Suburban homogenization spreads like kudzu from the urban taproots of places like Nashville, Atlanta, and Greenville. Attracted by cheap land and low taxes, refugees from the West Coast and the Mid Atlantic flood into rural towns. Big Business exerts influence and demands on political and social life entirely at odds with local custom and sentiments. The worst aspects of a perverted America increasingly appear in the least likely of places championed by twenty somethings whose ancestors fought bravely, barefooted, and hungry to defend their homes and freedom from invaders.

It would seem that Southern distinctiveness will soon be a thing of the past. Yet, in their 2017 study, The Resilience of Southern Identity: Why the South Still Matters in the Minds of its People, political scientists Christopher Cooper and Gibbs Knotts don’t think that it’s likely to happen anytime soon.

In their estimation, in spite of drastic political, racial, and cultural changes, the importance of Southern identity still plays a surprisingly important role in sustaining regional identification.

Cooper and Knotts studied every Southern city with more than 50,000 people (218 in total) and following the same criteria used in a similar study done 40 years earlier, surveyed businesses about the names of their companies and why they chose them. The authors then conducted focus groups with Southerners asking them to define what it means to have a Southern identity.

Like the study 40 years earlier, while the number of “Dixie” businesses had declined significantly, the number of “Southern” businesses remained strong. The authors concluded that people were distancing from the “Old South” but still believed it important to retain a Southern identity.

Across businesses and demographics (race, age, and socioeconomic) they found a “strong belief” that folkways, food, hospitality, family, and manners were still defining hallmarks of the South. The research showed that participants believed that in the past White Southerners were the only ones that could be considered truly Southern but felt as long as the South kept the “best of the past and embraced the future,” the South was open to anyone.

For Identity Dixie readers, the Cooper and Knotts study would mostly be interpreted in a negative way. The Old South is not coming back and the trajectory seems to be that the New South will be a diverse, tolerant, cynically commercialized, diluted, and plastic version. But the study does seem to prove that the South has an indelible character, something that we can build on.

The fate of Dixie is in the hands of a small vanguard. A Dixie worthy of the name and identity won’t happen through a single grand gesture. It will happen through countless small acts of defiance, attractive and joyful celebration, and being prepared to share the truth whenever you have the chance.

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