South Deserves Respect
By Juan Matute
Webmaster

The poet Christopher Bridges (aka: the rapper Ludacris) once said “If anyone talk bad about the Dirty South/Tell me what I'm gon do? Act a fool!”

It seems many Pomona students have failed to heed Bridges’ warning. The political correctness on Pomona’s campus seemingly does not extend to South-bashing.

South-bashing comes in many forms. Some assume the South contains the majority of the country’s racism, others just think it’s a swampy place that the religious right calls home, and yet others simply bash Southerners’ accents.

A lot of those who engage in South bashing have never actually been there. One person I talked to, who has never been to the South, didn’t want to consider Georgia Tech or Emory for Grad school because it’s in the South, without citing another reason.

Some people like to bash the South because of its history. I don’t think California is a place where people steal land from Mexicans and Japanese, but that’s a big part of the state’s history. Sure, racism and backwards people still exist in the South – just as they do everywhere else in the country.

I’m just urging you to view the South with an open mind. Atlanta is a city of 4 million people, mostly northerners. It has a surprisingly low cost of living for how urban it is. Maybe some of you will have the opportunity to live there when you graduate. I urge you not to pass up that opportunity because it’s in “the South.”

This suggestion extends all over the South. Louisiana is on the verge of electing a South Asian or woman as their governor. If you do live there, you’ll probably meet some of the friendliest people you’ll meet in your life.

Plus, bashing the South is distracting us from what we should really be doing: hating that door at ITS.