"I wonder sometimes about the outcome of a still verdictless life... why, Georgia, why?"

"People come to Georgia for two things: Gone With the Wind and Martin Luther King, Jr. But you have to have both- neither means a thing without the other. They seem like they contradict each other, but without the story that Gone With the Wind tells, Martin Luther King has no context; without Martin Luther King, Gone With the Wind is just another Southern myth," said my film teacher, Dr. King, once.

I don't think he was wrong. Georgia, and the South as a whole, is a strange place, full of dichotomies, juxtapositions, and contradictions. One of the big issues, of course, is race; with our history, the relationship between white people and black people is something that always seems to come to the forefront. And it seems like everyone, whether they are conscious of it or not, whether they want to or not, whether they have more melanin in their skin or less, operates and thinks at least sometimes based on racial prejudices. I'm sure I'm far from the only girl who's been told, "Don't you bring a black guy home!" And one of my best friends, Katrina, has told her son not to date a white girl when he grows up, because if they break up and White Girl's unhappy about it, she could cry rape and be believed. (Which is probably-most-likely true.)

But on the other hand, I think most people I know are proud of the diversity they see here. I remember when my friend Shelley moved from a somewhat-urban school in south Marietta to a more rural one in north Woodstock. She couldn't stand it; she'd had many friends, black, white, and otherwise in Marietta, and the move to a predominantly white school came with too much irritating homogeneity. (She's a blond and white, by the way.) I feel much the same way- I absolutely want to live places with people coming in all colors. I know that in New Hampshire, the black population is about 2%. I think I'd be a little blinded by the white. I know that, at least around here, the smaller and more rural the town, the whiter and less tolerant it seems to be. And maybe I love to go visit Elijay for the apple festival, but I couldn't fathom living up around there. This is part of why I want so much to live in a city- I often don't fit in, so I want to find places with more diversity, not less, diversity of all sorts: intellectual, ethnic, creative.

But Southern dichotomies aren't just about race, of course. There are politics as well. Maps always show us as the Red States, full of Republicans and conservatives. Part of that is because of the Bible Belt, the solid streak of Baptist churches lined up across our portion of the country. Despite the strong religious leanings, though, the conservative stance is to be against things like social programs, and for things like nationalism- strange, considering Jesus told people to share their goods with those who had none, and urged his followers to pursue an alternative social system with unlikely power structures. As Flannery O'Connor said, "While the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted." I guess we tend to endorse Republican candidates, because they are more likely to say, "Jesus told me to run, and cut taxes, and not develop healthcare, and to Be American." I guess the name impresses us.

At the same time, though, but on a lower level, people are kind, here. They're polite. From what I've noticed from limited comparisons with people from places like Ohio or Michigan or other chillier states, Southerners are more tactful and don't greet people in a way that sounds like an insult. We say y'all instead of you guys (you guys being a phrase that offends that inner feminist I have stuffed back here somewhere.) We call people ma'am and sir if they're possibly older than us, or even really for no reason at all. No, it's not the saving-the-world variety of goodness. But there is goodness, and lots of it.

Guns- the right to bear arms- another issue. People that wouldn't want a gun in their house will loudly assert their Constitutional right to have one. As far as I can tell, one of the original reasons for that right was so that the government would know its populace was armed, and not overstep its bounds and thus piss off said armed populace. At this point in time, though, no one would dream of getting together a bunch of people with firearms and taking down the government, no matter how high taxes were raised. But maybe we like to think we could, if we had to.

There are so many myths taking up space in people's heads that create these contradictions. The grand story of the happy antebellum past, a golden age of sorts. The epic civil rights movement, as half the population struggled for equality and respect. The underdog story of the South's defeat by the industrialized, uncaring North, and how it had to rebuild itself. "The Devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for a soul to steal." The shameful confession of all the things that were Not Good. Gone With the Wind and Martin Luther King Jr.

One of the reasons I've been thinking about this lately is because of my plans to move to Scotland. My (Canadian) flatmate-to-be asked if I wouldn't prefer somewhere in the south of England, since I was used to being Southern and all, and answered that I am definitely sure that no, I wouldn't. I sympathize with Scotland and its nationalism and possibly movement towards independence. It's not that I think the South should attempt to secede again or that we should institute the Stars and Bars flag, not by any means. But I've seen and heard the English prejudice towards and bemusement about Scotland- that it's weird, rural and undeveloped, that the people aren't understandable, that somehow being British but not being English is just... abnormal. Doesn't that sound familiar? Isn't that the perception given of the South from movies, the media? Just... bemusement. A lack of comprehension of why we're not classified as one thing or another, and thus we're drawling cooks of unhealthy food, or sheet-wearing Klansmen, or living in trailer parks making moonshine and playing "Dueling Banjos," or dying of critical stupidity as indicated by our SAT scores. We're Southern, so we're not normal, we're just... Other.

And maybe that's why Georgia literature, Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers and so on, seems so schizophrenic, zooming from one extreme to another, telling the stories of outsiders and misfits. Showing the lives of those that can't be put into easy categories, that are almost painful to read because of the difficulty of description.

Still, we resist cultural leveling where we can. We hold on to our conglomeration. "Be proud you're a Rebel 'cause the South's gonna do it again!" sings Charlie Daniels. Do what, precisely? Oh, nothing in particular. But still, we're proud, aren't we? And we'd rather be us than anything else. Even if that's something like Chattahoochee Tech sharing their campus with a trailer park, a sight I saw today.

So the myths go on, against each other and needing each other, and there are no conclusions to be had. But when is there, in life? We go on.