I Don't Think Massification And Globalization And

Drive A Hundred Miles And The Barbecue Changes.

There's An Ethic That Says: 'you Don't Run Off To The Church For The Sacraments Of Salvation, You Establish A Personal Relationship With God. You Don't Run Off To The Courts For Justice, You Settle It Yourself. You Don't Run Off To Labor Unions To Sort Out Your Work Relations, You Can Take This Job And Shove It If You Don't Like What You're Doing.

You Ask People What Their Ethnicity Is, And A Lot Of Scots-irish People Either Don't Know Or If They Know It They Just Don't Acknowledge It. It's Not Something They Really Identify With. They're Just Plain Old Americans, Plain Vanilla. I Don't Think They Are A Self-conscious Voting Bloc.

Maybe We've Been Brainwashed By 130 Years Of Yankee History, But Southern Identity Now Has More To Do With Food, Accents, Manners, Music Than The Confederate Past. It's Something That's Open To Both Races, A Variety Of Ethnic Groups And People Who Move Here.

I Can See Why Many Southerners, Black Ones In Particular, Don't Like The Implication That Southernness And The Confederate Heritage Are One And The Same, Because They're Not. On The Other Hand, There Are People Who Want To Extirpate That Completely And Want Folks To Spit On The Graves Of Their Ancestors.