Local wrestling in South Alabama has had luchodores since the 1980s.

Augusta, GA has had an established Chinese population since the 1880s.

Gwinnett County (ATL) is the 41st most diverse county in the entire U.S.

The South is more multi-cultural than is generally depicted.

LA and NY like to pride themselves as being somehow the most open and diverse places in America, but they are just places with their own provincialism that control the narrative of themselves while telling lies about the rest of the country.

The Midwest is not all white. The Northeast is not super leftist. Texas is not a hellscape.

Nearly 1 in 3 LGBTQ people live in the South.

There is no region in America that has a lock on progressivism and multiculturalism. There is also no region that is a conservative monolithic white supremacist wonderland.

Believing otherwise requires us to ignore immense swathes of reality (and how interdependent we are).

I miss the South a lot this time of year, and the things I miss most are the things the rest of the country ignores, and sometimes it really pisses me off how smug people are about not being Southern when they exhibit every trait attributed to the worst stereotypes of the South.