The Generational Difference in Southern Manners

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic ’s archives to contextualize the present.

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that the southerner is the most mannerly person in America.

Before any Yanks get defensive, I want to clarify that this does not necessarily make them the kindest group in America.

As a young child in Tennessee, I learned that a “Bless your heart” to one’s face paired particularly well with a cutting remark behind closed doors.

I also learned that etiquette was a pesky but persistent thing: Anytime I replied to my father with a curt “yes,” he’d look at me sideways and say, “Yes, what?” I’d sigh.

“Yes sir .” My father is a seventh-generation Kentuckian, and my mother’s family has lived in the South since the 18th century.

Growing up, I knew that there was a regalia to the southerner’s manners that might come as a surprise to those who cast the region as unrefined.

Men are to hold doors for their dates and give up their seats to women on the bus.

In some spaces, they will still stand when a lady enters or exits the room.

There are also the more casual types of manners.

When you pass any stranger on the street, you say, “Howdy,” or, “How are you?” You wave at pedestrians you drive by in your truck.

You let neighbors borrow an egg or a cup of sugar without any expectation of repayment.

Even as the identity of the South evolves, and more young people lose certain traits that are identifiably southern , manners remain one of the region’s most distinctive and steadfast qualities.