The past few weeks have brought a lot of attention to my home state of South Carolina, for reasons that at first were terrible and horrific (the massacre of nine black church-goers at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston by a horribly racist and evil little shit) and then, however fleetingly, hopeful (the sense of unity that took hold amongst blacks and whites in this state, not the "race war" that said little shit wanted to start). Then people started talking about the Confederate battle flag and...
Well, I've made my position clear on Facebook (as have a lot of my friends, pro and con) but I figure it could use re-stating here: the flag was put up in the early Sixties as a rebuke to the growing Civil Rights movement of that period, so even if you buy into the notion that the Confederacy wasn't somehow about slavery (which, btw, it was; I've been a Civil War buff all my life, and the evidence of intent on the Confederacy's part to preserve slavery is easy to find assuming you want to, if you're inclined the other way), the placement of the flag, first on the pole with the American and state flag (high over the capital dome in Columbia) and then afterwards on a monument on state-capital grounds, was a clear example of racial animus. It has no business on state or federal property, unless that property is a museum.
Which leads me to this: when it comes time to consider my MFA options, the states I'll look to with the most interest will likely be ones that never had any reason to fly the Rebel flag in the first place, much less as a symbolic gesture against basic human rights.
In a discussion we all had with our advisor, the point was made that, for PHD or MFA programs after grad school, it might behoove us to look outside of our immediate vicinity, if only because a Clemson degree might have some sort of novelty in, say, Harvard or Yale (not that I'm foolish enough to think either of those snotty snob-factories would take me in, but anyway). Schools in the South are well familiar with us mostly because of football (and depending on the season's fortunes, either they're well-disposed towards us because we can be beat or they bear resentment because we can't be beat). So me going to, say, the University of Georgia and saying "let me in your MFA program" (assuming they have one) isn't a shoe-in. Or maybe it is...I don't know what UGA's standards are. But they are the school where the members of R.E.M. met, so they've got that going for them.
I will look at schools in the South, naturally, especially those in and around New Orleans (I freaking love that city, and I've only been the one time). Also, I wonder if Vandy in Nashville might be an option, if only because their football team usually sucks and therefore I'm likely to end up having plenty of room to move around on a football Saturday (no offence, Vanderbilt). But I'd really like to try my luck north of the Mason-Dixon, to somewhere outside the Confederacy or the "border states": Missouri (Ferguson pretty much proved that the "Show Me State" was a Confederate state in all but name only), Kentucky (I'm sure they're lovely people, but there's Mitch McConnell), West Virginia (y'all was still part of old Virginia for the first couple of years of the war), Maryland, and Delaware (yes, Delaware was a slave state, if my 1960s World Book "map of slave states" is to be believed. Which would mean that was the last time anyone noticed Delaware for any reason). I realize that schools in these states might stumble across this blog o' mine when I start sending out resumes and say "hey, what's he got against Delaware?" To which I respond (because they might be the only places offering) "Not a damn thing. I love Delaware! It's so close to Philadelphia!"
There's the famous "Iowa Writer's Workshop" at the University of Iowa, which is justly famous for producing some great writers. Bet it's hella-expensive, though. Syracuse has a shared school color (orange) and George Saunders, but we were warned that picking a school simply because of someone in our field (in my case, creative writing) might not work out if said person is too busy to really help us, and I have to keep that in mind. Plus, there's cold weather to consider: I am not a fan of winter. I'm not a fan of summer, though. Spring and fall are more my speed, which is a shame because both are disappearing because of global warming.
At any rate, I don't ask much of my prospective MFA program: a good school but not too expensive, in a state with no former (or current) allegiances to the South which would cause it to want to fly a Rebel flag on state-owned grounds, with a professor who's good at writing but who can make time for me, and temperate weather all the year round. Is that too much to ask?
I will say that, for now anyway (because it could always change), I'm proud of my fellow South Carolinians (well, the ones not flying Rebel flags all of a sudden, anyway). We Southerners in general have often been the butt of national jokes, and the focus of a lot of opposition from others because of our clearly biased and horrific treatment of our neighbors (if said neighbors happened to have different pigment than ours, for example). We have a strong legacy not just of stubborn pride but of haunted pride, which permeates much of the literature of our region (there's the "two big Bills" Faulkner and Styron, Charles Portis, Eudora Welty, Flannery and Carson, Walker Percy and Roy Blount Jr., and so on), and I have at times been either ashamed or proud of my Southern identity. We is complicated for sure, but this time of national and state-wide mourning has shown me that we are better than we think we can be, when we really have to be. Now, at some point we'll probably go back to being gubbers and rednecks, but for now, for this moment, we're standing side by side with our neighbors, trying to love when it's easier to hate because love is so much more rewarding. For however long that lasts, it'll be a validation of our common humanity. The Charleston Nine will live long after the little shit that killed them takes his last breath and is dumped aside except by those who thrive on hate. Maybe I'll rescind my "no former Confed states" clause in my MFA search, because maybe the South deserves a little more credit than that. Maybe, anyway...
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