WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A WHITE UPPER CLASS SOUTHERNER?
Hieu: Dr. Lykes. In the speech at Hollins on Founder day, you emphasized very strong about …” I am a typical white southern woman, and you also mentioned Race, Gender and Class……have shaped the way you think…..and growing up. Can you expand that more?
Brinton: Uh, huh…uh huh……ok…..um………I think …..Well several things. One was I think that ….um……When I was growing up, I don’t think I understood how important race, social class and gender were to who I am. I think I was just assumed who I was, what I was …who I was. And it ‘s only as I got older that I began to realize that growing up in the South, growing up at a White woman, growing up in a family that had certain economic resources, created static social conditions that makes my up bringing very different than someone who grew up at the same time. I read a book, and if you ever heard the book that ……coming of the ancient of Mississippi.
Hieu: No! I have not.
Brinton: It’s written by a woman, name …Ann.. Moody, and she grew up in Mississippi. More less at the same time that I grew up in New Orleans. She was born….I can’t remember ….she was born in 51, 50 or 52. …… I was born in 1949. And we couldn’t have growing up more differently, if those Mississippi and Louisiana are next to each other. She grew up in a family; an African American family with very few resources, and the life choices available to her was very different from the life choices available from me. And I emphasized that at this stage of my life because I think it‘s really important how the brothers social systems construct us, that surround us, afford us opportunities and also constrained our opportunities. And they also create conditions. Through it, we understand who we are. Say create ways in which people label us and they create ways in which we understand our selves and they create ways in which we defined our understanding. And one of the thing that I also ….you know it like a fishing water, they say if the fish doesn’t know it‘s in the water because the water‘s around. But when the fish’s laid on the side of the fish ball, the fish had much better sense of what water is. So I think as a child growing up in the South and growing up in the city that was on the one hand very Catholic, and the South that wasn’t very Catholic. The south, it’s not practical Catholic. The South was Christine in a lot of ways. Not a lot of Catholic in the South. But New Orleans, the city has a lot of Catholics……um…..It ‘s was…when I ….It ‘s…..It seem to me that it …….when you leave what familiar and you look back ….what familiar….you begin to understand that familiarity of it and understand why. …..So…..when I left the South the first time, I understood much more fully what it meant to be a … Southerner.