During my undergraduate career, even though I was not what you would call an exemplary student, I sat amazed at professors, specifically English professors, who would rattle off titles, authors, and quotes at will, linking them together like a tapestry above my head. I never thought I would be able to do that, but as the years have progressed and I have spent, at this point, two decades in the classroom, I find myself doing the same thing. I’ve accumulated a lengthy list of quotes that always enter my head when thinking about a topic, and a number of those come from James Baldwin. Baldwin, in a quote I come back to again and again, stated, “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

Many people view any criticism of the nation or region they reside in as treasonous, as an attack on their very existence. However, this is not the case. Baldwin begins by proclaiming his love for America, and it is this love that leads him to “criticize her perpetually.” Frederick Douglass did the same thing in his fiery 1852 speech What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? where he blasted Christians and others who supported the Fugitive Slave Act and proclaimed their love of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution while enslaving others. Yet, he also praised the founding pricniples of the nation. He opens by telling his audience that he will speak “in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon.” He counters the argument that the Constitution enshrines the institution of slavery and states that if teh document is “interpreted, as it ought to be interpreted,” then it exists as “a glorious liberty document.”

While Baldwin and Douglass frame their comments around the nation, I think about these things in relation to the United States South, my home soil. I have lived in the South for my whole life, save one year when I lived in Norway. I have moved around in the South, going from the hills and farmland on North Louisiana to the waterways of South Louisiana to the plains of Alabama and then to the Appalachian mountains. I have see various regions of what we call the “South.” I love things about the South, but I also despise things about the South. I feel like Baldwin in this respect, changing “America” for “The South.”

The South, like the rest of the nation, fills its soil with blood and tears. The foundation of the earth trembles with pain, agony, and suffering. It’s baked into the region. Yet, it also contains beauty and splendor. I stand amazed, and in awe, walking across wetlands and seeing alligators glide stealthily across the water next to cypress knees and Spanish moss descends from the limbs. I take in the smells of magnolia and honeysuckle, letting the fragrance tickle my senses. I explode in joy when the taste of boudin and gumbo and fried chicken and deviled eggs touch my tongue, sending shivers through my very being. I bang my head with the dirt and grime of Southern metal, when the breakdown hits in a He Is Legend, Norma Jean, or Gideon song, the thick crunch that connects me to the South, amplified in my ears.

I walk the earth, thinking about Ernest Gaines, Lillian Smith, Pauli Murray, Medgar Evers, Anne Moody, and countless others who tread these paths before. I think about them and I contemplate why they did what they did. All of them from the South. All of them saw the tragedies of the South. All of them, though, worked to save the South and the nation from itself. They loved the place. They loved the people. They lived it. They breathed it. They worked, in their capacities, to make it the beloved community, to bring about a world that would benefit everyone, not just a few. They practiced what Ben Railton calls “critical patriotism: an embrace of the nation’s ideals that at the same time highlights all the ways we’ve fallen short of them, with a goal of moving us closer to that as-yet-unrealized, best version of ourselves and our community.”

I think about all of this, as well, from a religious perspective. I’m currently reading Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan’s The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon, and throughout they keep pointing out the ways that Jesus and Paul stared down the Roman Empire and worked for a better society, one that provided equality and justice for all. This comes out specifically when they talk about the ways that Paul uses “Christ crucified” in his writings, pointing to the fact that the empire murdered Jesus because he posed a threat to their position and status. Jesus’ message was anti-imperial, anti-empire, and that made him dangerous. He, along with Paul and others, worked to bring about a new world, a new society. For Paul, as Borg and Crossan argue, “Christ crucified and risen had both personal and political meanings.” The political meaning, they note, “proclaimed that Jesus was Lord and Caesar was not,” and continued by proclaiming “that God’s great cleanup of the world,” towards a more equitable society, “had begun.”

When faced with a society that privileges a few while oppressing the masses, this is what we should seek. This comes, of course, through perpetual criticism and education, highlighting for individuals the reality of the society. This should not be viewed negatively. Instead, it should be viewed through the lens of soildarity and a desire to love one another as Jesus called upon us to do when he told us to love our neighbor as ourself. What is so wrong with seeking a better world where communities have access to healthcare, food, childcare, schools, safety, etc.? What is wrong with seeking a world where we love our neighbors as ourselves? What is wrong with seeking a world where we succeed with each other? What is wrong with seeking a world where we dont’t need to start GoFundMe pages when faced with tragedy? What is wrong with seeking a world where we don’t have to check the exits when we enter a building because we fear a mass shooting? What is wrong with seeking a better world?

In S.A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed, Titus expresses these very sentiments as he talks with Darlene about the hypocrisies of religion, the bloody foundations of the South, and the rose-colored glasses that people use to look at the South. He also points out the fact, though, that while he despises the South and Charon County he also loves it wholeheartedly. He tells her, “Look, I love Charon. I know just now it didn’t sound like it, but I do. It’s my home and heart. And because I love it, I’m hard on it. I’m brutally honest about it. Because I know it can be better that what it was. But it can’t get there if we keep pretending that it’s some utopia on the Chesapeake Bay. We have to look at Charon and see the whole picture. Even the ugly parts.” He wants to make the community “better,” but he also recognizes that that can’t happen unless people acknowledge the ugliness at the roots. They must critically engage with history and their place within that history before they can make it “better.”

Hayley Williams, in her song “True Believer,” sums all of this up succienctly when she sings, “The South will not rise again ’til it’s paid for every sin. Strange fruit, hard bargain, till the roots, Southern Gotham.” What are your thoughts? As always, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Bluesky @silaslapham.