Mississippi is not a real place

Earlier this week, I read something in the Huffington Post about the poorest states in the nation. Not surprisingly, the poorest states were all red states, and mostly Southern. No argument there. The numbers don't lie, and of course, Mississippi is the poorest. It is not the reddest state in the South, the numbers show from the last presidential election that it was more Democratic-leaning than Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. But, like its neighbors, Mississippi does have a Republican governor who is testing the waters for a presidential run in 2012.

I was not offended at any of these things. What angered me the most, what really, really chapped my behind, was the number of times people used "uneducated" to describe the populace of Mississippi. People made these random assumptions that everybody from Mississippi is "uneducated" and "behind the times". A quick Google search would reveal that Mississippi actually has more universities and community colleges than states comparable in size and population. And even the most dilapidated school systems of Mississippi do not have the drop-out rate as high as Wayne County's of Detroit. Yet, nobody calls the populace of Detroit, or any other metropolitan area where the dropout rate is above 50%, "uneducated."

Then, I had this sudden realization: Mississippi is not a real place with real people in the minds of most of Americans. Mississippi is an idea. It is an ideological dumping ground for everything that America doesn't love about itself: homelessness, racism, uneducated masses who slavishly follow the Republican party against their own will, poverty, failing school systems, low-paying jobs that are non-unionized, teenage pregnancy, rises in sexually transmitted diseases and abortion rates among teens, sky-rocketing divorce rates, etc. All of these things are Mississippi's problems. I don't need to waste any space here outlining all of the "good ole' boy" and "cotton-picking" stereotypes about Mississippi that circulate in our national culture. According to Hollywood, there are no paved roads, it is never winter, and nobody has air-conditioning. We all talk lak Hai-leeeeeey Baaaaaaarbour (Whose accent is very questionable. Some people believe he has a coach so that he can appeal to his base. He certainly didn't talk like that at a commencement ceremony I once attended), and the state doesn't extend past the Delta region where white folks are forever night-riding with white sheets over their heads and Black folks are forever sitting on their porches singing the Blues about how miserable white folk done made them.

Mississippi exists as a psychological booster for the rest of the United States. When all else fails, when all looks bleak, when everything looks substandard and subpar, every state in the United States has the privilege of saying, "At least we're not Mississippi."