Heritage

This was an Okefenokee Heritage Center Writer's Guild assignment - tell your life story in 400 words, and give it an uplifting ending.  I don't know how well I did that, but...exactly 400 words, baby!  Woohoo!

I’m not a Southerner.  I was born in Michigan.

I’ve lived here 40 years, since I was 23, but that doesn’t matter.  People still see me as a Yankee.  It doesn’t even matter that Michigan is the Midwest.   I’m still a Yankee.

If I had chosen to blend in, adopt more of the Southern culture, I’m not sure anyone would notice.  But I have not.  I am a particular failure when it comes to the Southern male stereotype.  I don’t hunt or fish.  I don’t play golf.  I don’t go to a conservative Christian church, and I don’t cotton to right-wing politics.  Country music is not my thing, except Johnny Cash.  My accent is not pronounced, unless I have a Southern part in a stage play.

it’s my own fault.  People think of me as a Yankee because I don’t behave in a way conformist to Southern culture.

Am I being stubborn?  Am I refusing to assimilate because I am trying to preserve my Michigander roots?  No.  I don’t think so.

Facebook, that social media phenomenon that is both an uniter and divider, has a group where my Bridgeport High School Alum participate.  They are a diverse bunch, and a harsh reminder that had I not moved, had I stayed in Michigan, I would not have fit in.

The South’s culture is not as static as it thinks it is.  No matter what you do, things change.  There are fewer hunters than what there was once.  Golf is a fading sport.  And even though race relations are nowhere near where they should be, they have improved.

Heritage is a wonderful thing.  It should be remembered and celebrated.  But it should not be frozen in time.  Because there is a more important idea, beyond heritage, beyond devotion to one tribe of humanity.

I was lucky.  Growing up, my father taught me something that superseded heritage.  And that was the foundation of Christianity, that God loves you, and you demonstrate that love by how you treat your fellow man, regardless of their cultural tribe.  It’s a common thread running through all the great religions, and humanism as well.

No, I may not be the ideal of a Southerner.  Nor a Yankee, for that matter.  But I am a fellow human.  And, as nice as it may be, I have learned it is not a common heritage that binds us. 

It is love.