Facing South

David Bowman · Anita Parlow · Carl Abbott · Wayne Greenhaw · Allen Tullos · John Siceloff · Bill Finger · Valerie Quinney · Chip Hughes · Alvin Rosenbaum · Susan Moss

The Institute for Southern Studies

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 Throughout the country, and even this region, people view the South through myth and stereotype. It's not surprising. If they turn to newspapers, to television and radio, to popular films and literature, to most history books and folklore, they encounter these distortions. They find insulting portraits of Southerners, whitewashed presentations of southern economics and politics, selective visions of history, misunderstandings of relationships between people, and between people and their land and work. Many trivial qualities are romanticized; other important ones are totally ignored. Blacks are presented only as victims of racism, and labor struggles are completely forgotten.

This view is inevitable when people simply treat the South as an aberration of mainstream America, or a remnant of some past culture. We at Southern Exposure look at the South from another perspective. This is our home, we are of it and examine it that we may know more of ourselves and our neighbors. These are the politics and culture that surround us and affect us daily, that we must analyze, praise and attack so our lives can grow and prosper. And this is the ground from which we must view the larger world. By listening to local tobacco farmers discuss the pressures on them to expand or die, we can better understand Earl Butz's plan for US agribusiness. By hearing a bluesman's story, we come to appreciate how a particular culture evolves from material hardship and inspires immense creativity.