a different kind of slang that not just any American would know. It has its own culture that’s identity is widely mistaken as extremely unconventional. While some consider the south as just another place on map, I call it home.

The year 1941 saw a landmark book published, The Mind of the South, by W. J. Cash. Cash determined to delve into the true mindset of the South. His thesis contends that the South was divided into three minds, or “frontiers:” pre-Civil War, where the white planter class dominated all aspects of society, with little regard to Native Americans, African-Americans, or women; the Reconstruction era, where African-Americans were still not really free and elite whites continued to dominate society; and the beginning of the twentieth century where the old social order of the South charged on, with Confederate soldiers and elite whites assuming the lead roles in all parts of society, thus laying the groundwork for the Civil Rights movement. This is a shocking and almost comical book for modern readers, but remains a landmark book in early-twentieth century Southern scholarship. From his first few lines, Cash assumes his readers are just like him: white, male, and above all else, Southern.

A student who had moved with her family from Maryland to Georgia a couple of years ago reflected her own sense of being a northern in the South as alterity. She wrote that “Northerners are seen as “aliens” to southerners or native Georgians. Many southerners believe that northerners are rude or inhospitable due to stereotypes portrayed by the media. Northerners are often referred to as Yankees in the south”. The other student sitting two seats apart from her wrote “I feel like those who come from different backgrounds are aliens to me. I am a Christian from the south. I have been taught all my life to have this kindness and hospitality. Others from the north act differently. They are loud and even though they may be kind they just act

We live in a society where people judge everyone based on the stereotypes of who they are whether it is gay, southern, or even their nationality. First, just because a guy it gay does not mean they have to act feminine. There are many gay guys in the world that do enjoy sports and hate fashion. Most people think that just because a guy it gay means they have to love doing everything a girl likes to do when in reality it is up to the individual person to decide that not their sexual orientation. Next just because someone lives in the south does not mean they love hunting, go to church, and love sweet tea. Some southerners rather stay away from guns and live in the city away from the country life. Finally, just because someone is from a certain

Although the character of Sofia knows that her resistance will cause trouble, she feels it is more important to stand up for herself, than to bow down to repression of white authority. Had Sofia not fought back, she still would have been punished for cursing the Mayor’s wife. There was no pathway for Sofia to keep her dignity and not offend the Mayor and his wife. In that system, a black person had to remain inferior to whites, and in the South, follow the Jim Crow Laws that enforced segregation. C N Truman describes Jim Crow as “a minstrel show character from the 1830’s. He was portrayed as an elderly, crippled and clumsy African American slave and his portrayal showed all the negative stereotypes of African Americans – the black man with his white master with Jim Crow being thankful for his lot in life.” Sofia goes against these stereotypes as she is a strong-willed woman who throughout the text knows she is entitled to more. The only idea that Sofia follows, is that she unwillingly has a white master, but is never thankful for this.

“Yes, come in! How are you today? Can I get you some fresh sun tea or maybe something to eat?” My Mom inquired as she beckoned our visitor to the sofas for a chat. During a pausing point in their friendly conversation about the wellbeing of our visitor’s family, my Mom offered to refresh empty glasses and plates. Southern charm and hospitality are not plain stereotypes for residents in the South or clichés; they are a way to make friends, family, and strangers feel welcomed everywhere they go. Here, in Texas, hospitality and southern charm are not necessarily expectations, but attitudes and atmospheres. Within these atmospheres, everything seems warmer and more personal. I believe that manners, helpfulness, and _____ all determine whether or not somebody behaves like a lady or gentleman and contains southern charm.

Stereotypes are made up and simplified ideas that people make about something else. Alabama has many stereotypes surrounding it and the people that live in it. Stereotypes of Alabama include things about lifestyle, technology, and speaking. People that have never been to the state have a very different opinion to the people that have been because of stereotypes. Living in Alabama stereotypes are somewhat true but are overall false when talking about Alabamians as a whole and should not represent the people that live in Alabama.

The southern states’ demographic have increasingly become more white-dominated as Blacks migrated upward to the northern states (Campbell, 2010). Reinforcing southerners’ collective white social identities. The southern culture is characterized around rigidity and radical conservatism (Kuklinski et al., 1997). As until today, Confederate Flag is utilized as their identity marker. According to James H. Kuklinski, the omnipresent racial bias in the South is an idiosyncratically southern phenomenon that is not merely an outcome of the mixture of individuals who reside there. Contemporary southern whites exercise alternative sources of expression of resent

For decades the American people have been seen as the most privileged in the world. Their country has been envied upon for its many opportunities and benefits.In the past, Americans were subservient to the stronger higher powers of other countries,such as Great Britain. In 2015, Americans are seen as one of the most powerful and influential people in the world who live in a country who has both good and bad effects on other countries.

According to NYDailyNews, the average American watches more than five hours of television every day. Through these television programs, people are exposed to many issues in the representation of women, children, gender, sexuality, and race. Racial stereotypes are still evident today, even though times have changed since the early 1900s. They provide negative or false assumptions about a variety of groups, as well as ideas that do not necessarily pertain to every person. Fox Tv’s show Glee is an accurate portrayal of the many racial stereotypes that are apparent in today’s society. Glee offers viewers a complex construction of race that both perpetuates negative racial stereotypes for humorous purposes and attempts to disrupt stereotypical notions of “token” characters.