Leave, Steve

"Southern man/When will you pay them back? I heard screamin' and bullwhips cracking / How long? How long?" ~ Neil Young

"Well, I hope Neil Young will remember / A southern man don't need him around anyhow" ~ Lynyrd Skynyrd

For 3 years, DixieChick and I have worked in adjacent offices, taught and advised the same students, dealt with the same red tape and office politics, and found solidarity in our similar responses to the cultures of the South. So I am therefore very sad to report that I am leaving our place of employment to go back to graduate school. I am leaving Dr. DC to fend off armies of sweet tea, entitles students, and overzealous Baptists all on her own. What I want to share with you, DixieChick's loyal readers, is not a nostalgic trip down our office's tragicomic memory lane, but rather a DixieChick-style anthropological investigation of my own. She would want it that way. My observations are about the funny responses that I've been receiving from Southerners when they find out that I'm leaving the region.

Maybe it's my own fault. I've always been very polity and coy when asked why I, a nerdy white kid from the suburbs who fell in love with social science and mass media production, moved from Big Midwestern State University to work at a small HBCU in an even smaller Southern town in the middle of an agricultural region. Southerners know pretty instinctively when "you ain't from around here". Common questions include "Where you from?" and, while taking down my number, "What the hell area code is that?!".
In response to the abundant questioning about why I came here, I often reply with the quick and smug "For the weather". And that's true, although only part of the truth. My partner and I somewhere warm, like Florida, Georgia, or Arizona. And for the record, I'm glad I didn't choose Arizona. Anyway, sometimes I add "for the job" to my response. I have a pretty much perfect job. It's tailor fit for what I want to do at this stage in my life, and the position at it is now was actually kind of designed for me. I love what I do - the only reason I'm leaving now is because I have to earn a terminal degree and that's not something I can do while working this full time job. So I tell people I came here for the weather and the job. And maybe that confuses them.

You see, the subtle underlying truth that I know and that they suspect is that I'm a carpetbagger. I came here as an "opportunistic Northerner" to fix your institutions. I wanted to come to this smaller school because they needed development and leadership in my areas of expertise. I came here because I wanted to work with, for, and around African Americans and other minorities, and stick my finger in the eye of white culture. I know white bigotry - the Midwest is more racist and segregated than people realize, and I come from one of the most racist states in the Midwest, where the Klan ran the state legislature a mere 4 generations ago. I jumped at the opportunity to work for a black institution, and to expose my ignorant white self to black culture, issues, and education in an immersive way. I have two signs on my office door that just stop short of proclaiming "kill whitey". Unfortunately, my students and colleagues are not quite that radical. In fact, they're the epitome of conservatism at times. But that's fine, I still love it here. I came here because I believed in this place and its mission. I should have just been a lot bolder saying that.

It probably doesn't help that there are white locals, "good ole boys" and gals, who work here because there is good paying work here, and there is not much else in the region. So some black students and peers don't know what to make of me. Am I just another white person who doesn't get it? Or, they just wonder why I cam here in the first place. Am I an opportunist? I don't really understand the south, do I? The non-progressive white Southerners hope or assume I'm like them (a surprising number of white people feel comfortable making racist comments and jokes to other white people, just because they're white), while black people either worry that I'm another white bigot, or that I'm some sort of know-it-all holier-than-thou Northerner who came down here to show 'em how it's done. It's hard to know how much of this is my own neurotic/guilty imagination, and how much of this distrust and discomfort is real, but I have to point out that that discomfort really comes out when they find out I'm leaving.

"You goin' back home?"

See, the thing is, I applied to a lot of different grad schools last year. I tried to end up on the East Coast, I considered Florida, I even looked at California and the UK, but in the end, the schools that were the best fit academically and financially were schools....in the Midwest. Three hours from my hometown.

So when folks hear that I'm leaving for Even Bigger Midwestern State University, their universal and immediate reaction is "Oh, so you're moving closer to home?". But in spite of what my mother might wish, I am not relocating to be closer to "home". It's nothing more than a coincidence. But to the Southern mind, this carpetbagger is headed back to where he came from. Go back home, boy.

What surprised me about this response is the provincial and parochial attitude it betrays. Where you are from = where you belong. I have the feeling this is a strong outlook in the South. Stereotypical Southern White families like to think they're descended from some aristocratic plantation-owning dynasty, and Stereotypical Southern Black families stayed put in the Deep South after Reconstruction and through Jim Crow, opting not to take part in the Great Migration to the urban metropolises of the North.
Since I'm "from" the North, that's where I, at least according to the Southerners in this town, belong. Why would I want to live somewhere I ain't from? Away from mommy and daddy and grandma and auntie and cousin so-and-so with the towing business? The answer is obvious to me, but not to the locals I guess. DixieChick and I are always surprised at how many of our students have never been outside the state, have never seen snow, and could not for the life of them understand why anyone would want to live anywhere they had snow.

So these are some of the responses I have been getting, and I just found it really interesting and worth sharing with you all. People have mainly been unsurprised or even relieved to hear that I was going back where I belonged. Southern Man don't need Steve around. That's alright. I still love y'all! I know that DixieChick and a few others will miss me, and maybe someday we will get to work together again in the big, scary, but real cosmopolitan world out there.