kmj
That’s an awfully prejudiced thing to say for this board. I’m not impressed. I grew up in rural Tennessee and now I live in Louisiana, but I have done a lot of traveling and I know that there are major, sometimes off-putting differences between Southerners and other Americans. A lot of this is in misinterpreted social interactions. Southerners are brought up to interact socially in a more formal manner. That includes, for better or for worse: never using a confrontational tone, never speaking ill of someone to their face, and pretending to listen to a conversation rather than check out of it abruptly. Southerners are often not trustworthy of outsiders, especially if the outsiders patronize them because of a preconceived notion that Southerners are idiots and somehow lower class than anyone else. And I have never heard the criticism that Southerners are negative people – we keep it very positive here in Nawlins! You will find that the formality falls away very quickly if someone likes you and trusts you. Southerners are all about trying to make you feel comfortable and will sometimes try to parrot back your social tendencies to interact more effectively. This can sometimes have pretty hilarious results. So don’t go sending your resume all over the country because you’ve struggled to get along with a small group of people. Kill them with kindness – it always works around here. Try smiling a lot, saying hi to strangers on the street, taking it a little slower and a little sweeter, and you will come to know what being a Southerner is about.
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