The Stagnant, Drunken, Blanketing Images of the South

Three images define my vision of the South: bubbles, Coronas, and pollen.

For a majority of my life, a bubble surrounded me. I experienced the “Bless your heart!” racism. My immediate family and I were pitied. We knew so from the looks people gave us and the conversations we overheard. Because we were low-income and my caretaker was handicapped, there was no bitterness paired with the acts of kindness. Small church groups gathered to give my family and I money to buy enough toilet tissue to last us a few months (The supply never lasted long enough.). Food banks opened their doors to us, acting as if their foods soaked in liquid cancer saved our lives. Rich families across the area donated gifts so we could have a bountiful Christmas. However, with every gift came a congratulations over my intelligence, my caretaker’s diligence, and our resourcefulness. They expected us to be dumb, uncaring, and reckless. We never rejected the help though. We needed their pity, even if it degraded us to poor, pitiful black souls. Today, we are even poorer, but the head-of-the-household is able-bodied. We now pity ourselves more than they pity us.

A majority of my family is composed of poor, pitiful black souls. If not poor financially, they are poor in morals or morale. They pity themselves because of their blackness. That is why Corona bottles litter the table at holiday dinners. Everyone needs a break from the self-loathing.

While I am too young to partake in the festivities, I have my own way of self-loathing: pollen. The spring time attacks my body. Flowers bloom; the South shouts with life; I choke. A sensible person would stay inside as much as possible. I am not sensible. I eat outside and breathe deeply, waiting for the itching, sneezing, and wheezing to begin.

Together, these images defined my view of the South as a whole. My personal experiences made bubbles, Coronas, and pollen the center of the Southern universe, but I see three images everywhere I turn. Each evokes a form of progression prevention. A bubble provides shelter to the air within it. One protects the stale air that is Southern, racist culture. The Coronas I see at every adult-oriented event (family or not) leave a population of self-loathers in a willingly unaware stupor, and they love it. The South mirrors these people in its unawareness, but is proud to be unaware as long as being so means persevering a certain way of life. Pollen, as it covers every thing and every one in its path, blankets the South in yellow, burying any items forgotten or left outdoors. Likewise, the neglect of a past still unanswered for blankets Southern history and threatens to bury the culture’s true roots.

One day, the bubble will be popped, the Coronas will stand still on a production line, and the world’s weather will prevent a Spring from ever occurring again. Until then, these images will shape my perspective.