You Ask People What Their Ethnicity Is,

I've Occasionally Wished I Had Caller Id. Even Telemarketers, I Hate To Hang Up On Them. I Try To Explain I'm Not Interested, But They Have All These Canned Responses So I End Up Having To Hang Up On Them Anyway.

Every Southerner, I Think, Knows People Like Bill Clinton, Maybe Not Quite As Smart And Maybe Not Quite As Liberal, But Kind Of A Glad-handing, Country-club Yuppie Southerner. The Problem Is We Don't Have Labels For Middle-class Southerners.

The South Is Like My Favorite Pair Of Blue Jeans. It's Shrunk Some, Faded A Bit, Got A Few Holes In It. It Just Might Split At The Seams. It Doesn't Look Much Like It Used To, But It's More Comfortable, And There's Probably A Lot Of Wear Left In It.

If You Care To Define The South As A Poor, Rural Region With Lousy Race Relations, That South Survives Only In Geographical Shreds And Patches And Most Southerners Don't Live There Any More.

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.