Southern Stereotypes

For our blog’s next topic, I would like to focus on stereotypes, particularly southern stereotypes. Southern stereotypes are often portrayed in movies, television, commercials, etc. Southerners are constantly compared to northerners. Northerners are shown to be progressive, intelligent, face-paced, but arrogant and rude while southerners are shown to be hospitable, patriotic, friendly, but slow and unintelligent. In this video (also embedded below), Craig Considine directed a discussion about northern and southern stereotypes and typical views that Americans have of their countrymen. Starting at 1:15, a few people list some common stereotypes. One southerner described northerners as rude, rich, fast-paced, arrogant, and jerks. One northerner described southerners as civilized, but backwards, not intelligent, and poor. Another northerner says he thinks of rednecks when he thinks about the South. Below the first video is a slideshow of redneck images. Most of these images show comical contraptions or people doing very unintelligent things. People associate these images, however, with rednecks and the south.





What are some common stereotypes you associate with the South? Have you seen anything lately that portrayed the common stereotypes of the South? Do you think southern stereotypes still provide an accurate representation of the post-modern south? Is there still a difference between northerners and southerners now? Is the division less or more defined?

I also found an interesting blog post about stereotypes from southern blogger J D Murrah. In his blog post titled, “A Southern Primer: Truths, Untruths and Stereotypes,” Murrah writes about where some stereotypes come from and describes their origin or completely refutes them based on history, southern traits, and outlooks.