Into the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

This chapter argues that the recent dramatic acceleration in immigration to the American South and an openness to increased social diversity have led to changes in the southern living concept, making for more diverse identities. The chapter charts the coming of large numbers of Latinos, Asians, and Middle Eastern peoples who have enriched and complicated understandings of the South. Culture has become central to regional consciousness through music, literature, sports, food, and regional magazines that all express a transformed regional identity around cultural hybridity. The chapter explains the recent relationship of the South to national culture and the continuing impact of the regional past through commemoration of the Confederacy and the civil rights movement. Struggles over defining southern identities have grown as the twenty-first century progressed through an intensification of culture wars. “Authenticity is a key term long associated with southern culture, but recent changes in the region have made it a fraught but still relevant concept in southern living. The southern civil religion continues to provide a religiously based public philosophy rooted in aspirations of regional redemption of the nation’s racial burdens.