Just like migratory birds and retirees, college students flock to the south. Large state schools with large soccer courses and strong Greek life, such as the University of Alabama or the University of Mississippi, have seen students in the north. Number of students leaving the north and heading to the south to attend school Increased by 30% Between 2018 and 2022.
There are many reasons for this change. It could be an interesting campus experience or it could be that the southern campus relaxed its common restrictions before its northern counterparts. This may be a change in the scenery. Students may increase their meaning when college tuition has been at an all-time high. But whether it’s #rushtok or less student loan debt, students live south of the Mason-Dixon line.
According to Bloomberg senior journalist Amanda Mullthis is just a symptom of the greater embrace of southern culture. She unravels these changes in this week’s episode Explain to meVox’s weekly call podcast.
Here is an excerpt from our conversation with Mull and edited to length and clarity. You can listen to the full plot Apple Podcast,,,,, Spotifyor Wherever you get a podcast. If you want to submit a question, please email askvox@vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.
As time passed, the South grew in the American imagination. What was the talent in the first place?
In the 1960s, you’ll see political evolution, logistical evolution and technological evolution happening at the same time.
The political side is of course the civil rights movement and Civil Rights Lawwhich changed the political possibilities of many people in the South. It began to change the view of the South in other parts of the country.
Then, you have a real change, that’s air conditioner. So, in 1956, you will get American Highway Programbuilt interstate highways connecting areas and parts of the country that were previously difficult to travel. The industrial development in the south is less developed than that in the northeast and the central and western regions. As a result, the advent of the highway system made it easier for the South to engage in business with the rest of the country and made it easier for the South to interact with its own business at the end of Jim Crow.
The emergence of air conditioning has made it possible for many different types of businesses to see the South as a possible location and allows more people to see the South as a place they might want to live. This change across time has brought us where we are, the southern population has been growing for decades and is still growing.
Southern states began to provide advantages for businesses. What are these advantages and how can we change the culture there?
The state government began to bring incentive packages together, where both of them put themselves to the entire business community and specific employers. One way you can really see this happening is that the Southern countries use themselves as an unfriendly alternative to auto-made trades. You will find this particularly appealing to foreign automakers. American manufacturers have fewer operations in the South, but over the past few decades, they have moved the auto manufacturing industry there because employers see it as an opportunity to avoid certain transportation, tariffs and logistical issues for cars overseas, but also avoid paying higher wages and providing better working conditions in the Midwest and Northeast, a traditional area of automobile manufacturing.
Both the automotive and film business are great examples of how this similar script works in the industry. Georgia and Louisiana have organized huge tax packages to attract TV and film production. Netflix has a huge complex in Atlanta. Many Marvel movies have been filmed in Georgia over the past decade. They use themselves as a place where you have many different outdoor landscapes and can stand in many different places. You have cities, mountains, coastlines and forests.
I want to get caught up in cultural influence. How did the South influence mainstream American music?
The rise of hip-hop in the south and the subsequent rise of country music are two aspects of the same coin. I don’t want to say that the embrace of the country is completely reactionary. But I do think that some of the interest in the clear white southern culture over the past few years has been a reaction to the ubiquitous black southern creativity, especially in music.
When you look at someone you like Morgan Warrenhe was very popular among the audience and also made news for making clear racist things, it was hard to look at it and then said, “Well, it has to be at least a reaction to black dominance in music.”
But then you look at other artists with more obvious progress, such as Kacey Musgraves and Brandi Carlile, who are both challengers. Then you also see Beyoncé Cowboy Carter Reshape her legacy into a Southerner and question some metaphors, aesthetics and the sound of white Southern music. Of course, there is no white southern music. It’s hard to look at the South and go, “Well, this is the Southern culture of white people, this is the Southern culture of black people” because as time goes by, culture overlaps so much.
How does the new embrace of the South make you a Southerner?
I have two ideas about this. I think if people see the South more as a legitimate part of the country than the human being the backwater of siuphuman and Sustrical, then that will be good for all stripes, all races, all backgrounds. But this is also very strange. It is incredible to see people embrace the aesthetics of the South without having to do with what the South is, what it is and what it means. Because I think most people in the South do this.
From the South, you need you to interact with the history of the region so that the rest of the country can skip if they choose. So it’s weird to see people becoming stereotyped Southerners when I know a lot of people don’t really think about it.
