May 24-Sweet Home Alabama

Hello!
I'm Anna (pronounced like Ana, like "ON-A table")
This is my first post on my new blog and I'm very excited to join the blogging community.
I'm 16 and I live in Alabama. Let me say a little bit about Alabama. Alabama is among the most prejudiced and ignored areas of the United States. I don't have a Southern accent, and neither do any of my friends. I'm proud to say that my father is from Ireland and my mother from Michigan. However, I am still proud of my state. Yes, some prejudices are still true. The majority of people in Alabama live in cheap homes or trailer parks, enjoy beer, barbecque, and NASCAR, and consider Wal-Mart clothing "high fashion". However, I'm sick of all this "Southern people are racists" stuff. African-Americans make up a huge percentage of Alabama's population. Montgomery is the home of Civil Rights. Southerners face the issue of racism everyday, and because of that, we as a whole have become a thousand times more tolerant. I have never met a racist Alabamian in my 16 years living here. I know they're out there, but from what I have seen, there are problems with racism in every state. Also, Alabama has a profoundly beautiful culture. The Gee's Bend Quilts (http://www.quiltsofgeesbend.com/) and musicians like Emmylou Harris are proud to call Alabama their home. Southern Literature is hugely prized, with world-renowned authors like William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury), Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire), Truman Capote (In Cold Blood), Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird). I have met extraordinarily talented Alabamians, people who don't get any of the credit that they fully deserve.
Stop sneering at Alabama and consider that it has something to give. Because it does. There is a warmth (both physical and spiritual) in Alabama, that I have never witnessed in any other part of this Earth.

"The South. You can't understand it. You'd have to be born there."
-William Faulkner