defensive rant, anti-south, pro-best friend. back off, assholes. leave my fucking best friend alon

[cimorene]

your background comes from everything that happens around you when you grow up. i'm a firm nurture-supporter in the nature/nurture debate, even down to artisitic and writing skills to a large extent, and it matters how many friends you had and who they were and what your parents thought about everything and how hot it was and how often you played outside. but the thing is that when you have good parents to whom you're very close they're like half of your nurture all together because they color how you take in EVERYTHING else.

guinevere33 and i, as the lovely (if bitter and old) wax_jism can attest, do not have southern accents despite growing up in the heart of dixie--why? because my father's parents grew up in nyc, so he doesn't, and my mother grew up in kansas. why? because even though her mother was bred in the carolinas, is named betty gail and gan sound like katherine tucker windham on a good day, her father is from maryland. confederate battle flags? jesus fish? the word 'y'all'? ignorance of evolution? an inexplicable distaste for biracial marriage, or, hm, a desire to see the ten commandmants on the wall? move right along, folks, because you're not going to find them here. we're alabamians, not southerners, transplants, not fucking natives. no one in 18 years has assumed either of us was from tuscaloosa, but in less than 12 months, people can't tell she's not pure la and i'm not pure massachusetts, so yeah.

your heritage, your upbringing, your background? those are in your home. not around your house.

Comments

[thelionforreal.livejournal.com]

me, i was born in irving, texas (home of cowboys stadium) and raised in the very northwestern most corner of mississippi. i never really had a bad accent, and six months after i moved up here, *snap* it was gone. (i had my own reasons for phasing it out, including those having to do with living in a village of 3000 residents who weren't so tolerant minded, having shaved my head and being a lesbian. all i needed was one more thing to make me stick out like a sore thumb.) but, anyway, the point is this.

i was never a southerner. 17 years in the south, and i was never ever a southerner. not a stereotypical one, anyway. my father, born and raised in chelsea, michigan, is more of a southerner than i ever was. he's the one who's got the southern accent now. my grandparents (his parents) still don't have one, and they've lived there just as long. i was raised by transplanted northerners in the south, and that's where the question of upbringing comes in. my grandparents practically raised me, and they are very tolerant individuals.

i asked them once what they thought about raising me, if they expected me to become anything, as i was their only daughter (their daughter katja died at 16 months from scarlet fever), and my nana said, "raising you, we just tried to give you the widest berth possible so that you could be come your own person. we never wanted to mold you into anything." and that's why i'm the not-southerner that i am. i was raised to be completely open-minded, tolerant, and so on.

there are things about the south that are beautiful (which you don't dispute, i'm sure), but i got out as soon as i could, and while my daddy would love for me to come back, i never will, and he knows that.

okay, that was a ramble, and i'm not sure it had a point.