Slow as Molasses
I was born and raised in the South and had problems with it. The racism is the part I found to be the most disturbing.
Fast forward to the early 2000s when I took a road trip to Montgomery, AL with a friend. She was planning to try out for “Who Wants to be a Millionaire,” and I had my sights on visiting Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to see where Dr. King had preached. When we rolled into town, it felt like we had journeyed back in time 50 years. The lack of social progress there was apparent and jarring.
Fast forward again to 2025 and my first visit to Charleston, SC. While there, a friend and I visited an old plantation to specifically see the slave quarters, as we both thought that highlighting the Black experience was a positive shift in the zeitgeist. However, when we toured the site, we learned that the plantation was not a museum owned by the city. It was, in fact, still owned by a wealthy white family.
Nothing, in essence, had changed. The plantation worked in much the same way it had in the past—a wealthy white family was profiting off of Black folks by making the estate a tourist attraction and using it as a wedding venue. The idea of getting married there was abhorrent to me; it would be like getting married at a concentration camp.
Rather than highlight the atrocities of the past, the plantation supported the Lost Cause myth that emerged after the Civil War, reframing the Confederate States of America's defeat. The myth suggests that it was not a loss over slavery, but instead a noble, heroic struggle against the overwhelming industrial might of the North—a "lost" but morally justified cause.
Complete and utter bullshit.
Likewise, when we stopped for drinks at a fancy hotel in Charleston, I assumed it was owned by a corporation—like most hotels. But it, too, was owned by a wealthy white family. As I studied their portraits aligning the walls on my walk to the bathroom in the lobby, it dawned upon me that much of Charleston is still being run like a plantation. And any so-called progress, just like in Montgomery, is SO SLOW.
Four years ago, I moved back to the South to give it another go, make peace with the past, and finally own the kind of house I always wanted in California but could never afford. Although the overall vibe here is much better than when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, there are still social realities that I find disturbing, like voluntary segregation along racial and socioeconomic lines. Also, a fear, suspicion, or automatic and unearned deference from certain people of color, which I also find troubling. And just plain sad.
This past week, I had to rent a storage unit in Oxford, MS since I’m about to move from a house to an apartment across the country. When I got to the warehouse to unload my things, I found that the garage-style door was not working properly. I texted the manager and said: “Hi there, can you please get the garage door fixed? It’s hard to open without pulling on it. It should just open by pushing the button.” And in response, she said: “It’s been like that for years with no complaints.”
Her “it is what it is” attitude irked me, and I kept thinking about it. In doing so, I wondered about my own rumination, then finally realized this morning—southern culture is like a self-serving passivity that maintains the status quo. If you ignore the broken garage door, you never have to pay to get it done. If no one complains, why fix it? History has shown that the South only changes when it’s forced to—never by choice. Never because it’s the right thing to do.
It’s slow as molasses, and the kind of social change I longed for as a biracial kid in Memphis, TN has still not come to pass.
Photo credit: Susan Mah