Southern Stereotypes During The Civil War

have an image of being a distinct group of people with bad personal hygiene, who spits chewing tobacco and drives old, beat down trucks. Southerners have had this reputation since the early 1900’s when slavery was prominent. The stereotypes about southerners are still strongly alive today, creating a sense of oldness pertaining to southern living. Often looking back upon the Civil War ages, keeping the south in the past. However, what is often left out is the fact that the South has become as suburban, chain-stored and wired as the rest of America. Following the oldness southern stereotypes have made, those who have spent most of their lives in the South are frequently forced to reminisce on the destructive and disturbing misconceptions that many other Americans have made.
Stereotyping is seen everywhere from reality television to everyday life. Southerners are given terms that now categorizes them into southern stereotypes, such as: cracker, white trash, redneck and hillbilly. After getting burned on the back on the back of their necks from the sun from working outside all day, poor white southern farmers are given the stereotypical nickname “redneck.” Those in the South work only enough to get by with what is needed and no more. This example of a southern stereotype led to the construction of a new stereotype of southerners becoming known as being “lazy.” Southern people do not believe in living a life where they have to or choose to work every possible hour of the day to be able to have nice material things. It is not necessary to overindulge in life. Southerners believe it is just enough for the simpler things in life. Reality television industries have intruded on the innocence of southerners and their lives by discovering an easy way to exploit a perceived otherness of the