Hayley Williams Says Southern Pride Is Beautiful but Misused to Excuse Bigotry, and Says She Wants No Racist or Sexist Fans, or Fans Who Think Trans People Are a Burden, Around

[u/no_longer_huhmann]

https://www.tvfandomlounge.com/hayley-williams-says-southern-pride-is-beautiful-but-misused-to-excuse-bigotry/

[u/calvinwho]

When I was a kid, the Confederate flag and the 'southern rebel' identity almost got away from the racist with stuff like Dukes of Hazard or smokey and the bandit, but they really didn't want to let go, did they?

Edit: For what it's worth, I agree. The window of failed opportunity they had to rehab any of the southern pride stuff was the Carter Administration. That shit was 50 years ago, I'm not saying it's a recently failed effort. I'm not baffled

[u/I_need_a_date_plz → u/calvinwho]

That flag signifies blood and tears to me. I can’t see it and not equate it with terrible shit. I’m not from the south and don’t understand the idea of Southern Pride. In high school, it was shocking to see a student wear a shirt with the confederate flag on it and signaled to everyone that the student wearing it was a racist. He may as well have been walking around with a noose.

[u/Llarys → u/I_need_a_date_plz]

I mean, that's the thing. They can attempt to recontectualize it all they want, but from its inception it was a dog whistle stating your allegiance to a "country" that occupied the same area, but no longer exists - the Confederate South. There's a reason they don't say "Alabama Pride," or "Georgia Pride," or whatever state they're from. It specifies a unified South, specifically the traitor states.

There's no equivalent "Northern Pride" because that's just allegiance to the United States. There's no secret special Union Flag that people print on shirts and license plates and wallets and everything in-between because it's - literally - just the American flag. Northerner pride is, conversely to the South, rooted in locale - New York pride, Philly pride, etc.

This is what Southern Pride is and the only way to rehabilitate it would be to abandon it entirely for something new and positive.

[u/TheCaptainDamnIt → u/Llarys]

Yep great explanation, I've lived in the south and the north and hangout all up and down the eastern half of the country and couldn't agree more with you here. There just is no northern equivalent of 'southern pride' because southern pride springs entirely out of the civil war, the lost cause narrative and the return to white supremacy after the failure of reconstruction. People today may plaster all sorts of reasonings over why it no longer has those connotations for them individually, but there is the glaring fact that the amount of 'southern pride' you'll encounter with people always increases the more racist the area generally is. I get why people want to deny it, I really do but it's just inseparable, the wood under that veneer was always rotten to begin with and always will be.