The origin of Southern culture

Added: 2026-04-29

[00:00:00]This is where southern culture comes from. It all started because of the big tobacco farms that flourished in Virginia and throughout the south. This created the greatest wealth inequality seen throughout the British colonies.

[00:00:09]Now, the newly minted elite class started to build huge plantation mansions to distinguish themselves from their poor neighbors. They tried to emulate their British colleagues by acting with gentility, which basically means they behaved overly polite like they were trying to show it off. Their mansions became places to show off their wealth and measure themselves up to their neighbors. A whole culture of drinking, dancing, gambling, and horse racing developed out of this, and fashion and manners became important class distinctions. If you didn't know how to eat properly at the dinner table, your standing in society would fall. But the lower classes wanted in on the action. They increasingly purchased more and more consumer goods so they could appear wealthy. This drove the actually wealthy people to spend more of their own money so they could stay ahead. But as slavery increased, the tension between the lowerass whites and their upper class counterparts diminished. The elites came to be seen as the protectors of the entire white population, especially because they repeatedly advocated for lower taxes, which benefited everybody. They also mastered the art of condescension, meaning they treated their poor neighbors kindly while maintaining superiority. This created a bond between all the white people in the south that grew as slavery became more prevalent. And speaking of slavery, to justify the horrendous methods used to keep the slave population in line, a new way of thinking emerged. Race became a primary factor in identity. This was really the origin of modern racism and it would go on to infest not just the south but the entire