I've thinking about these two posts of yours for a while.

I've been thinking about those posts ever since I posted them too. I know they came off sounding fairly prejudice. That was not at all what I intended to do, but it's what I did none the less. That bothers me quite a bit.

I think I do a fair job of eliminating prejudice from my views except for "my own people." Again, this is not to say that I think Southerners are stupid. I agree that television may have had something to do with this problem.

Unfortunately, though, I really believe that the people *SOME OF THE PEOPLE* in my home town were not stupid, but ignorant. When we were in kindergarten, my mom helped out the teacher with some field trips. We went to the next town over to go to a mall because lots of the kids had never been 10 miles from home. That's just how isolated the place was. (I don't think it's that bad anymore) When I happened not to think as the people of the town had done for the past 50 years, I got a lot of bullying. That's where my prejudices came from, and I don't think that way anymore. It's just a childhood predilection that I can't quite get rid of.

I've certainly had to deal with plenty of Southern sounding individuals in school and at work. I certainly don't think they are unintelligent because of their speech. I even affect that accent (in certain cases) when the people I am talking with have it, because it makes them feel more comfortable, and it doesn't make any difference to me anymore. I apologize for the rant. I just felt I needed to defend myself. I seem to have come off as some sort of self-hating mongre in these past few posts. I don't know if I've done any better with this one but I hope so.