Kissing Dixie Goodbye

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• Kissing Dixie Goodbye
• Artress Bethany White (bio)

(Reprinted from Survivor's Guilt: Essays on Race and American Identity, New Rivers Press, 2020, 2022)

I fell in love with the Shenandoah Valley the first time I saw it. The sun shone brightly through intermittent clouds floating overhead and created the illusion of folds along the verdant green mountain range. As a kid traveling south with my family, I promised myself I would live there one day. Though the valley below was only dotted with farms and fields of cattle, and I had no aspirations to own either a farm or livestock, the mountain range won my heart. Years later, I recalled those thoughts while traveling up through the Shenandoah Valley with two of my stepchildren in tow. Every now and then I would yell toward the back seat, "Kids, come on, look at that majestic view." They in turn sighed heavily, ungluing their faces from their respective iPads with a dismissive, "Yeah, nice," before diving right back into cyber world. The beauty was lost on them, but it didn't stop me from interrupting a few more times just so I wouldn't feel guilty for not trying. In the summer of 2017, driving through the Shenandoah Valley represented something else for me: this was my proof that I was finally returning to the North after too many years away. What I didn't know when I was a child was that geography, as beautiful as it is, often harbors politics that are not culturally inclusive and are too often blatantly dangerous.

I remind myself regularly that I should not idealize my return to the North, because to do so would be a setup for disappointment. After all, I was returning to live in Pennsylvania, the very state that had gone from blue to red in the 2016 presidential election. Add to that the realities of racism I have faced in the North and the South, and the truth is evident that racism is a pandemic knowing no regional borders. Still, it was reassuring this past winter to see one of those post-election signs planted in a snowy yard while house hunting with my husband before our move to Philadelphia. You know, the signs that state: "In Our Community, Black Lives Matter, We Fear No Faith, Women's Rights are Human Rights, No Human is Illegal, Science is Real, Love is Love." As I read this one I thought, I am surely in the right place. Here was a self-identified human being claiming a sanctuary for all of us who desired to live in a compassionate world. Hugs and kisses to you, too, my new Philadelphia neighbor, I thought.

Imagine my delight when, a scant few months later, our eight-year-old brought home her three new girlfriends during the first week in our Pennsylvania neighborhood: a Haitian American, an English-Chilean American, and an Asian American. The great melting pot of America I had previously experienced living in Boston and New York was now replicated in Philadelphia. Our next-door neighbors were even an interracial couple. [End Page 32]

My social groups while living in Tennessee were largely politically segregated. People often cultivate homogeneous communities in places where diversity is considered a dirty word. I spent a lot of time around other African Americans, self-identified liberal whites, and people of color—all those who at least attempted to empathize with or understand my subject position. Within this group, I found other educators, writers, and artists joined in solidarity to make inroads into outdated Southern cultural politics. Each couple had their own reasons for desiring change. Some were parents resulting from transracial adoptions, and others were in interracial or transcultural marriages. Many just wanted, at the very least, to create a better, more inclusive world for their own children; they approached the task with a sure knowledge that if they did not work hard, their own visibly white children would absorb the racist rhetoric they heard around them on school playgrounds and someday verbally oppress the children of their multiracial friends. You bet they felt a burning need to share their pedagogies for change with others who would...