Using your heritage- Daniel Sweat's intro

Jeff Foxworthy has made a living making fun of his heritage. He has done jokes about his speech, his family, and his way of life. He has sold cd's, made movies, and done stand up so much that he his a house hold name. My question for the weak is what other southern stereotypes have people used to make them famous? Do you think that they make these stereotypes worse or do you think that it is ok?

Stereotypes, why? by Parmi Shah

So this week, for the visual presentation project I found a fact that African American's actually do tip less than Caucasians, and this made me wonder how many other stereotypes are true and why?

So I looked in to crime rates and saw that According to the most recent FBI uniform crime statistics, white males are responsible for 48% of all sex crimes and black males are responsible for 48.1% of all sex crimes. YET the Toledo Police Department is at least twice as likely to issue tickets to blacks than to all other drivers. The numbers in Akron, Columbus and Dayton are similar: blacks are about twice as likely to get tickets as those who are not black. So the question is what is true, and what is just influenced by stereotype. My thoughts are that the mere .1 percent difference in the race is probably based on the stereotype where the predominantly white law enforcement look for black criminals skewing the numbers, not because the crimanls arrested are framed, but because the same effort isn’t being put into other races. This manipulates the ratio and reinforces the stereotype. The reason I find this so interesting is because driving while black is equivalent to my situation which is flying while brown. I get stopped almost every flight because my last name is a first name for Arabs. Regardless of the fact that I am not Arab, its racist for “random checks” to occur because of race, it skews data and influences stereotypes which than influences people to continue their prejudice. It’s basically a vicious cycle.

Daniel Sweat's Southern Sports: Baseball

In my town, LaGrange, Ga., football is number one. But this is closely followed by baseball. We have 6 major league players or former players from my hometown. The most resent is Luke Bailey.
Although he is from my rival high school, everyone in the town knows his name. He is held as a celebrity and treated as such, but he is a nice guy still.

Baseball is a life style in the South. There are leagues for every child age group from 3 years old and up. The extremes of these leagues are travel leagues where people will drive from Texas to Georgia for a weekend tournament. My brothers were on such teams, although they only played in Georgia, Alabama and Florida, and at these tournaments you would see extended families. There would be the stereotypical dad cussing at the ref for a close call. Here is a video of the coaches fighting after what looks to be a ten year old game or younger.

Baseball is America's past time, but it is the South's second leading religion behind football.

Sports in the South

Honestly, I can't find an answer to your question Matthew. I'm from Texas, and when it comes to sports we take every one very seriously, mainly Basketball, Football, Track, and even Gymnastics. When it comes to colleges in Texas, one can see how highly each main sport is ranked in their conference, and even the nation. If you refer to the Big 12 Sports site, you can see that many southern states are ranked above and beyond northern states. For men's outdoor track the rankings are as follows:

1.	TEXAS A&M
2.	Florida State
3.	Oregon
4.	LSU
5.	Florida
6.	NEBRASKA
7.	Arkansas
8.	Arizona State
9.	OKLAHOMA
10.	Stanford
11.	Indiana
12.	BAYLOR
13.	Minnesota
14.	Penn State
15.	TEXAS TECH
16.	California
17.	Virginia Tech
18.	South Carolina
19.	New Mexico
20.	Auburn
21.	Kentucky
22.	Georgia
23.	Arizona
24.	OKLAHOMA STATE
25.	Washington State

as you can see, 10 of the top 25 are southern states. That's just one example though, I don't want to go on copying and pasting for each sport. But I feel that when it comes to sports, I always see people from my area, or the south, ranked in the top 100 in the nation to be recruited. I personally know many people that went to and ran pro, like Sandy Wooten and Brittany Cross, that used to run on the same track, Alamo Stadium, against my Track and Field AAU team in the summer. When it comes to football, probably only one or two of my friends didn't go D1. The others went to Nebraska, Texas, Texas A&M, LSU, Baylor, Florida, and the list goes on. I know a lot of this is personal, but I didn't want to fill this blog up with long superfluous national prospective athlete lists, their rival rankings, their commitments, their accomplishments, and etc. Yet here is a video of my friend Mychal Dungey running against Rynell Parsons in the 200m dash. Rynell had the fastest 100m time in the nation at 9.99 as a sophmore.

Football is almost a national phenomenon, but I do believe that the southern states dominate this sport. With all the big, hefty men bred down here, its hard to argue. The top 3 teams in the Nation were:

1. Alabama

2. Texas

3. Florida

All southern states. Sometimes I wonder if its just in our blood ;)

When it comes to basketball, the rankings display much more presence from the northern and mid-nation states. I don't feel that the south dominates that sport as much as it dominates track&&field or football. Maybe because they are both outside sports and the weather down here allows for that to be played year round, but up north it is much harder to utilize that time to get better. The national rankings for basketball are as followed and were found on the this Sports page :

1. Kansas

2. Kentucky

3. Syracuse

4. West Virginia

5. Villanova

6. Purdue

7. Duke

8. Georgetown

9. Kansas State

10. Michigan State

11. Gonzaga

12. Tennessee

13. Wisconsin

14. Texas

15. Butler

16. Ohio State

17. Brigham Young

18. Northern Iowa

19. New Mexico

20. Georgia Tech

21. Temple

22. Cornell

23. Pittsburgh

24. Vanderbilt

25. UNLV

Obviously the presence of the south isn't as strong when we take a look at this.

When it comes to gymnastics, I did it for about 8 years of my life! All I know is that the hardest competition was at regionals, because once you got to nationals you had seen all of the competition. There was no one out there better than the region that consisted of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and a few more that I forget because it was a little while ago.

Yet, even with all these rankings and personal experiences, I couldn't label just one sport to represent the South. The South is a powerhouse for all sports and the rest of the nation better come ready or go home.

Jasmine Kent

Jasmine Kent--Blog Topic: Stereotypes in the South

Stereotypes are big everywhere, whether they are the punch lines of jokes, the initiation of fights, or are actually reality. Yet, when do stereotypes cross the line? When are they true, totally false, or ride down the middle so one can tilt them either which way for their own purpose? How often do you use stereotypes subconsciously in your daily life and when do people actually notice and respond to them? How do they respond to them?

Many specific southern stereotypes I can think right off the bat are ones about Texas. When someone says they are from Texas, the initial thought of some people are to think of cowboy hats, cattle, accents, and plain flat country. A funny play on this was a clip found in an episode of Family Guy where the Griffin's move to Texas to hide their infant son, Stewie, from the angry mob in Quahog, RI.

These are just parodies of stereotypes, but for this post, I would like you to analyze southern stereotypes and how they are depicted in the real world, whether they are funny, like Family Guy, or are rude and violent, like the nukes made during the election of Barack Obama in 2008.

Georgia Tech's Impact on Atlanta

Georgia Tech has impacted Atlanta by adding a more urban, intellectual edge to the already youth infested city of Atlanta. Atlanta is already known for its night life and the flourishing businesses within the city, and once Georgia Tech was established, it brought more attention to the city. The addition of more youth and more young aspiring entrepreneurs has helped businesses to thrive, develop, and expand. The best example of this is Atlantic Station.

Atlantic Station was established in 1946 as a national model of smart growth and sustainable growth. One can live, work, and play in the same area, which is totally the opposite of our suburban nation. The following map shows its proximity to Georgia Tech:

View Atlantic Station in a larger map

Atlantic Station has a variety of stores like H&M, Victoria Secret, Guess, etc. but also includes places like the Regal Cinemas, Dolche, and the Strip. One can eat, shop, and be entertained all in the same section without a car. This is an ideal place for college students above and below the age of 21. Atlantic Station has catered to them as well as the city itself, bringing business and young minds from all around. It gives opportunity to the young and the old with its stylish, yet affordable homes. Its appeal is also emphasized by its proximity to the city. Georgia Tech and its population has helped this place flourish and become a model for the nation of what sustainable growth should really look like.

Besides the places that Georgia Tech has helped expand, Tech has also provided young job seekers into the city, keeping its economy growing. Ivan Allen Jr., in the graduate class of 1933, became mayor of Georgia from 1962-1970. Jim Allchin, in the graduate class of 1984, was a high level executive of Microsoft. Micheal Arad, in the graduating class of 1999, was an architect designer for the World Trade Center Memorial!

Those are just a few examples, yet I feel that they support my claim that Georgia Tech has helped flourish the young vibe of the city of Atlanta and provided new, innovative intellect to the upcoming businesses of the renowned city.

Jasmine Kent

Sports in the South - Week 4 Topic - Matthew Orr

When Southerners aren't enjoying a nice plate of BBQ pork, relaxing on an afternoon in a rocking chair in front of the plantation home, or deciding whether or not to attend church for a fourth day in a row, most Southerners love to spend weekends watching sports. In particular, football is most associated with the Deep South. High school football is almost a religion in small towns all across the South. However, what if football wasn't the only sport that the south enjoyed and contributes to the rest of the country?
I read a week or two ago in the Atlanta- Journal Constitution's High School Sports section online about the possibility of Georgia being a basketball state. This intrigued me because not only did my high school, Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia, have an AWFUL football team (we haven't won a single game in at least two years), but we have a nationally recognized basketball program that has won four state championships this decade alone. As many high school pack the football stadiums every Friday in the fall, so does the Lipscomb gymnasium sell out at least an hour ahead of tip-off every Friday night in the winter and early spring.
Besides Wheeler High School, there are several other programs across metro- Atlanta alone that are consistently churning out elite prospects into Division-I schools every year, including Norcross, Milton, and Westlake High Schools. The blogger on the AJC where I read this article provided statistics about how many NBA players (currently playing and not currently playing) have come from each state since 2000:
"Alabama: 7
Arkansas: 4
Florida: 23
Georgia: 22
Kentucky: 5
Louisiana: 15
Mississippi: 11
North Carolina: 19
South Carolina: 3
Tennessee: 11
Virginia: 19*

*All but two are from prep schools and academies such as Oak Hill and Hargrave Military.

Other states of note:

California: 62
Illinois: 38
Indiana: 12
Maryland: 22
Michigan: 27
Missouri: 9
New York: 26
Ohio: 20
Pennsylvania: 22
Texas: 43"
-Statistics provided by Todd Holcomb of the AJC.
Other Southern states, like Kentucky, already have basketball as their de facto state past time. So here is the debate question for the week: Should Georgia, and for that matter, the entire South, be considered a football state, or should basketball be known as a major contributor to our culture here in the state?

Below are some highlights of a recent game between Wheeler High School and their archrival Walton. The two players they focus on, Ryan Harrow (#12) of Walton and Jelan Kendrick (#0) of Wheeler are the top two seniors in the state, and two of the best seniors in the country this year: