John Shelton Reed Quotes

We could say that people who eat grits, listen to country music, follow stock-car racing, support corporal punishment in the schools, hunt ‘possum, go to Baptist churches and prefer bourbon to Scotch are likely to be Southerners.

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.’

The nature of the South is changing faster than the stereotypes are. Much of the South now looks like San Jose. Is it still southern?

Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe’s wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes.

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.

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.