Why The South Is Broken

Thank you for watching my video on the struggling Southern United States. This isn't a video about why the South is a good or bad place, but a deeper look at how the region is hurting.

Arkansas is unquestionably the deep south

The problems discussed here are not limited to the south. Small towns are dying everywhere

I'm Southern borne and bred. I've spent almost my entire life minus 3 years in it. I'm also a pretty harsh critic of the South. And even I have to call BS on a good bit of this video. Among many things, Atlanta, Nashville and Charlotte metros aren't the only prosperous areas. There's RTP in North Carolina and Greenville-Spartanburg in South Carolina and Huntsville in Alabama, just to name three more. And this video makes it sound like only the South's rural areas are struggling. Rural areas are struggling in most places in the country. And in the world.

The rural south suffers from the same problem as many other struggling areas in America. Corportization of everything which smashed small business and sent millions of manufacturing jobs over seas. The southern textile industry is just one example. These companies deserted small towns, took their jobs with them and nothing has come to replace it for ordinary people who need to live and support their families.

Rural areas have been dying nationwide for 60 years. You can’t look at poor southern towns and think “that’s the south” while ignoring atlanta or charolette . 60% of georgias residents live in the atlanta area. 6 million of 10 million people live in that city. North Carolina has like 5-6 million people juggled between Raleigh and charolette. The metro areas of the south are huge and population dominant

If you have alligators, hurricanes, hot humid weather, bugs, pollen you are in the south my friend.

As someone from GA. I would say you pretty accurately explained what most of us here consider the south. Florida and Texas have interesting histories that make them both similar and different to the south. The Florida panhandle is definitely the south though!

This was just 8 minutes of some guy expressing his opinion and bias that the south is so bad.. You didn't really say anything about the south actually being broken. And I've never known southerners to "work twice as hard". Its just a different lifestyle and different economy. Its not broken, which is why southerners are not fleeing the south.

Defining the south purely on state boundaries isn’t very accurate. For instance east Texas is most definitely the south but El Paso is most definitely not. The cultural, culinary, and dialects don’t just suddenly stop when you hit an imaginary line. My wife is from south east Texas right on the Louisiana border and guess what they have Cajuns there. She is from Cajun county just as much as someone from south Louisiana.

Small towns and rural areas are shrinking everywhere, not just the south. You could have said everything here about any part of the country.

I grew up in jersey, lived in arkansas for 7 years and now in georgia. arkansas is easily one the most southern states culturally. Huge miss

I feel like this video is on the cusp of a really interesting point. Youre illustrating a very real divide, but its not between the south and the rest of America, but between urban and rural. The Popular understanding of “southern” is probably a lot more linked to “rural” than the literal geographics of the south, so it urabnizing feels like a more distinct move to something different

The best way to geographically define the South is the map out the restaurants which serve you sweet tea if you ask for "tea" without qualifiers.

Yeah you better add Arkansas to that list.

To quote a poet from my generation - “Southern man don’t need him around any how”

I've seen areas in the Midwest and Northeast that were just as economically deprived as areas in the South.

I think the word "broken" applies to most of the country.

Feels like this video set out to talk negatively about the South and found numbers and facts that fit that goal. The last point about rural areas eroding away, for example, is true across the U.S. It is not a strictly southern phenomenon. One of the most comical parts of the video was when you said the South isn't known for it's urban sprawl? Like, have you ever been to the South? Atlanta and Houston (unquestionably a southern city, by the way) are the kings of sprawl.

Listening to an outsider talk about the south might be one of the most painful things I have ever subjected myself to