Growing up in a small town in the American South, one topic of conversation was a constant amongst my peers: growing up and moving to the big city. My friends and I would go on about the ignorance of the adults around us and how slowly life moved.
So, when I was 14, I did it—I left North Carolina for boarding school in New England.
It was everything I had ever dreamed of, going to class with other kids from all over the country and the world. I made best friends from Hong Kong, San Francisco, Montana, you name it. I spent breaks staying with friends in Manhattan and Atlanta. When I did go back to my hometown, I counted down the days until I got to go back to New Hampshire, with my new friends and my new world view.
If that all sounds a little pretentious, it’s because it totally and completely was. I had left, and so I was better was the flawed logic of my early adolescence.
As the years passed, my other friends and I from the South began to notice something.
It’s a relatively common experience, as a southerner in northern elite environments, to hear this phrase after telling someone new where you’re from: I’m sorry. Some new acquaintances would apologize to us, for the “ignorant” environments we grew up in. And this word, “ignorant,” that I had once passionately employed myself, started to sound different. It began to bother me.
After the 2024 election, one of my classmates at Tufts, a Boston native, posted an infographic on their story. It was a map of the states with the worst rankings in education, compared with a map of the states that had voted for then President-elect Donald Trump. I don’t remember exactly what caption she added to it, but it was something along the lines of, “these are the people who determined our future.” This is something I probably would have posted at 12 years old after the 2016 election, but at 20, my reaction was anger. Now, after living in New England for the better part of 8 years, I understand why.
Ignorance is a difficult concept to discuss. There are certainly a lot of well-informed people in the South who voted for Trump. There is also an entire region of my home state, just an hour from where I grew up, that is classified as a “news desert,” where the closing of local papers combined with lack of internet access has left a large number of citizens without reliable local, national, and international news. When Northerners apologize to me for being from the South, is this what they are apologizing for? Are they educated on this issue? Are they doing anything to fix it?
And here’s another thing that really bothers me: more than half of Black Americans live in the South, not to mention other minority groups. Yes, I witnessed blatant racism in the South. I also had an incredibly diverse school, friend group, and upbringing. Now, in the Northeast, I witness veiled, systemic racism such as this. Painting the entire South as less intelligent will never sit right with me.
I don’t remember when exactly I started to feel defensive about my hometown, but at some point I stopped counting the days until I got to once again leave. I love how it’s not so crowded, and that I can find parking wherever I go. I love the traditions of food and music, shaped by an entirely different group of immigrants of cultures than the Northeast. I love the untouched beaches, the Appalachian mountains, and the way it floods after a heavy rain. And I love the people–the “ignorant” people I wanted so desperately to get away from. I realized that we, as a nation, need to invest in this place.
I am very proud of where I am from, and I never apologize for it or hesitate to preach this to anyone who asks. It is this love and pride that I carry that is exactly why I won’t be moving back home. I want to keep entering new spaces and meeting people from all around the world, and I want to tell them how great the South is. I had to leave my hometown to love it, and to be a good steward of it, I’m going to stay out–not because of the ignorance of the people there, but because of the ignorance of people everywhere else. I want to understand the experiences of other people who love–and leave–their hometown.
Artwork by Nicole Mousad