You're From the South?

A few nights ago, at a reading for the book "Other People's Property" (supposedly a book about being white and loving hip-hop), a guy said, "Violent rap doesn't exist anymore. (Pause) Well, except in the South where it's all just bling."

This came from the same reading where the author had said Eminem experienced "reverse racism" (whatever that is. Neola Young and I are still trying to figure that out. Isn't any racism racism?), where when Lynette Hanson said she is from Mississippi, the crowd collectively gasped (some even covered their mouths).

We're in Portland, Oregon, folks. It's the place I dreamed about as a young teenager in the South, thinking I'd move here to the land of progressives and fit in.

Don't get me wrong, Portland is open and welcoming, and you can walk gay as you want to do down the street. But it is amazing to me the way the world still views the South. It's not a foreign country. It isn't the only place where violent rap still lives (and as a side note, every song I know about bling has nothing to do with violence. Jewelery and violence do not necessarily go hand-in-hand).

So what do we do to get people to quit thinking of the South in such distorted ways? I know I want to work for a national bureau at a paper, covering the South, to combat unresponsible journalism (like my favorite example, Eric Lipton's piece on post-Katrina Jackson last year) but also to illuminate the South for the rest of the country, to end the collective gasps and the misinformed declarations.