Can you tell me about upscale southern culture?
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Anonymous
I am. I just can’t find my great great great grandmas birth certificate. You suggesting the 2021 DAR cohort would reissue me a card despite if I show my ancestors birth certificate? Gettouttaaheeere 
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Anonymous
| I'm the one with the in laws and they have the upper class Southern accent. They like to make fun of the people from the more Appalachian part of the state (SW VA) and their accent. |
Anonymous
They're not the only ones who do that. |
Anonymous
That is good news because I felt like my kitties were starting to become a bit hostile around my discussion of the loss. |
Anonymous
| Oh my in laws gave me some paintings of the dogs they had, which were all prized hunting dogs and show dogs. |
Anonymous
Lol how dare you have kitties. Everyone on DCUM knows fancy people like horses and dogs. |
Anonymous
True. Which is funny because dog slobber and horse sweat are not fancy at all. |
Anonymous
+1 yea.. no thanks. -signed a non white person |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
but it's not classy. |
Anonymous
obviously, it's so that you hide your valuables. |
Anonymous
People like this can think they are nice AND be racist. Has OP spent enough time with them to determine this? How many upscale white southern families have non white people in their family/social circle? |
Anonymous
| I married into an upper-class Southern family but my own relatives are working-class Northerners. I’ve heard wayyyyyy more casual racism from my Northerner relatives than from my ILs. |
Anonymous
The family I knew like this definitely had a very polished exterior that hid the unhappiness inside. They seemed like such a perfect family that everyone was surprised when they announced their divorce. (I'm not saying in any way that a happy front means an unhappy family inside, just that in a culture where image counts a lot, you'd have to know them very, very well to know if there were issues.) |
Anonymous
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As a person descended from poor white trash who went to southern private schools for 16 years, both k-12 and college, I am an outside observer on the subject of southern rich people.
Some are casually racist, some are not. Usually the richer and more well educated they are, the less classist and racist they are (in my experience) and try to make everyone feel welcome. The warnings: If the family welcomes all family members, they will usually have a number of eccentric family members they are fine with. And gay uncle Larlo and his partner Miles, for example, will be invited and embraced at family events, even if they aren't completely out. See, at least partially: a famous politician from SC. Not all rich southern families are casually racist, but again, those with less money and less education than others are more likely to be racist than the richer, more educated families. Beware any rich southerners who are still South Baptist or evangelical--they are the most likely to be racist. Episcopalians and Presbyterians, less so. If I were your DD, I would plan for a longer engagement--she will need it if planning a large wedding that includes the groom's whole family and their old friends. The one thing I have seen trip up people who marry into rich "old" southern families are the expectations: she needs to figure out what expectations there may be before actually getting married. Does his family expect them to go to the family vacation house every single year, no matter what? Does his family expect the couple to live near them, no matter what? Does his family expect her to dress and act a particular way? (for example, many of the wealthier southern women I know have a fairly strict unwritten dress code, unless they are considered "eccentric.") It's fine to be eccentric, but there will be pressure to conform, which may continue on if they family is really conservative. Does his family expect women to stay home and not work after they have children? Do any of his female family members work after having children? If his family is old southern money, they are used to getting what they want. Your dd needs to observe his family and especially the female relatives, to see if there are any expectations they might not be talking about, which they assume everyone knows about already. I've known really welcoming, wonderful, generous "old money" southern families, and then I've known others that could have stepped out of a southern gothic novel from the 1950s. |