Dare To Ask Talk And News About Our Differences - This topic has 28 replies, 29 voices, and was last updated 20 years, 5 months ago by
.
- Posts
Kelly, Stop, and take a deep breath. I am a native Southerner. However I’ve known many folks from elsewhere in the USA. People from other places in this country, especially from the Northeast, tend to be more blunt and outspoken than those of us from the South. I know someone from New York who tends to be short and curt with others, but since I know she is from the Northeast, I realize that this is simply her background, and make an allowance for that. I guess, what I want to say is, relax, and try to relate on a gentler level with us. Try to meet us halfway, and we will do the same. You may want to let your co-workers how you feel; communicate to them that your background is different from theirs. Once all y’all get this out in the open, things may go more smoothly for all of you.
User Detail :
Name : Fossilhund, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Lutheran, Age : 48, City : Orlando, State : FL, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,I moved to Atlanta a year and a half ago from Arizona. I have found some similar things. I find it difficult to get information from many individuals from public places to business to church. I have been told that using ma’am and sir will open many doors. I am working on that. I have also run across lots of chauvinism. In the south, I think it is simply seen as proper roles instead of chauvinism. I have hit many walls with this, and have found that when my husband addresses the issue there is more success. I have had to turn many things over to him as a result. I can’t offer much in way of help, but I can sympathize with your frustration.
User Detail :
Name : Dawn25940, Gender : F, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 32, City : Marietta, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Educational Software, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Lower middle class,I’m from the Midwest, and lived in Tennessee for ten years. I’d always heard how people in the South were so polite. And when I moved there, I totally disagreed with that notion. But after a couple of months, I didn’t notice it as much. And then after a year or so, I didn’t notice it at all. When I moved back to the Midwest last year, I thought the same thing…these Midwesterners are so rude! But now I don’t think that. I think communicating has regional nuances. And until I got used to those things, I tended to misunderstand people and take things wrongly. I LOVE the South. I hope that you, too, will get used to it and learn to love the people. And if you live down there for fifty years, you’ll still always be a ‘Yankee.’ A lot of Southerners identify very deeply with their Southern heritage and still wish they’d won the war. I never met anybody who called me a Yankee in a mean way, though. But you’ll always be an outsider. Embrace it, I did and had some amazing experiences with people as I learned about Southern cooking and traditions. Enjoy!
User Detail :
Name : Janey, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Catholic, Age : 34, City : Aberdeen, State : SD, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,Honey, I’m afraid that you are in a terrible situation. While it may be difficult to move to a new area, I have to say that as a lifelong Southerner, sometimes when I encounter a Northerner, I find myself being looked down upon because of my accent! My poor (Vanderbilt philosophy major graduate) baby sister had to endure tons of anti- Southern attitude while she lived in Massachusetts! Perhaps it is in the way that you approach things. Southerners are typically more likely to respond in a way you may find more acceptable when politeness, respect, and understanding are brought into the mix. Good luck- and persevere- we are wonderful people here- look for the best in us, not the worst.
User Detail :
Name : cynthia31784, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Methodist, Age : 29, City : new orleans, State : LA, Country : United States, Occupation : retail sales, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,Parts of the deep south -still- have a hangover from the post civil war era. Coming from Vermont, I’m sure you sound like a super-duper yankee. I moved to Chicago from Kentucky at 18 and I had a similar problem. People up here hear my accent and they assume I’m stupid.
User Detail :
Name : j21253, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Atheist, Age : 34, City : chicago, State : IL, Country : United States, Occupation : Healthcare, Social class : Middle class,There are several factors working against you, some of which are covered by the previous replies. I will cover them as follows: a) you are ‘foreign’ – a Yankee in the South; b) you are a woman – the South, especially in small towns, is the last bastion of male chauvinism, and as a female, you are just assumed you don’t know what the heck you are talking about; and c) as a female, are working in a business setting. Most business workers in small town businesses are male, and the only female staff are usually clerical, who are lowly paid and assumed (by virtue of this) to be ‘dumb.’ If I sound bitter, it might be because after attaining a law degree, working as a sucessful city administration official for over 10 years, recognised in my field, etc., I finally gave up working in offices after one of my male bosses went on and one about there being ‘too many queen bees’ in the office who ‘thought they knew what they were doing.’ And government was the most liberal of areas in which a woman could work in the South! I went into consulting on my own terms, and have never looked back. I also have since left the South (far away, as you can tell).
User Detail :
Name : K. Greenberg, Gender : F, Age : 50, City : Northampton, State : NA, Country : United Kingdom, Occupation : consultant/doctoral student, Education level : Over 4 Years of College,I just moved to New York from the SW, most of my family is from the South. I can’t get over how blunt and aggressive people seem to be up here or the lack of casual conversation before major issues are discussed. It has taken me months to realize they don’t mean to be rude. You may come across to them differently than you realize. I find it hard to listen to what they tell me, because I spend the first half of the conversation shocked by how they say it and feeling attacked. Try slowing down, smiling, and not anticipating a fight; I know I wish the people around me would do that.
User Detail :
Name : Dianne, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Methodist, Age : 28, City : Buffalo, State : NY, Country : United States, Occupation : Veterinarian, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,I am speaking as someone born and raised in the South, having lived several places. This attitude is present in some places I’ve been, not in others. I’m currently almost right on the Chesapeake Bay, and these are the laziest people I’ve ever seen, don’t listen to anything, no sense of urgency as someone else mentioned, and very racially divided. However, I lived in the Tri-Cities area of Tennessee, and it was a different world there. I’ve often thought that I’d love to take these people down there for a week, none of them would make it. In my opinion, sometimes the more rural an area is, the more negatives there are. Maybe not always the case, but that’s what I’ve seen in my experiences.
User Detail :
Name : Carla-T, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 29, City : Lancaster, State : VA, Country : United States, Occupation : Currently SAHM, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,I think you might be taking several personalities of your coworkers, and calling it ‘The South’. Southerners are as diverse a group as you can imagine. I consider myself a southerner, although I’ve travelled all over the world as an Air Force Officer and contractor, and to southerners I have a slightly northern accent. When I worked in New York two years ago, everybody thought I came from a farm outside of Hicksville. We have liberals, conservatives, black, white, catholic, jewish, baptist, hispanic and even transplanted europeans and orientals who have become southerners, and we natives welcome them. (We do have intolerant rednecks, but they often live way outside of the city limits) My observations from my travels vs. life in the south: Southerners don’t lay on their car horns as much as those from up north, and are sometimes tactful to the point of ‘white lies’ so they don’t hurt your feelings. Southerners hate rudeness, abruptness, impatience and having other cultural views forced upon them…although they’ll eventually accept new situations, in their own time.You may be working with a tight-knit group who are suspicious of outsiders. You may be facing a small-town mentality, where your accent makes you stand out. (In some places down here, differing accents are a novelty and a pleasant diversion.) Without more information, it’s hard to say. Please don’t become closed-minded and think that all southerners are the same. Hang in there…you’ll eventually find a group of like-minded souls and form fast friendships.
User Detail :
Name : Mitch, Gender : M, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 44, City : Columbia, State : SC, Country : United States, Occupation : Sub-contractor, artist, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,As a manager and a Southerner myself, I can see many issues in your post that I can respond to. I could go on and on, and this WILL be long, but I will keep it to a minimum… Managers/supervisors must take an “even ground” when there are conflicts between workers. While you may think you are being ignored, I can assure you that you are not. A good manager listens to all sides and makes changes in a way that does not hurt the self-esteem of any employee. If you make a mistake at the work place, your supervisor and co-workers assume that it is due to lack of training therefore giving you the benefit of the doubt. Do not expect background/management decisions to be discussed with you, especially if you are a new, entry-level employee. In the South, as it should be everywhere, combativeness in the work place is perceived as bad for morale as well as productivity. While “debates” may have been acceptable in Vermont, they are definitely frowned upon down here. There is an old Southern saying that you catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar. The business practices from many northern companies I myself have dealt with would be considered extremely rude here. What dismays me more than anything is when it is my vendor. As a newly transplanted “Yankee”, it is going to take some time for Southerners to build up trust in you and for you to change some aspects of your behavior. Pleasantries are a part of our normal discourse. Changes are to be well thought out and made without undo haste. Many people from the north come down here with uninformed, loudly spoken opinions that are insulting to us. I will give you just two examples that I myself have experienced. About 10 years ago, another soccer mother was ranting and raving about all the things she hated about our area including the polite chit-chat by store employees and the large number of black people. I kept my mouth shut until she kept going on and on about public school busing. I finally informed her that we did not like it any better than she did and that it was a federal mandate imposed on us back in the late sixties to enforce integration of schools. Basically, we had to comply or lose any federal money for education including free lunches for the poor.
User Detail :
Name : Shelley, Gender : F, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 44, City : Charlotte, State : NC, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,As I grew up in the rural South, I thought that people everywhere else must be more open-minded, less provincial, and more sophisticated than we were. I was wrong! I lived in Connecticut for four years when I finished college. I loved the place and the people that I got to know. I never got to know many of the people I saw regularly, however, because they were close-minded and unwilling to get to know outsiders. People in Connecticut asked my wife and me some ‘stupid’ questions: Do you have electricity down South? Does the South have multi-lane highways? Do you still beat blacks? Does everybody live on the beach in Florida? Because I knew the people who asked these questions, I realized that they didn’t ask from arrogance or enmity but from simple ignorance. They didn’t know because they had never visited the South and didn’t know anyone from the South. The reaction you received in the South is most likely similar to that some Southerners have received in the North. People have mental images of people who are different from them and, until those images are burst, those false images determine their attitude and how they interact. I’ve found that one of the best ways to react to such prejudice, malicious or not, is to be oneself and give ignorant people an opportunity to learn who you are and that, after all, you aren’t so bad. It worked for me. When I left Connecticut to return to Florida, my wife and I had good friends of different colors and nationalities and who knew much more about the South than they did before we met them.
User Detail :
Name : Wayne Harvey, Gender : M, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Baptist, Age : 56, City : LaCrosse, State : FL, Country : United States, Occupation : minister, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,Yeesh, I’m sorry your situation is so horrible. It’s also really pissing me off, because those idiots are giving Southerners a bad name! I lived in South Carolina for many years, and encountered many kind, generous, patient people, as well as the odd a**hole or two. Maybe it’s just that town in particular that has a higher ratio of them. My advice: find a Southerner in that town who seems friendly and educated, and explain your situation as politely as you can (no one likes to hear their town dissed, even if the place is a dive). They should be able to sympathize or give advice, or perhaps steer you towards people who are like-minded.
User Detail :
Name : Rina, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Catholic, Age : 22, City : Royal Palm Beach, State : FL, Country : United States, Education level : High School Diploma, Social class : Middle class,I am from the suburbs of NY and have been in Texas for 24 years. I haven’t had any of the problems you have had, but I have noticed people in the South tend to exaggerate the traits of Northern people, or make them up completely. We all tend to think the best of our own kind, and the worst of another type of person. I also think if you win a war, you let it go, but if you lose a war, you never get over it.( as in the civil war)
User Detail :
Name : Mary Ellen, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Catholic, Age : 52, City : Coppell, State : TX, Country : United States, Occupation : marketing exec., Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,First of all, most of what you’re describing is not related to Southern Culture at all. It seems to be related to where you’re working and your occupation. The first thing you should do is read up on Southern culture just as you should if you were going to another country for awhile. Southerns are generally polite but not necessarily nice. They also hide behind a public face and can appear outwardly charming, while hating your guts.
User Detail :
Name : Wyn, Gender : F, Race : White/Caucasian, City : Augusta, State : GA, Country : United States,
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.