John Shelton Reed Quotes

• Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the US to Europe’s wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes.

  John Shelton Reed

  Wine, Europe, Southern

  47 Copy quote

• Every time I look at Atlanta I see what a quarter of a million Confederate soldiers died to prevent.

  John Shelton Reed

  Atlanta, Southern, Soldier

  12 Copy quote

• Maybe we've been brainwashed by 130 years of Yankee history, but Southern identity now has more to do with food, accents, manners, music than the Confederate past. It's something that's open to both races, a variety of ethnic groups and people who move here.

  John Shelton Reed

  Moving, Past, Yankees

  8 Copy quote

• No one would stand for it [being the fool in the media] in a minute if you took any other group -Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, women - but somehow it's okay to do that with hillbillies.

  John Shelton Reed

  Native American, Media, African American

  7 Copy quote

• The South is like my favorite pair of blue jeans. It's shrunk some, faded a bit, got a few holes in it. it just might split at the seams. It doesn't look much like it used to, but it's more comfortable, and there's probably a lot of wear left in it.

  John Shelton Reed

  Blue, Jeans, Looks

  John Shelton Reed (1993). “My Tears Spoiled My Aim, and Other Reflections on Southern Culture”, p.7, University of Missouri Press

  16 Copy quote

• You ask people what their ethnicity is, and a lot of Scots-Irish people either don't know or if they know it they just don't acknowledge it. It's not something they really identify with. They're just plain old Americans, plain vanilla. I don't think they are a self-conscious voting bloc.

  John Shelton Reed

  Thinking, Self, Ethnicity

  6 Copy quote

• I can see why many Southerners, black ones in particular, don't like the implication that Southernness and the Confederate heritage are one and the same, because they're not. On the other hand, there are people who want to extirpate that completely and want folks to spit on the graves of their ancestors.

  John Shelton Reed

  Hands, People, Black

  4 Copy quote

• The nature of the South is changing faster than the stereotypes are. Much of the South now looks like San Jose. Is it still southern?

  John Shelton Reed

  Southern, Looks, Stereotype

  7 Copy quote

• Why can I write 'South' with some assurance that you'll know I mean Richmond and don't mean Phoenix? What is it that the South's boundaries enclose?

  John Shelton Reed

  Writing, Mean, Phoenix

  John Shelton Reed (1993). “My Tears Spoiled My Aim, and Other Reflections on Southern Culture”, p.5, University of Missouri Press

  6 Copy quote

• I don't think massification and globalization and all those other 'izations' are necessarily hostile to regionalism.

  John Shelton Reed

  Thinking, Globalization, Regionalism

  8 Copy quote

• There's an ethic that says: 'You don't run off to the church for the sacraments of salvation, you establish a personal relationship with God. You don't run off to the courts for justice, you settle it yourself. You don't run off to labor unions to sort out your work relations, you can take this job and shove it if you don't like what you're doing.

  John Shelton Reed

  Running, Jobs, Justice

  4 Copy quote

• If you care to define the South as a poor, rural region with lousy race relations, that South survives only in geographical shreds and patches and most Southerners don't live there any more.

  John Shelton Reed

  Race, Care, Poor

  4 Copy quote

• Barbecue is the third rail of North Carolina politics.

  John Shelton Reed

  North Carolina, Barbecue, Thirds

  John Shelton Reed, Dale Volberg Reed (2016). “Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue”, p.12, UNC Press Books

  21 Copy quote

• Any Southern nationalist movement, especially one that wraps itself in the Confederate flag, is going to be viewed with suspicion, given the historical record.

  John Shelton Reed

  Southern, Historical, Flags

  4 Copy quote

• Drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes.

  John Shelton Reed

  Hundred, Miles, Barbecue

  John Shelton Reed (2016). “Barbecue: a Savor the South® cookbook”, p.14, UNC Press Books

  23 Copy quote

• We could say that people who eat grits, listen to country music, follow stock-car racing, support corporal punishment in the schools, hunt 'possum, go to Baptist churches and prefer bourbon to Scotch are likely to be Southerners.

  John Shelton Reed

  Country, School, Scotch

  John Shelton Reed (1993). “My Tears Spoiled My Aim, and Other Reflections on Southern Culture”, p.15, University of Missouri Press

  21 Copy quote

• Southerners smile more than other Americans.

  John Shelton Reed

  Smile, Smile More, Southerner

  7 Copy quote

• I've occasionally wished I had Caller ID. Even telemarketers, I hate to hang up on them. I try to explain I'm not interested, but they have all these canned responses so I end up having to hang up on them anyway.

  John Shelton Reed

  Hate, Trying, Ends

  4 Copy quote

• I think there's a suspicion in the South of people putting on airs. You see it in most successful Southern politicians, but you also see it in someone like Richard Petty, who may be a multimillionaire stock car driver, but he's also beloved because he has a nice self-deprecatory way about him.

  John Shelton Reed

  Nice, Successful, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• I do believe states' rights was a sound doctrine that got hijacked by some unsavory customers for a while - like, 150 years or so. I'm professionally obliged to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance, but some kinds of forgetting are OK with me.

  John Shelton Reed

  Believe, Ignorance, Rights

  "Term 'states' rights' heard anew in election cycle" by Allen G. Breed, www.foxnews.com. January 26, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• Dixie has just fallen to pieces. There are little patches of Dixie. But even in the heart of Dixie - in Alabama - Dixie is slipping. They've stopped using the word in commercial listings.

  John Shelton Reed

  Heart, Alabama, Dixie

  4 Copy quote

• But I still do believe that there are useful things to say about Elvis Presley, including what his own ordinariness as a poor Southerner says about 20th-century hero-making.

  John Shelton Reed

  Believe, Hero, Poor

  4 Copy quote

• Every Southerner, I think, knows people like Bill Clinton, maybe not quite as smart and maybe not quite as liberal, but kind of a glad-handing, country-club yuppie Southerner. The problem is we don't have labels for middle-class Southerners.

  John Shelton Reed

  Country, Smart, Thinking

  7 Copy quote

• As long as there are Japanese tourists, there will be a market for the Old South.

  John Shelton Reed

  Long, Tourists, South

  4 Copy quote

• Country music historically has been sort of middle-aged people's music.

  John Shelton Reed

  Country, People, Middle

  4 Copy quote

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