The "Southern way of life" is a palimpsest and a shibboleth. I wouldn't put that much stock in it. What's supposed to be unique about it is only typical of any largely rural, largely working-class region. Cities in the South are the same as cities anywhere else in the US. Twenty years ago I might have added "with a bit more income inequality", but these days I think that's getting to be also pretty much the same all over.

Focusing on the South in a discussion of what's wrong with white people in this country is a mistake. It's a ubiquitous mistake and a deliberate one, because making it all about someone else is an easy way to let yourself off the hook. But it's still a mistake.

Partly it's a mistake because of the resentment it elicits from the people you place in the role of your sin eaters. That's the sort of thing that would make anyone unwilling even for a moment to consider abandoning their heroes, no matter how ill served they may be to preserve them.

But mainly it's a mistake because it gives you an excuse not to think about, or even notice, the part of the problem that you yourself are being, that the white people around you are being.

White people in the South have had a hundred and fifty years of hearing from everybody else white in the country how terrible they are. I know; I grew up there. Imagine my surprise when, on leaving home to make a life for myself somewhere with better prospects, I discovered that no one anywhere else is any better. Imagine my surprise when I discovered there were people who'd assume from my origins and my way of speaking that, in me, they had at last found someone with whom they could air their real feelings. Imagine my surprise when I realized that I'd been wrong all those years to think, as so many were so anxious to convince us all, that there was something uniquely wrong with the South.

Well, I was oblivious to a lot of things, growing up. But, as my back and my knees let me know every morning, that was a long time ago. To remain oblivious now, despite the historical moment unfolding all around us - I don't know what that would take.

A lot of effort, I imagine. I have family who to this day won't speak the name of William Sherman without a curse - not that I blame them; my family is one of many who still bear the scars of his attempt to make a point - and even some of them are starting to think thoughts new to them. It bewilders me to imagine how anyone, in the current moment, could avoid new ways of thinking.

If we're going to try to figure out anything here, why don't we make it that?