My Kind of Southern Pride

The last week has been pretty tense in my home state, and equally tense on my Facebook stream. I've bitten my tongue so many times it's a miracle I can still speak.  I have spent more of my life living out of The South than in it, but I self-identify as a southerner, and I hope for all the right reasons.  I'd like to share some of the reasons I am extremely proud to have grown up in the south and hope that some of you might also see what I see.  Perhaps it's time we start focusing on what we do well so that we can begin to realize that some of the things we don't do well still need work, and now might be a good time to start.

1. The Food.  Southerners know how to cook some seriously good food and there's no denying it.  BBQ (all kinds), cobbler, sweet tea, shrimp and grits, cured ham, chicken and dumplings, banana pudding, deviled eggs, low country boil, deviled crab, hush puppies.  I could go on and on and on. . . . . .
2. Loyalty.  Sometimes this one gets us into trouble, but for the most part it's a good thing.  Southerners are fiercely loyal.  To their families, their neighbors, their communities, their state, their BBQ, and their football team. Barbecue and football are actually very similar. People all over the south have their favorite type of Q and their favorite football team and will argue until the cows come home over which is better.  With football though, we pick our sides and hate each others guts when we are playing each other, but when a team from another part of the country plays one of us we all fiercely defend each other. (except for maybe Florida, because nobody wants to cheer for Florida except Florida fans.) (Oh, and Go Dawgs/It's great to be a gator hater)
3. Grace.  There is a kind of southerner that has an air of "grace" about them.  It's probably mostly rooted in faith, but also rooted in the need to do the right thing when people need it most.  I've experienced extraordinary Grace in people during two major events in my life: my father's passing and my mother's lung transplant. They built a foundation under my family in some very trying times, and there is no denying that that support helped us all get through it.  The world witnessed this kind of Grace from the families of the shooting victims when they stood up in court and offered forgiveness instead of hate.  Those types of southerners are the best of us, and we should do everything we can to honor them for having that kind of extraordinary courage.
4. Community. Everything revolves around your community in the south.  That means any and all of the following things:  family, neighbors, town, church, school, football team, little league baseball team, etc.
5. Football. Yes, I have mentioned football as part of previous items, but it's so big it also gets it's own slot.  Football is the great unifier in the south.  At all levels, but we are most obsessed with college football.  On game day, all politics is put away and everyone comes together as one big family to cheer on the home team. It offers us an automatic connection with our society.  Even the enemy is welcome at your tailgate table on gameday as long as he is not an asshole. Even then the response is usually "Bless his heart, he can't help that he's an Auburn fan, someone get him another beer."

And with that, I'll end with a football video.  I'm biased, but no one does hype videos better that Georgia.  Consider watching this one not because it's a football video, but because the narration is very powerful and speaks to the right way to react to last week's tragedy in Charleston.

We Are One from Georgia Football on Vimeo.