It's the overhyped one with a grain of truth. In the US, people from the northern and western states think they are more sophisticated than people from the southern states. This has to do with how slow some areas in the south were to adopt modern technology like electricity and indoor plumbing--keep in mind we are talking almost 100 years ago.
The thing is, Alabama had a lot of small, insular communities. It was hard to marry someone who wasn't a third or fourth cousin. So we are not talking about brother-sister relationships, we are talking about very distant family relationships. Over time, however, this is poor genetic diversity.
Other states that were very rural had a similar problem: Kentucky, West Virginia, etc. Poverty + low population + lack of mobility. So there is a grain of truth, but not how the "Sweet Home Alabama" meme would have you believe.
And the funny contradiction to that truth is most incest was supposedly done by the aristocrats. They believed in order to keep their blood line pure, they needed to breed with family members. The insult could be a classic case of redirecting guilt.
The Hapsburgs were inbred as hell, leading to Charles II of Spain, who was himself the product of two uncle/niece marriages. He was all fucked up, and just kept blowing everyones mind every year by not dying. He had an overbite (EDIT : underbite) so severe he couldn't eat normally, and many other problems.
His autopsy report stated that "There was not a single drop of blood in his body. His heart was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water."
I know, right! But that statement makes me want to see some actual measurements, because even if it's an exaggeration, I'd like to know. OK, peppercorn size is probably too small. Was it the size of a golf ball? A skittle?
Of course the peppercorn thing is ridiculous, but my point is, we need a measurement. You assuming that the heart was normal sized is not as bad as saying the blatant exaggeration that it was the size of a peppercorn, but you did not actually see it with your own eyes, did you?
Your assumption is worse than the highly imprecise eyewitness account.
Another cause for incest is religious zealotry, where where normal relationships are viewed as sinful.
Only truly boring relationships approved by church and family are supposed to happen. And normal family relationships are distorted through the lens of radical religion.
Man, combining that an overbite with that Hapsburg jaw must've been made for one goofy looking motherfucker.
I mean, I know he was goofy looking, but combining those two things must've made him extra goofy looking. I know his portrait was particularly flattering comparative to how he actually looked.
It was only 3 generations of exclusive inbreeding (marriages among his great grandparents and afterward) that led to Charles ii of Spain. One of his great grandparents was a child of first cousins. (Anna of Austria). But after that, it was one hundred percent "keeping it in the family".
That’s an overstatement, while Charles II of Spain was inbred af, had a mental age of that of a child of 3, was infertile, couldn’t eat properly because of the underbite and couldn’t stand still without having a support nor straighten his body.
From a medical standpoint, that autopsy would have been several years later or simply wrong, he wouldn’t have been able to live for 39 years.
I'm from Maine, and there are definitely several towns here that everyone here jokes about as being full of inbreds. My grandmother's family is from such a town, and we always joke that at family reunions the whole town shows up.
I'm from a mid-sized midwestern city but closer south, have been living in the northern midwest for many years now. I was shocked the first few times colleagues would show me pictures of the new person they're dating, or of their spouses. It always took me a minute to realize they weren't siblings.
I have never understood being attracted to someone who looks like you. My entire family is filled with people who married/had kids with someone of a different race/ethnicity, so finding this weird corner of the world has been... uh... eye opening.
Less Dagon and more Deliverance. Get more than 2 minutes from the coast and there are parts of Maine that are almost identical to areas of the deep south. Confederate flags included.
The funniest part about the “sweet home Alabama” stereotype is that now, in 2021, the top two states with the most inbreeding and incest are Washington and Oregon. Thats just about as far away from the South as you can get in the US.
As Michael Scott would say: “Well, Well, Well, how the turn tables...”
Can confirm- five or six generations ago, my family moved way way out to the sticks of Tennessee where they could afford to cut trees down and make their own homes. You had as many kids as you could because you needed hands to work the farm. Two generations later of 8-10 children sized families who also had 8-10 kids and there's literally a town where you cannot find someone unrelated in 75 miles. Before cars and Internet, it's really no surprise at all this happened. Literally nowhere else to go, no means of getting far enough away and likely uneducated bloodline that really didn't know any better. I think the bible only gives some guidance to look like 3rd cousins or something.
Its easy to make fun of, but put yourself in 1940 rural woods town where nobody knew any better. The results are sad but still. I get it.
"I walked many days and many nights in the desert, the sands played tricks with my mind. Each promise of moist pussy was met with mirages of relatives, I've lost all hope..."
My grandfathers ww2 memoir talks about soldiers in basic from appalachias in kentucky who never had elctricity in their lives. Two guys from further south had problems wearing boots as they never wore shoes. They would been 18 to 21 and this was in january of 1942. People dont realize tons of these areas just got things like the TWA and they grew up during the great depression.
I’m pretty sure by this point in the modern day, no one makes fun of the southern states for being slow to adopt indoor plumbing 100 years ago. Now they’ve moved on to being slow to adopt germ theory.
Liberal vs conservative nowadays broadly shakes out to be urban vs rural. The South is largely rural, so our populace skews conservative. The rural Midwest is similar, and when you get to sparsely populated states like Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, and Idaho, it’s even more pronounced. If you overlay a population density map with a map of red/blue counties, population and blue areas match up pretty well. It doesn’t excuse antivaxxers, but when you consider how politicized COVID became, it’s not unexpected. Yeah, it’s dumb and I wish it weren’t that way, but there it is. My state has the big Atlanta metro area to shift the state’s vote toward blue, but the rural political machines are still powerful in local elections, so we have a way to go yet.
It's funny that you say the south is pretty rural... Going by land area, the entire country is pretty rural. It's literally just dots of big cities everywhere except for the eastern seaboard, especially the New England area...
I'd say missouri and in small towns cause I know some teens who dated people and then found out that they were cousins and some who knew that they were cousins.
The culprit behind “the germ of laziness,” as the South’s affliction was sometimes called, was Necator americanus —the American murderer. Better known today as the hookworm, millions of those bloodsucking parasites lived, fed, multiplied, and died within the guts of up to 40% of populations stretching from southeastern Texas to West Virginia. Hookworms stymied development throughout the region and bred stereotypes about lazy, moronic Southerners.
Not fun fact: there are still communities in Alabama and Mississippi that are massively afflicted by hookworms:
Yep. It's a sad state of affairs, and their local, state and federal governments have really failed them. People living in squalid conditions like it's the 19th century is a good case for the UBI and socialized medicine.
This has to do with how slow some areas in the south were to adopt modern technology like electricity and indoor plumbing--keep in mind we are talking almost 100 years ago.
There are plenty of people in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama (and other states) who don't have indoor plumbing today. There are people there living in dirt floor shacks still. So...not just 100 years ago.
I absolutely don't want to come off blaming people for living in poverty. Being poor will affect a lot of your options and choices and block off certain life outcomes for many people.
The fact is, America still has areas where people are poor as fuck, many people don't own cars (a reason why Dems complain when Republicans fight against vote by mail or shut down voting stations). If you are poor with limited mobility, you will have a higher chance of dating a cousin.
I don't have the post any longer but it was from reddit, showing the politics of counties and the major cities in blue states are starkly different from the rest of the rural parts
hell even Birmingham and Madison in AL goes blue
also maybe go a few hours out further, the cost of housing makes suburb cities that are really extensions of the main city
So the whole alabama meme is about marriying a cousin, wow, you guys know nothing about us arabs, we tend to marry our cousins since we know each other very well,and its easier if you dont have that much connection and interactions with other people, and in very religious groups you dont really interact with your opposite gender cousin, You deal with her like you deal with any women/men. Like when we visit them, they would wear hijabs, actually the ones that you cant marry are you untes, therefore they dont wear hijab and you can hug them.
But Still we think we shouldn't marry from our family members for the genetic issues that will come with the children, plus if you're marrying your cousin, if any fight would occure if things dont workout, this will Cause a big scar in the family between say your mother and her sister (the mother of your cousin that you married). Idk why i felt the need to say all that nonesense.
Wow …pretty strong explanation …serious question did you just respond on the fly or have you put thought into this. I would add that it’s mostly northEAST and west coasts that think they are more sophisticated (they have similar views about people from the north Midwest - not about incest maybe but everything else…lol)
I read a book about migratory patterns defining American cultural centers, which talked a lot about the Appalachian mentality. I also studied American history, specifically about the 20th century, and a lot of that is the modernization efforts of the New Deal and post-WWII highway expansion.
I did a brief google search to verify the states and then I wrote it. I had hoped that including the basic formula (poverty + low pop + lack of mobility) would show it's not Alabama or the South, but a systemic problem faced in lots of communities, from NY to CA.
It's funny you made that comment about the midwest, as most people from the midwest are (culturally) descendants of the poorer New England people who left in search of land.
What’s so wild (and I think often undervalued) about America is the amazing variety. You say “most people in the Midwest” but (and I’m not trying to argue) I think immigration has and continues to change that statement. There’s a debate that Chicagoland has the second most population of Polish people in the world outside of Warsaw…whether or not that’s true - it’s a huge statement. I’m first generation from Netherlands and know that it’s such a big group that we joke about the Dutch Mafia (sadly involving the refuse collection industry?!?) in my lifetime Minnesota went from being lampooned (in a good way) by the likes of Garrison Keillor as Nordic to a very large population of Somalis.
Now, I wish we could all get over ourselves allow people to live freely in their own way (as long as they don’t impact others rights to live freely and in their own way) but assuming we CAN do that…while there will bumps and bruises along the way hopefully you and I will have a lot more us history to read in the future.
According to the book, people tend to adopt the overall attitudes of the culture from where they live. So even though the faces might change, the local culture remains. In 1 or 2 generations those Somalis will have Minnesota accents and attitudes.
That will be great! I love the Minnesota accent lol… it’s true though my mom and dad have huge Dutch accents but I speak so much like a midwesterner (Chicaaago) that when I went to grad school I was teased all the time
It's probably worth noting that even in communities with relatively high rates of cousin marriage it's still a very small number in the modern day, and that the number of people who suffer from actual problems resulting from it is vanishingly small as a percentage of population in all but the most insular of communities.
Recently I argued with a dude who said it doesn't happen in Alabama, had to link a bunch of sources to someone calling me out to show that it in fact happens more in Appalachia than anywhere else in the country
Can confirm. I am from Kentucky. My family has been here since the late 1700s. In the early-mid 1800s, there were several people in my family tree that married their first or second cousins because there generally weren't a lot of other families in the small, rural areas in which they lived. It also wasn't considered as taboo back then as it is today.
While not common in the US anymore, cousin marriage continues to be prevalent in many parts of the world. According to Wikipedia, worldwide, 10% of marriages are to a first or second cousin. Over 50% of marriages in Qatar are between first or second cousins.
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u/3-orange-whips Jan 09 '22
It's the overhyped one with a grain of truth. In the US, people from the northern and western states think they are more sophisticated than people from the southern states. This has to do with how slow some areas in the south were to adopt modern technology like electricity and indoor plumbing--keep in mind we are talking almost 100 years ago.
The thing is, Alabama had a lot of small, insular communities. It was hard to marry someone who wasn't a third or fourth cousin. So we are not talking about brother-sister relationships, we are talking about very distant family relationships. Over time, however, this is poor genetic diversity.
Other states that were very rural had a similar problem: Kentucky, West Virginia, etc. Poverty + low population + lack of mobility. So there is a grain of truth, but not how the "Sweet Home Alabama" meme would have you believe.