Any state in what’s thought of as “the South” is going to get more than its share of jokes. Those of us born there (Louisiana man here) tend not to include Texas (too much a part of the West) or Florida (too different, too weird, too tropical) in that list. Most joke lists will also include Kentucky and West Virginia. In addition to being mostly rural, which puts a target on people everywhere that is rural, Southerners worked aggressively at setting themselves apart from the rest of the country from 1776 up until the about the late 1960’s, when “the New South” public relations campaign began, and there are a LOT of holdovers still.

Southerners are supposed to be lazy, ignorant, and too willing to marry close relatives, all of which accusations are both egregiously unfair and to a considerable degree rooted in fact historically.

The lazy accusation stems, I think, from two causes: first, roundworm was endemic until about a hundred years ago, so a significant percentage of rural people were carrying parasites that induced lethargy and brain fog, so a lot of people were slow both physically and mentally; second, it’s HOT and “walking Southern” was and is a reasonable response, so we look slow to this day.

The ignorance part stemmed from children attending fewer years of school on average, because so many of their families were poor farmers and the kids were needed to work at home, almost always at jobs that didn’t require much education anyway. Additionally, their parents were uneducated, so few of them saw the value of education. In Louisiana in the 1930’s the state’s governor was a populist demagogue named Huey Long. In an example of the fact that a corrupt tyrant can still do good things, he saw the economic drag that a largely uneducated populace created for the state economy, and in a wonderful case of thinking outside the box, he mandated free lunches at all public schools. At many schools enrollment instantly surged by 100% or more, because those poor kids were guaranteed one meal a day.

The close cousins marrying thing was never terribly common, but it did happen, especially in small, isolated populations in the mountains, and the predictable results of generations of inbreeding got publicized and the idea of the practice was generalized to the much larger total population in the minds of people elsewhere.

Too long? Sorry. I’m on hold waiting for an IRS agent, which has given me time to write an essay with my right thumb.

Stillll waiting.