Thou Shalt Shut the F**k Up and Learn Something

The American South isn't a monolithic thing. It's nuanced, beautiful and utterly complicated. If you stop judging it - and come and see it for yourself with a little less snide, perhaps you could actually learn something? From Mississippi, to Greenville, SC, to Lexington, Kentucky and even Dallas, Texas - and everywhere else. #travel

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, and welcome to everywhere. I am your host, Daniel Scheffler.
Today's travel commandment thou shall shut the funk up and
learn something. Myself and yourself might not be the same.

(00:23):
What some call America's Deep South includes, without question Georgia, Alabama,
South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana a k a. The Cotton Belt.
But for some like me, Tennessee and Arkansas feel so
much part of my Southern appreciation, whereas Florida and Texas

(00:45):
appear to be totally their own things, almost in a
kind of isolation. Some travel industry people are actively calling
it the New South. I guess it's less controversial than
calling it Dixie and right. I think what they mean
is that a bunch of hipsters have opened up a
design centric descourse stores and themed boutique hotels, or found

(01:11):
new ways of barbecuing and are getting tattooed whilst they're
at it. But for me, if I choose to live
in America, I need to travel America. The least I
can do is to get to know it. All. The
South sounds so monolithic to me that I was determined
to unpack it and allow every region, every county every

(01:33):
piece I could discover to show me what it is
and what it is not. Charleston and Nashville are the
current gems and the travel game, the bride's maids and
the cool kids have descended. But I've also wondered about Greenville,
South Carolina, and also about Little Rock, Arkansas, and even Atlanta.

(01:54):
So I orchestrated a series of road trips across the
South over the course of a few years. Some studies
like Memphis, Tennessee, and Savannah, Georgia, I returned to numerous
times because there was so much to find that I
just simply love. And the road from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Asheville,
North Carolina, to Spartanburg, which is also North Carolina, I

(02:16):
could possibly now drive in my sleep. But then they
parts of the South that I still need to get to,
so see you soon, Montgomery, Alabama, and San Antonio, Texas.
My friend Sue and I decided that if we wanted
to understand a little more of America, the good and
the bad, we needed to road trip through Mississippi. I've

(02:38):
always loved the many essays in that wood and those
iconic silky essays on the road signs just thrilled me.
So we started off with a wild weekend in New
Orleans for her birthday, which ended with us in a
car driving over the Twin Span Bridge from Louisiana into Mississippi.
Oh look, she said, a dollar gen a store And

(03:01):
that was the first of our troop. After a week
in the state, we had counted nearly a hundred different
of these. It was our official road trip game. We
also came up with a new slogan for the Mississippi
Tourism Board. Better than you think. You need to say
that really fast together, better than you think, and we
tried it on locals. They all seem to like it
a lot. Our first stop was the Luxe. I was

(03:26):
told that had three syllables, so you had to slow
your pronunciation right down. The Luxe a beach town with
large casinos, plenty of surf, and even more shrimp. Back
in the day, the casinos weren't floating barges for tax
and regulation purposes and sneakiness I suspect. But today they're

(03:50):
all on the beach. And of course Sue knew how
to gamble. In Mississippi, they have crapless craps a craps
variant in which the player cannot lose a pass bet
on the come out role. Yes, I have no idea
what that means, but it was fun to watch Sue
make a couple of thousand dollars within minutes. The town

(04:12):
of belux Se also boasts a Frank Gary designed or
O'Keefe Museum of Art. Nothing to do with George O'Keeffe.
This was just the family who paid for the museum,
dedicated to the mad pot of Biluxei. George e Er.
In the late nineteenth century, pottery was taking America by storm,

(04:33):
and I probably need Holly to tell us more about this,
but it was usually a French laurel or Japanese minimal.
But good old George had other plans, like pots in
anatomical shapes or a whole filled coffee mug that required
you to drink from it in a specific way to
avoid a spill. Long after his death, the art world

(04:55):
caught up with him, and even Andy Warrell became a collector.
So right next to Biloxi is a little extension of
the area called Ocean Springs, a sweet little town with
incredible chefs and young people who are from the area
and revitalizing it in a sort of entrepreneurial spirit. And
this is where I really started to ponder about gentrification.

(05:17):
Here it felt less like hipsters moving in and shaking
things up by kicking locals out, and more like rebuilding
a defunct part of the state. In fact, the whole
coast fell under disrepair with weather disasters and people just
moving away. But here in the Ocean Springs community, albeit
pretty small, pulled together to create a place for progressive

(05:40):
people to come live healthy, creative lifestyle. I entered us
into the local Southern biscuit competition, where town folks were
competing every Thursday with no family recipe. It's no wonder
my sneakily storeboard biscuits lost to the savory bless your
Heart a can and cheese entry. No trip to Mississippi

(06:04):
is complete without a stop in its capital, Jackson, home
to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum that opened not so
long ago. So here we were two white people standing
next to a Confederate flag and a ku Klux Klan
costume in display cabinets. An eerie darkness descended on Sue

(06:25):
and I. This was in some ways America. I was
standing in this museum room when an older African American
lady came to stand next to me. She looked at me,
and I looked at her silence, and then we held
hands and we both started to quietly weep. All I

(06:47):
wanted to say is I'm sorry to apologize with something
I didn't quite understand. I felt some of the pain
and I think African Americans must experience walking through the museum,
and I felt shame for the world. We stood there
for a long time, just trying to process our emotions,

(07:09):
and this is often how I feel. In the South.
I don't quite grasp the race situation. I was born
in Africa as a white boy, and it fences my understanding,
and I do wish that I could talk about it
more openly, and that maybe I could shut the funk
up and listen to someone for once. Unfortunately, in most schools,
and certainly the ones I attended, I just wasn't given

(07:31):
the vocabulary to talk about it bravely. I did have
an English teacher at high school whom i'm still best
friends with, that encouraged reading James Baldwin and black writers
from all over Africa. We debated race and class and
ways that felt both respectful and very challenging. But that

(07:52):
was the eleventh grade, and this is the real world,
so real that when Michael and I found ourselves at
a plantation house in South Carolina, just north of Charleston
as part of our tour of the South, we both
felt pretty uncomfortable staying on property. But somehow this like
uneasy feeling was probably something we needed to deal with

(08:12):
and not run away from. So we stayed, and it
was really hard not to make a run for it.
When there was this bizarre re enacted slavery section as
part of the touristy tour of the grounds, I naturally
took this opportunity to question our tour guide and rapid
fire questions with her about the South and racism. She
wouldn't let up. The more I talked about it, the

(08:35):
more she wouldn't. The next morning I had my moment.
Breakfast was awfully formal, served at this very long table
in the old slave master's home. We took our seats,
and this now owner of the property brought out family
style food. Soon enough, I asked the woman next to
me whether, as a white woman, she felt aren't being there.

(08:58):
She looked at me for a split second in silence,
and then started talking fast. Hi, I'm Annie, and we're
from a small town nearby in South Carolina, and we've
come here to understand race a little better. And on
she went. Her daddy, who was sitting next to Michael,
ran a chain of grocery stores aimed at lower income communities,

(09:20):
and her mama helped local women in their community get
kids through school. In fact, her parents had adopted many
local kids and helped them get educated. Her brother, for instance,
who happens to be African American, was finishing up Harvard
in the fall. She herself ran a clinic for woman
to get healthcare services at cheaper rates, even abortions. She added,

(09:41):
if that's what they wanted. We chatted for about an
hour with this whole family, and with the elections going on,
it obviously turned political. And at some point I said, oh,
I so wish I could spend an hour of my
life with Trump supporters so I could just better understand
their viewpoints. The room went silent and Annie said, you

(10:06):
just did, and the rug was pulled. Those are the
moments that the South keeps delivering to me. In Memphis,
I met this glamorous hat wearing woman named Karen who
owns a restaurant called the Beauty Shop. So one night
we were sitting at dinner and you can sit under
the old hand dryers, and she told me about her staff.

(10:28):
I hired the ones who don't feel like they belong,
she told me. And it's true. I've been to the
restaurant a number of times now and made it my
business to chat to the service and bartenders and line chefs.
Many of them are lgbt Q and have come from
small towns or maybe a farm somewhere in the South
where they are not welcome. They told me stories about

(10:49):
being chased from their childhood homes by guns, and how
some were sent to gay conversion therapy classes. But luckily
news travels and many kids scared for their lives need
to run away. Here about Karen's I don't know safe haven,
And as she says, I'll hire just about anyone. Everyone's
welcome here. How can I not ponder how fortunate I

(11:12):
am to have had an immediate family who embraced my sexuality,
who never made me feel lesser because I happen to
love men. Of course, the story is about race acceptance,
identity are everywhere in the Greatest South, ready for anyone
to take and start discussing, like the Savannah College of

(11:34):
Art and Design, transform the electric City of Savannah and
open it up to a new generation of creatives from
all walks of life and all over the world. There's
nothing I love more than people who are Southern and
come back to the South to find their roots, like
Mashama Bailey, who runs the incredible Africa meets Southern meets

(11:54):
New York City restaurant The Gray in Savannah. Nobody embodies
the South quite like she does. But just a few
hours south of the city, nearby on some beautiful Georgian
islands is where I found out Blacks weren't welcome at
some of the resorts until about twenty years ago. The

(12:15):
Jews weren't until about ten years ago, and only very
recently other gays welcomed. In Dallas, I'm always struck by
how Sheik people are on the street, the most sophisticated
Southern city by far. Maybe the Nieman Marcus HQ downtown
could take some credit. And close to Lexington, Kentucky, I

(12:36):
learned about the Shaker communities who had a model of
equality of the sexes in Raleigh, North Carolina, Michael and
I became friends with a chef, one of Indian descent
by way of the Bronx, and a restaurateur who came
to America as an adopted baby from Lao. The expressions
of being Southern is what America is all about to me. Yes,

(12:57):
I mentioned their ethnicity just to make a wide a
point that the South is a place filled with everyone.
The stereotypes of the South are useless and I think dated.
They cannot just be this one idea of the South.
And people like Cheaty and Van and Raleigh, they show
us that every experience is valid and that every single
person can open your mind, but only if you let them.

(13:24):
Now everyone for a time out, except for sponsors. We'll
be right back with more Everywhere trade tables up. You're
returning to Everywhere land. Maybe it's time for a little
holly chat about the South. Since she is from the South,

(13:45):
Ish Ish, so she says, I wasn't born in the South.
I was a military kid. So I was born in Arizona,
and I lived in Seattle, and we moved to Florida
when I was nine, and then I'm moved to Atlanta
for college and I never left, so I am, in
practical sense absolutely a Southerner. Although it's kind of funny

(14:08):
because I sometimes find myself feeling a little between two worlds.
When I talked to relatives from like Michigan, for example,
they think I have the thickest Southern accent they've ever heard,
Whereas when I'm in the South, people are like, are
you a Yankee? But the real question is in New York,
where did they think you're from. Sometimes a lot of
people in New York think I'm from New York, which
cracks me up. Like my point of pride is that,

(14:31):
like if I'm walking up Eighth Avenue, which anybody who
knows New York is like tourism Central, that the people
who are trying to hustle and sell you tickets to
the any of the things like whether it's a Broadway
show or to get to the top of the Empire
State Building, they ignore me completely, And I'm like, okay, cool,
I'm blended in with New York, So yeah, new Yorkers don't.

(14:51):
I don't think I've ever had an interaction with the
New Yorker where they ask of him from the South.
That's interesting when I say I'm from New York. People
immediately say it, way you really from and I go why,
and they go, well, you don't sound like you're from
New Yon. And then I have to say, well, New
Yon doesn't have a sound it exactly. Interestingly enough, um

(15:13):
Ella's with us in studio. My dog she's from Puerto Rico,
and very often people would ask me, always a dog
from it, and I'd say, oh, she's Puerto Rican and
they'd be like, oh, she's from a foreign country. And
I have to be like, well, no, Puerto Rico is American,
and they'd be like, no, it's not right. There's some
confusion that still persists on that point. But that's like

(15:35):
a weird way where like race and diversity and ethnicity
comes through, like even through my dog, this suddenly this
like that's the other, Like she's from the other right,
And everybody's just trying to process the world and like
define things in in the simplest boxes they can. But
unfortunately that leads to a sense of otherness. But like

(15:57):
I feel like because I moved to the South when
I was nine, which would have been nineteen eighty, because
I'm a very grown up person, find no baby, I
have all the life experience for you. So, as I mentioned,
my family moved to the Panhandle of Florida because my
father is in the military and their bases there. And
I think we had been living there about two months

(16:20):
when three lots down from our house and we were
in a pretty remote area of what is now a
very booming beach town. But there was a KKK rally
like complete with burning cross and I just remember like
looking at my parents and be like, where have you
moved me to? And we even kind of walked down
the street tentatively just because like our next door neighbors

(16:42):
had said, oh, just f y I this is going on.
Maybe don't go out if you don't you want to
see any of that. And we were like, wait, no,
that can't she can't be don't wear white pajamas outside
in the street tonight. It was just so bizarre. But
for the longest time, I mean, I grew up in
a community that was almost in tirely white. We had
one black kid in my school and he was a

(17:04):
unicorn to most people, you know, they were like, what
are you like? And he was like a person. Um.
I always wondered if he, too, like had been a
military kid that just kind of landed in the South
and was suddenly like, what is this experience? And of
course I was young enough to not realize like, those
are exactly the people you should seek out and find
out what their experiences because one they may need an ally,

(17:26):
and two that's a unique situation that is definitely a
learning thing, which you're not thinking about that when you're
a kid, because you're a dumb kid. At least I was.
Not all kids are. Some are very bright and insightful.
So yeah, it's been very interesting to see that and
then living, you know, continuing to live in the South
as I do, how we haven't haven't progressed in the

(17:47):
intervening thirty plus years. Well, the South to me is
such a perfect and easy way for anyone to learn
these lessons, because like, I've traveled to South Africa with
a black friend and have gone to a beach where
the entire beach left, Every single person on the beach left,
and someone said to me, that is the first black

(18:09):
person to ever come on this beach. And this was
two thousand and three. Wow, that's not so long ago.
And this was like a segregated beach, and that happened
almost ten years after apartheid ended. I don't. I'm curious
because I feel like you have this unique, parallel, but
not quite the same experience being from South Africa, where

(18:32):
there is sometimes a desire I think in the study
of American history for people to go like, Okay, the
Civil War happened, and then abolition happened, and then reconstruction
and racism was solved, and it's like no, no, no, no,
no no. And I wonder if it's similar with apartheid,
Like maybe the legal rules on the books have been
done away with, but that doesn't mean that cultural norms

(18:54):
magically shift to cool. It takes a while, and it
takes to me. I see it generationally, like maybe you
grow up in a household that is racist and you
don't like it, so then you create a household that
is not that, but surely you're probably still propagating some things.
And then your kids see that and they do one better,

(19:16):
and you know what I mean. So I think it
generationally improves. Not in all cases. Obviously they're outliers to
that model. So I do. I mean, I think that
when I talked to teenagers today or kids in their
early twenties. I'm always wowed by how wise they are
about embracing each other for who they are and not
needing to do those things like put people in defined

(19:39):
boxes with a label on them like that. It's just
not the same mindset. My gone dn'ta who's like at
high school would never use race as an identifying for someone.
She would never go that and to race the girl.
She would identify them with something that's more universal. Right. Well,

(20:00):
and there is like this other angle to that, right
where I like, you don't want to erase though somebody's
identity in that regard, Like to some people their ethnicity
is super important and it's a big part of their identity,
but you don't want to treat it disrespectfully, as just
like an adjective. So I always wonder how those waters
will be navigated going forward. Well, I think the idea

(20:23):
of traveling, like I've spent time in Croatia where the
friends that I made there had never seen a person
of color because Croatia wasn't at the time, So this
is like maybe ten years ago, it wasn't as open
to tourism, and they would say things like I've never
seen a person of color so I'm staring not because

(20:45):
I'm being racist, It's because I don't know it, right.
I mean there and then the invos, like you go
to India and some rural parts of India, those people
have never seen white people and they stare at me
and look at me like, who's this person? This alien
from wherever? Honey, it's not because you're a white person.

(21:05):
It's because you're a tropical fish walking among us human. Yes,
just because I'm slightly taller than you, you're a tropical fish. Yeah.
I mean it is fascinating, and it gets back to
you what you were saying about the other, right, Like
we come to understand what we're exposed to. And so
that's like the thing you've talked a lot about being
open to meeting people and hearing what they have to say,

(21:27):
and that makes them not the other, even even if
they are very different from you. There's still part of
the greater human experience. Well, as I told you about
my experience with Annie. When I became quiet and was
able to listen to Annie, who I met at the
Plantation House, telling me about her life, that's when I

(21:51):
was learning something instead of just being like my experience,
my way this is how I see the South. I
was thing to let somebody else explain to me their
version of the South, and it shocked me because the
stereotypes that people have are so wrong, and they based

(22:11):
on such a small part of the world. Like people
say things like New York is a rude Where do
you get the stereotype from? That? One always cracks me
up a little bit because because my experience to me,
I meet some of the friendliest people I've ever met
in New York. Why do you think the South has
this reputation that's the Southern accent has a reputation, that

(22:36):
very notion of the South has a reputation. Well, there
are certainly reasons, right, Like we have a tag on
our show where we talk about racism is not something
that only happened in the South, but because it was
where a lot of high profile civil rights moments happened,
it looks like where that like the South is where

(22:56):
the battle over racism was happening. The other thing too,
that I think is that we don't always realize how
rooted in history some of these ideas are going all
the way back to the Civil War, Like two Northerners,
there are still roots of that idea that everyone in
the South is a stupid backwards person. Similarly, I mean,

(23:16):
I remember going to high school with I had a
wonderful teacher, but her family would still talk about people
north of the Mason Dixon line as though they were
the enemy. Like she was telling this story one day
about how her brother was engaged to a woman from
like Pennsylvania, and it was like the family scandal. What

(23:37):
that was like more than a hundred years ago, that
this actually took place. That you don't have to do
the the Yankee versus Confederacy thing. I'm not sure why
this is playing out, but I think that those tendrils
have continued longer than people realize. Not everyone embraces change,
particularly not social change. And it's like while things may

(23:57):
be progressing in one way, the people that don't like
it really rally the other way, and those they're passing
those ideas to the next generation after that, etcetera. I mean,
it's the same thing that we talk about in terms
of how we see other races, how we see LGBTQ people. Again,
it goes back to that idea of their this way,

(24:17):
like it becomes that monolithic idea of Southerners are this way,
Northerners are this way. When really, I mean, you could
meet someone from almost any place on Earth, and once
you get over any possible like language barriers, they could
take an assortment of boxes of identities and descriptors that
you would find similar in almost any place in the world,

(24:40):
depending on you know, what their culture and geography has
given them to begin with. This is why you get
on the plane and you go and see everything else, Yes,
so that you can learn that everything else is the
same as you. Yeah, I mean it's so cliche, but
they're really are more similarities than differences. Usually, at the
end of the day, most people just want the basics, right.

(25:03):
They wanna, you know, find love and connection and community
and a place to call home. Everything else is kind
of gravy. I mean, this is the stuff that you
talk about on your show. Yeah, I mean that's the
thing that always gets me. Right, Like we have discussed
off and when people are like, what is your show about,
I'm like the fact that there have always been people

(25:23):
in the world of every stripe that we maybe we're
not led to believe if you will only read, you know,
history books, because those tend to be a lot of
old white guys. There have always been women, There have
always been people of color, There have always been people
all over the spectrum of gender and sexuality. They were
all having the human experience too, and contributing to history,

(25:46):
even though maybe their stories didn't get the attention they deserve.
That's why you should shut the funk up and learn something. Yes,
but I've been talking an awful lot, so you teach
me something. If you'd like to listen to more of Holly,
you can find at stuff you missed in history class,
which is at missed in history everywhere on social media
and missed in history dot com online. Let's take a

(26:10):
breather and we'll be right back with Everywhere after a
word from our sponsors. The time has come for more
of Everywhere. Now where were we? Oh? Hi? There you
are only. Cheety Kamar can be both rock guitarist and

(26:32):
an indie band and the owner plus chef of a
James Beard nominated restaurant. If that's not enough, she's also gorgeous.
I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina with my dearest friend Cheaty Kamar,

(26:54):
who is the co owner and lovely chef at her restaurant,
Garland downtown and I am in town for her incredible
Brown in the South, which she hosted this year. Welcome,
thank you so much, so nice to be here with
you in person. I am don't see you enough, think

(27:18):
of you often, my Indian girl by way of the
Bronx into Raleigh. That's right, my convoluted journeys. So firstly,
tell me what is Brown in the South? Okay? So
Brown in the South is a collective, I should say
it started with five of us. Um Marijuana Rani in

(27:41):
Asheville from Chaipani Group and Fishpot is a chef in Oxford, Mississippi,
and they were at the Southern Food bas Aligne Symposium
a couple of years ago. Every year the symposium has
a theme, and I think um the Latin South was
an important theme of that year. And they started talking

(28:01):
and they were wondering why we don't have that, We
don't have this coalition, We don't have a voice in
a platform or at least even just a a structure
to have this conversation. That conversation happened with them and
they just decided, like, let's just do a dinner because
food is the catalyst for all conversation. To us, So

(28:24):
we did this dinner a year ago in January in
Decatur at one of Marijuan's restaurants, and it was the
five of us and it was just like a mind
blowing experience for all of us and kind of life changing,
and we decided to do a series and just keep
doing it and with everyone. We ask other chefs that
are in that community and go to different cities and

(28:46):
just like feel that city and invite people that are
in that region and cooking and like make it an
inclusive conversation. So when you say brown, you mean Indian. Um,
we mean Indian because we're Indian, but it can mean anything.
Because I hosted this one, I really was considering inviting
Van and our good friend Van is from Laos, And

(29:10):
then it becomes a little tricky because then you can't.
Our personal experience has become so varied in a way
that um, but they're also the same, you know. The
immigrant experience is very similar and inherent as a part
of being new in the country is a feeling of
being isolated, a little bit shameful of your accent. Your

(29:30):
childhood experiences are not the same. You didn't watch the
same cartoons, you didn't like I mean, it's just a
whole set of experiences that make you feel like you're
the other. And a lot of that is self inflicted.
It's not necessarily people that tell you that. Some do
for sure, but you're you're constantly evaluating your difference, chitty um.

(29:52):
As you know, when I met you, I was doing
my very own road trip of the South Johney of
the South with my husband, and the idea it was
that I wanted to shut the funk up and learn
something instead of judging the South. I wanted to stop
thinking of the South and my Daniel way and stop

(30:12):
thinking of the South and a Southern way. Well, I
think I remember when I first told my parents that
I'm moving to North Carolina. They said, oh, why, they're
they're very racist there, you know, And I said, no,
you know, you just have to be here. It's different
and this is not like the Deep South. And then
I started a band and then we toured, and so

(30:35):
I did a lot of road tripping too, and playing
in the South is always different. It's comfortable, it's uncomfortable.
The food is good, the people are warm, and you
can judge them if you want to. But again, if
you just stop and get out of the way. Um.

(30:56):
You understand that this is a complicated place with a
very slow a journey, and unlike I think some of
the places in the country that are you know, different
or have a different feel, commerce seems to be like
the driving force, and here I think such a part
of the history of our commerce here in the South

(31:18):
is so awful and it's so ugly. There's um, I
think there might have been some subconscious shift away from
money as a priority. So I know there's economic reasons
for commerce not being the driving force. And it ends
up being about if you listen, if you're connected to that,
it's about relationships, and it's about a connection to history,

(31:42):
family history, and and the land and nature a little
bit more. There's more space, and there's more time, and
it's a little bit easier to live here because it
is economically or it has been, or recent history has
been economically cheaper. It's a place where you and be
creative without having this pressure of being you know, um,

(32:03):
of compromising to make it, to make more money. And
that's the thing that appealed to me when I was
a kid just graduated college and and came here. Wow,
you know, these bands are really cool here, and people
practice in their house and they buy a used van
from the state surplus and then they go on tour
and they book it themselves, and they're not worried about

(32:25):
having a manager or getting a record deal, and you know,
eventually you do worry about that, But it was just
like you just invent your life, you know. And I
think that there's a certain amount of creative invention at
the South to me Fosters that I did not find
when I was growing up in New York in the
Bronx or went to school in Massachusetts. Like I could

(32:47):
not have imagined myself in Boston, you know. Can you
see me in Boston? Yeah? Right. You feel so quintessentially
Southern to me, which is for me beautiful because when
I talk about my like quintessential Southern bellfriend, it's you.
But I like that. I like the idea of you,
you embodying something so southern, and your sense of hospitality

(33:09):
is so Southern, Like the South is not this monolithic
thing that people think like. And part of my whole
journey of traveling the South was if I choose to
live in America, I needed to understand the South as
part of the whole. I needed to come here and
not just see the divide. I needed to come here

(33:30):
and see everything and uncover that stuff. Of course, I'm
a white, privileged person who comes from a certain place.
I'm clouded by my stuff. But I try and travel
and unburdened myself of those ideas by just being quiet
and not coming to the South with my notions of

(33:50):
what it needs to be. So I arrived and I'm like,
what is Raleigh. Let Raleigh show me. I came here
and you showed me that there's a place for everyone
in the South because everyone and anyone can be summon
I think it's a matter of staking your claim and
understanding what your intention is in being here. And yes,

(34:13):
there's still so much to be done. Race is an issue,
but it's not just an issue in the South. It's
an issue everywhere. It's just that it's maybe, uh rightfully
so a more present and sore wound. Still it's not healed.
But I feel like when I went to high school
in the Bronx, you know, uh, that school was segregated.

(34:34):
We had two separate entrances, so the people on the
south side came in one way and the people from
the north side came in a different entrance and in
that symbol right there. It's like even in one high school,
you know, that's a that's a big conversation for the
whole country. Um. But I think I dare say that
Southern culture has always been pushed forward secretly by brown

(35:00):
and black people. The white folk maybe own it and
they have the face, but really we're the ones who
are pushing it. And the African Americans not only influenced
the table, they actually made the table from the seed
to the plate. I mean, there was everything had to

(35:20):
do with their hands and their history and their um,
their heart and their family lure that they didn't have
the benefit of writing and sharing in an any official way.
When you have that strong culture of storytelling, it becomes
ingrained in the fabric of a place, and that economic privileges.

(35:42):
You know, it's not everything, it's it's a lot, and
it can certainly make life easier. But I think that
the that heart force has always been pulsing really hard
in the South, and the revolutions that happened to give
people more rights on the Civil rights movement, I mean,
what a beautiful story story of connection and um, multi

(36:02):
layers of people banning together, and people don't talk that
much about that part of it, you know, but that's
the Southern history. And when we talk about brown in
the South as recent Indian immigrants, I mean, that's a
new story to us, because you know, you have to
also think about the immigration laws, you know, and we

(36:23):
weren't really allowed to be in this country until the
fifties when the Chinese people are finally allowed to be
here and and be norm like quote normal citizens. You know,
there's there are a lot of forgotten laws and historical
facts that it is exactly why things are the way
they are. They're very specific reasons, and it's a matter
of just like learning about it, you know. I think

(36:48):
as I've had and have been so humbled by my
experience because I thought that the South was this one thing,
So how do we break up the monolithic idea this?
So I think it's about experience. I think it's about
understanding the nuances. And I think that's always the answer
to most questions, is to understand the nuances. It's not

(37:12):
a black and white like literally, it's not black and white.
It is a whole many shades of brown and all
the other colors. Um. I mean what what's uniting maybe
is agriculture is maybe a way of um of eating
and of thinking about your neighbor um. Ideally, it's a

(37:32):
sense of community and it's hopefully a sense of inclusiveness
really when it comes down to it. I mean, you
can talk about the word redneck, and that can mean
a whole lot of different things. I've certainly seen a
lot of rednecks in Massachusetts, um. And there's some folks
here that on the surface you might say, oh, that's
a redneck, but then you start talking to them and

(37:53):
they're brilliant and talented and kind and open hearted. I mean,
it's really just a matter of getting into it and
and not just writing things off because of preconceived notions.
That's for me, so pivotal for people to understand and
change the notion. Like I would love if people could

(38:14):
travel to the South and come to places like Raleigh, Greenville,
South Carolina, Pigeon Forged, like go and see that, look
for Dolly Parton and not just go to Charleston in Atlanta,
which is amazing. But there's all this other stuff available
to you. I mean, I think there's a place for

(38:35):
all that kind of travel, but there's an artificial presentation
of a place and a culture that is sold, and
it's often really fun and delicious and creative and comfortable
and luxurious, but then there's just a place for its
own sake, you know. And actually we talked about this

(38:55):
with the visitors bureau here and Raleigh, and there's a
comple caated conversation like how do you market a city
that doesn't have a baseball stadium or soccer stadium or
like a big landmark. We're not on a river kind
of new really in the in the scheme of things,
we don't have anything that draws people except us. We

(39:20):
realize at the end of this meeting that the draw
is a community and those of us who have businesses
are a part of that. But it's also just like
the fact that the city embraces that and people come
all the time, and they come to the restaurant and
they often say, like, I love Ralli, Like it just
feels really good here. And I hear that so much,

(39:41):
and I think that's just because there's an open heart
here and I think that if you choose to be
connected to that, it's it's palpable. And I really like
being intangible, no tagline marketing scheme. You know. I love that,
Like the idea that there's nothing here just me. Yeah,
it's a beautiful thought. I agree, it's not. I think

(40:04):
it takes a certain amount of confidence to just say, yeah,
that's actually our draw, like that's our value. You know,
I'm gonna find me. Yeah, exactly right. Thanks Jutty, Thank you.
I love seeing you. Thanks for hanging out. Connect with

(40:24):
us on Twitter at everywhere Pond, Instagram at Everywhere podcast,
or on the website at everywhere podcast dot com. I'm
Daniel Scheffler. I'll be seeing you everywhere For more podcasts

(40:50):
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