BECAUSE I SAID SO

I've been thinking lately about people I don't like. Such is the American pastime, after all. All of us have people we don't like, and we enjoy nothing more than thinking and talking about why we don't like them. We particularly enjoy lumping together entire subsets of people we dislike and associating those people with unlikable traits possessed by every member of the group we made up. It's a game we play. It's not real. Sometimes we aren't even aware that we do it, but we all do. That's my thesis, anyway. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we don't all do it, but I certainly do.

For instance, I don't like Yankees. There it is. I said it. I wish it weren't the case, but it is. Yankees bother me, and I'm not too proud to admit it. Neither am I too proud to admit that there's little logic involved in my generalized dislike. I actually know a whole bunch of Yankees who I quite like on an individual level, and still, as a people, I don't like them. I have a friend, Robb, who's from Massachusetts and I like him well enough that I've shared an office with him and traveled out of the country with him. I have another friend, Elijah, from New York, who I like so much I let him swim in my pool and I don't even drain the water afterward. I have another friend, Brad, who's an Elvis impersonator from Illinois, where they aren't really Yankees but they might as well be, and I like him well enough that I bought him a couple of beers just the other night and let his dog sit on my lap. That's just scratching the surface. I have lots of friends from the North.

So what sense does it make for me to say that I don't like Yankees when I clearly like quite a few Yankees? It makes no sense whatsoever. Most sweeping generalizations don't make sense, and my own predilection about Yankees is one of them. It's an un-thought-out bias that I just toss about without questioning myself. Maybe it's just some outmoded cultural baggage that I picked up in my youth. If so, it would be understandable. I'm from Louisiana, my father's people are from Texas and my mother's are from Oklahoma. There was plenty of Yankee-hating in my childhood environment, conscious or otherwise.

So as I'm writing this, I'm thinking that perhaps I need to be less cavalier about saying things like “I don't like Yankees,” and maybe I need not to make sweeping generalizations about people. Maybe I need to stop associating individuals with stereotypes and just either like a person or not based upon how that person is, rather than where he or she happens to call home. In fact, maybe we all do.

Like I said, I'm a southern mongrel, and I know I don't like it when people make sweeping generalizations about me. For the record, I do not French kiss my cousins (not any more). Also for the record, I have never had sex with a sheep (I was helping it over the fence). I can read and write (sort of). I do not have a car up on blocks in my front yard. There are no bloodhounds sleeping under my porch. I do not have “Linda Beth” tattooed on my bicep, crossed out, with “Mary Alice” drawn in over it. I have never rented a couch. And I don't smoke at church (not during the service, at least). It's true that my great-grandparents from Pickle's Gap, Ark., were siblings, but I cannot play the banjo and I do wear shoes when I go squirrel hunting. I, like a good many Southerners, am plenty smart and I'd like it if the rest of y'all would stop thinking I'm not.

Protest if you like. Go ahead. Tell me you don't have preconceived ideas about Southerners. Pretend to yourself that you don't make sweeping generalizations about my people and that those generalizations don't come out in some insensitive, stereotypical ways. Well, folks, Tony is going to disillusion you. You aren't the innocent, unbiased, scrupulously principled, postmodern free-thinkers you purport to be. Think really hard about this: Have you ever, even just for humor's sake, wished to affect stupidity and done so by adopting a mockery of a Southern accent? Be honest. You've done it. Many of you do it regularly. When you want to sound stupid and make each other giggle, you try to sound like me. Well, that's not nice.

Obviously, most of you don't dislike Southerners in general and I'd bet most of you don't consciously think people like me are dumber than people like you. But conscious or not, you've got some of your own baggage, and wherever you picked it up, I don't cotton to it. In fact, I take umbrage. I wish you'd drop it.

Maybe it's because mine is a defeated culture and I am an heir to a civilization that was burned to the ground by your forebears some seven-score years ago that I and my kind have become the subset of Americans that can be freely lampooned in public. Had things gone differently in the War Between the States, maybe y'all would be the stupid ones and I the uppity, effete, brash-talking, pushy, impatient snot. But as fate and overwhelming military force would have it, I'm the former and you're the latter and that's OK with me.

But I would be even more OK if we would all try to be just a bit more introspective about our likes and dislikes, our prevailing and underlying beliefs, our attitudes and opinions, our inclinations and aversions. I need to stop disliking you swindling, deceitful, pasty-faced carpet-baggers and ya'll need to stop believing I have seven recipes for armadillo and they all include okra. I have only one and it calls for celery. I'm trying to get along. I hope y'all will, too.