By Kianna Amaya

Somewhere in rural North Carolina, while riding in the passenger seat down dirt roads lined with cornfields, I scrolled through Instagram, in abject frustration at the painfully slow loading speed. Nearly every other post on my feed that day, July 5th, was about the Texas Hill Country flooding. The Guadalupe River rapidly flooded and led to the death of more than a hundred people and the destruction of many homes. Unsurprisingly, the video was flooded with callous comments. People rejoiced at the lives destroyed and lost because they were in Texas, saying things like “who cares” and “that’s what they voted for.” It’s always “They voted for it” when something bad happens, and when Southerners face governmental neglect. But who are they? There is no single “they.” The South is complex and diverse. It’s not just what non-Southerners imagine. Yet these are the same comments I see after many Southern tragedies, like Hurricane Helene last year. Southern hate, especially online, is often disguised as activism and solidarity with marginalized people, but is a cover for classist and elitist beliefs.

People seem to use them as an opportunity to use the South as a punching bag. To mock a place they have so much hatred for, yet know much less about than they think. The South is often reduced to a red hellscape of white racists, ultra-conservatives, and backwards people. While the North is upheld as more intelligent, more progressive. Superior.

The problem is that many of the people who denigrate the South aren’t even fully aware of the dynamics of the South. The South is more diverse than people think. More than fifty-percent of Black Americans still live in the South. We didn’t all leave and many who did are returning. We still exist here (hello!). Native Americans across the South are often erased from national conversations about the South, too. Also, Latinx and Asian-American populations are rising faster in the South than in any other region. And the truth is, it's Black, Brown, Indigenous, immigrant, disabled, and poor Southerners who bear the brunt of tragedy in the South.

The South is riddled with economic inequality and has been so for decades due to neglect and underdevelopment in the region. Slavery enriched southern elites as they extracted free labor and resources while leaving the region largely impoverished. Even now, it's clear who the elites are that benefited and hoarded generations of wealth, leaving the rest of the South poor and underdeveloped. We can still see that today.

I’ve had many conversations with people like me, frustrated that in parts of the South, especially rural areas, local officials refuse to upgrade infrastructure or support the local economy at all. Leaving behind everyone without hoards of generational wealth.

So when we see that the South has higher rates of poverty, worse health outcomes, and lower access to education, we must understand that that inequity is systemic. I grew up in rural NC in a food and medical desert where most people drive forty or more minutes one way for groceries and medical facilities. I attended a high school that was underfunded. Yet these realities are weaponized and used as proof of Southern inferiority as if we’re all just dumb, lazy people living in a different reality than the rest of the country.

This attitude isn’t rare. I recently saw a TikTok comment arguing blue states should secede from the nation because they are more “civilized.” Someone else said the rural South is full of “A-holes,” and that’s why everyone looks down on us. Another said there’s no reason for Black people to stay in the South. That our ancestors should’ve just gone North long ago.

People say it again and again that they don't care or feel bad about what happens to the South because “they voted for it.” Millions across the South voted against Trump. And millions of votes were hindered and silenced by voter suppression and gerrymandering. Voter suppression in the South disproportionately affects Black and Brown voters. And it has increased in the past decade, leading to an increase in challenges, like a few Southern states allowing same-day registration and the increased need for photo IDs. All of these structural barriers are meant to silence voices. So, simply saying “they voted for it” ignores this systemic theft of democracy.

These barriers are once again playing out on a national stage, showing just how ruthless Republican politicians are in controlling and silencing Southerners’ votes to give themselves an advantage. Recently, Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Republicans have pushed to redraw congressional district maps and gerrymander the state. And this is not the only instance of this happening in the South. This has happened for years with attempts to silence votes, especially marginalized ones. My state, North Carolina, has a long history of this, too.

Meanwhile, what about blue states? California had more Trump voters in 2024 than some entire Southern states, including North Carolina. New York and Illinois had millions of Trump voters, too. Yet those states are framed as progressive havens while the South is reduced to a caricature. This black-and-white thinking about red and blue states ignores reality. Racism, discrimination, and reactionary politics are countrywide, systemic issues. The reality is it's a countrywide problem. What sets the South apart is decades of deliberate voter suppression and systemic neglect that exacerbate problems and erase the votes of marginalized people in elections.

But people don’t want to hear it. It seems many non-Southerners feel the need to “other” us to feel superior. To feel like they’re above racism. To feel like better people who simply live in better states. It’s about feeling superior and ahistorical viewpoints. Ignoring the racism and discrimination throughout the entire country.

It’s quite ironic that people who say they care about racism and discrimination could completely ignore all the marginalized people harmed and disenfranchised in the South. It’s strange to see how some self-described “progressives” openly ridicule the South as a whole, essentially tossing it to the trash when the people they claim to care about and advocate for currently live here in the South in large numbers.

And for Christ's sake! It’s also frustrating how people purely equate being rural with being conservative or a Trump voter. Of course, they exist, but so do they exist in suburbs and cities. Just like there are progressives in rural counties too. Yes, even ones that didn’t vote for Trump last election or the ones before.

Those who did not just “vote for it.” And it falsely equates the South alone with bearing responsibility for slavery, as if the North didn’t heavily profit from slavery, from banks, to shipping, to textiles. Slavery bolstered the entire U.S. economy. Racism is throughout the entire country. Non-Southerners can’t just wash their hands and act like it's not their problem, too. As if it’s just a “Southern thing.”

Pre-Civil War, there were many racial attacks and riots against Black Americans. In states like New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Philadelphia, and Rhode Island. In modern times, racism, of course, still exists in all regions of the U.S., with police brutality, the prison-industrial complex, and housing discrimination. The whole idea that the North has a moral safe haven is a myth. But the myth allows non-Southerners to distance themselves from nationwide systemic problems and push them onto “backwards” and ignorant people.

It’s clear that this widespread acceptability of Southern hatred is causing people to be less empathetic to Southern struggles and leaves the most vulnerable in the region at even greater harm. And unfortunately it seems many have written the South off as a wasteland.

But the South is truly diverse and complex. It cannot and should not be reduced to MAGA country. Now, there are plenty of racists in the South. That is unmistakable. I’ve, of course, experienced it myself. But that doesn’t negate everyone in the South.

The South is where I joined political action groups and worked with others who actively fight for racial justice and voting rights. Southerners have been and still are fighting against injustices in the region and in the country at large. From the Reconstruction to Jim Crow to the Civil Rights movement and into the Trump era, the South has been engaged in activism and social justice.

Southern hate is just a more socially acceptable form of elitism. It abandons the very people “progressives” claim to stand with. The South is more than what many think. What about the ones that fight for change? What about the ones that don’t fit the caricature of the South? To ignore them is hypocrisy. What we need now is solidarity.

Sources:

Othering the South: The Myth of “They Voted For It”

By Kianna Amaya

Gut Instinct

Othering the South: The Myth of “They Voted For It”

By Kianna Amaya

Kudos to CooDos: Camille Estrada is a Multi-Media Artist to Watch

Gut Instinct