Road Tripping Through the South

Ari Kaufman, a writer for hackwriters, drove through the South and realized that many of the stereotypes northerners harbor about southerners are actually wrong. Kaufman relays his journey to readers in his article; The South shows its many colours.

“Driving through a 30-minute blizzard in Western Alabama last week, I mentioned to my traveling companion that I didn’t think that this area received this kind of snowfall. She nodded in concurrence, and then I went on a contolled tirade about how weather is just another large misconception many Americans have pertaining to the South. My investigation was already in full throttle, but this simply added to the intrigue and validity of my endeavors.

A friend of mine, who used to work in Americorps, spent nine months in various southern areas from the Gulf Coast to Southern Tennessee to Western Georgia. Although a hard-core liberal Northerner, he often elucidated to me how we wrongly portray southereners (black and white) as uneducated, poor, racist, or homophobic. After spending a week last March in Mississippi and Louisiana with him; also driving across this part of the country twice in the past year, and, very recently, spending four days traversing the interstates and back roads of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and North Florida, this man was basically correct.”