Different, Yet So Much the Same

She was born and raised in Georgia. Motivated by a strong desire for service and ministry, she pursued a career in nursing. She married a man whose job took them on several relocations, all over the country.

At one point, they landed far away from home in Michigan. She hated it there. She cried almost every day, missing her family and roots, now the breadth of a nation away. This felt like foreign territory. Folks there were obsessed with her southern accent, asking her to say certain words, then giggling when they came out different from the way they spoke. She felt like entertainment and novelty to them. She said northerners would equate her dialect to ignorance, gullibility and lack of sophistication. It got so bad, she lamented, that she chose to become very quiet and withdrawn, for fear of inviting mockery and condescension.

Her story struck a sympathetic chord with her listener, whose experience was similar, though geographically running in the opposite direction. Having spent the first twenty-seven years of his life growing up in Wisconsin, he also chose a transient path, moving frequently, eventually finding himself in the south, knowing not a soul, far, far from home. He would encounter steady teasing about being a “Yankee”. Though no one ever said it, he often took it as a subtle implication he was not welcome. This caught him by surprise. He had never thought of himself as a Yankee. Yankees were people who lived along the eastern seaboard. He had always thought of himself as a Midwesterner, and thus, kindred to the people of the south in culture and values.

Nor had he ever thought of southerners as backward or slow. To the contrary, he envied them. His image of Dixie was what he observed on television, a land of good looking, tanned people who frolicked on the beach, enjoyed incredible cooking, and excelled at southern hospitality. As a child, he sat spellbound in front of a black and white TV, watching Bear Bryant and the Alabama Crimson Tide dominate college football, and admiring the way the fans passionately supported their teams. He and his family would religiously watch the Miss America pageant each year, and note that the final ten always seemed to be dominated by smart, poised and beautiful southern women.

Yet upon his arrival, he found himself often stereotyped as impolite and impersonal. Southern folks seemed surprised when he routinely addressed them as “Sir” and Ma’am”, as he had been raised to do. Some were not expecting him to work hard at blending into their traditions and customs.

He could relate to what this woman was telling him. But now, with the benefit of three or four decades of hindsight, they reflected on what they had learned. She moved back to the south. He sensed perhaps a trace of regret in her voice, as she told him, given the chance to do it over again, she wouldn’t let the inquisitive fawning of her northern acquaintances keep her from getting to know them better, and experiencing the love and kindness that is an integral part of the midwestern way of life.

He never migrated back to his northern roots, having fallen in love with the people of the south, who had proven not only to be welcoming, but deeply loving, loyal and inclusive. He would stay for forty years and counting, raise a family there, and feel every bit as much at home as he did amidst the love and security of his native Midwest.

Both of them agreed the major takeaway is that people are just people, no matter where you go. What a shame we let so many things divide us. Trivial things like speech accents, or larger things such as politics, race and income levels. We are so much stronger together. Though it is sometimes hard to recognize, we truly do have much more that unites us than divides us.

We are different, yet so much the same.