The truth is of course complex.  Let’s start with the good.  The denizens of Cleveland, Mississippi seem to be genuinely happy.  It’s the sort of place where everyone knows everyone.  Neighbors are friendly and helpful.  Religion and politics are rarely discussed in public.  Cleveland (and the Delta more broadly) also have a rich history.  The local business community is thriving and jobs are more plentiful than elsewhere in the region.  So life is good and moves at a slower pace than in the rest of the world.  And living is cheap.  So low stress, no traffic, low cost of living, friendly people … what’s not to like?

A few things.  You have to love quiet living to enjoy the Delta.  There may be a thriving local culture, but there still isn’t much to do compared to many other communities.  The nearest city of any real size is two hours away.  So many people spend time with family and friends.  Without those your pretty much stuck.  There aren’t a lot of meetup groups so you have to hang with those who land next to you.  This can result in some interesting friendships.   The main sources of friends for a lot of residents seems to be either work or church.

Which brings me to my next point.  The Deep South is called the Bible Belt for a reason.   There isn’t quit a church on every street corner, but the ratio of people to churches is rather high I suspect.  Religion isn’t forced, but it’s also everywhere in ways great and small.  You can get by without going to church (I do), but you miss out on a lot of social activity.  Being an outsider in a small town can be tough.

And people seem to be rather averse to change.  You see this in a lot of little ways.  Traditional gender roles seem to predominate, for example.  Race is another example.  White and black communities still remain largely separate.  The former thrives, the latter not so much.  And not many people seem to care to change the state of affairs, which is part of the reason for Cleveland’s on-going struggle to integrate its schools.

These are all generalizations, of course.  Cleveland is full of wonderful people, many of whom defy the stereotypes others have about Mississippi.  The good isn’t just a facade for a darker reality.  That said, there is more to this town than meets the eye and not always in a good way.

In some ways I’ve lived in a bubble for the past 3 1/2 years.  Not only do I live exclusively in the white half of the town, I’m not overly close with a lot of people.  I tend not to see my friends very often outside of work which makes it difficult to see beyond the facade people usually put up in public.  Still I’ve led a good life in Cleveland.  On the whole the good out weighs the bad.  It is, in many ways, a unique place to live.

In some ways the town feels like a suburb. There are things to do, places to eat, and friendly neighbors. However Cleveland does not have big city problems such as traffic and crime. The people are friendly and most everyone knows everyone else. With all the town has one expects to find a major metropolitan area hidden somewhere in the cotton fields. Except of course there isn’t one. You have to drive over two hours in any direction to find anything approaching a big city. In between there is nothing, but farmland and poverty.

Living in Cleveland is like living in a bubble. All those friendly people don’t seem to care what the outside world thinks of them. They blissfully go to and from work, Kroger, and Walmart spending Friday nights at Delta Meat Market or maybe Hey Joe’s. It is all a self contained world centered on Delta State University. The school looms large here and is the sole reason Cleveland does not look like Clarksdale or Greenville or any of the other Delta towns. Fortunately the college is going nowhere. So there seems to be so little need to do anything differently.

Yet step outside the safe boundaries of the white community in Cleveland and reality quickly intrudes. A few days ago I attended the wake of a colleague’s relative. Driving up along South Chrisman, I saw block after block of run down houses, dilapidated corner stores, and rusted cars. The faces, of course, were all black. Then comes Court street and suddenly its all shops and familiar territory.

Make no mistake there is a wealth gap in Cleveland. The racial divide is somewhat blurred, but is there all the same. The white and black communities might as well be separate towns. They exist in different areas and don’t really mix. I have yet to see many examples of overt racism, but its legacy is on display for all to see. Sadly I don’t have statistics, but if I did they would not be encouraging.

In the grand scheme of things Cleveland is insignificant. It’s a small college town in the middle of nowhere. Few historical events of note have occurred here and it has no real claims to fame. For a while I bought into the idea that Cleveland, MS is the best place on earth. Then I traveled outside it. Returning home in particular helped put things in perspective.

Yet Cleveland is also unique. Somehow this small, insignificant town has managed to attract a diverse population. There are college professors from all over the country, international students from many countries, TFA corps members from all walks of life, and more. It’s as if there is some inverse hellmouth drawing people into the land of the lotus eaters. You see once here, many people don’t want to leave. Life is cheap, friends are close, and anything you can’t get at Walmart is available on Amazon. Only the reality of better employment elsewhere pulls people away.

It’s hard to say what the future holds. The Mississippi branch of the Grammy Museum opens in about a month. There is a lot of buzz about the number of tourists it will attract. Personally I am skeptical. Delta State, meanwhile, is going nowhere. Yet thirty miles away one can find its mirror image in Mississippi Valley State University. It too is a regional university. Being a Historically Black College and University there is little appetite to merge the two school although the idea has been floated in the past. So for now life in Cleveland continues on as it always has.

The same holds true in our country.  The culture of New York is not the same as California, which is not the same as the South.  It was one of the first things I noticed when moving down here.  Its not so different as to be another country, but sometimes feels as such.  People are more religious, more conservative, and generally in less of a hurry than where I’m from.   Their priorities are different.  The inhabitants of the Mississippi Delta are big on SEC football, barbecue, and hunting, but not so much on dancing or doing much of anything on Sunday.  It took time to get used it all.

Then there is the whole Southern Hospitality thing.  I wrote about it before.   There is a format one is supposed to follow when talking in public.  You stop and chat asking how the other person’s family is doing and how they are doing.  If some one is in need to help, you offer assistance.  People make eye contact and smile.  No one simply asks “how you are doing?” and walks on by.  More over there are some things one does not discuss in public.  The list includes politics, religion, or anything upsetting.  There is a lot of theatricality in the way people interact.  Above all, one does not simply give one’s honest opinion on anything.  Politeness is not just a nice touch its a way of life.

Probably no culture in America causes more confusion than Southern culture.  Just google “Southern Hospitality” to see what I mean.  Most people elsewhere consider the standard way of interacting in the Deep South to be full of hypocrisy.  Southerners in turn consider everyone else – especially Northerners such as myself – to be rude.   As far as I’m concerned Southern Hospitality is genuine in the sense that people really do consider its dictates to be the way someone is supposed to interact with others in public.   Its nice really.  Everyone feels so welcoming.  Unfortunately several people, and some experience, has told me those feelings are more complex.  Here in lies the real difficulty and what makes getting along so hard with people down here.  Some times people really are hiding their true feelings.  You see it when you’re the last to know when a new shop opens up or when people invite everyone but you to a party.  Personally I actually like being ignored.  If you don’t like me so be it.  Only the genuine and honest may apply to be friends with me.  However its easy to see why some people feel mislead or betrayed.

Then there is the ubiquity of Southern culture.  As the name implies, Southern culture is the culture of the region.  Everyone here shares its values to one degree or another.  And part of that culture are family, church, SEC football, and often the Republican party.  Its hard to reject any of those and still be considered a part of the culture.  So when outsiders come who question the primacy of what people hold dear around here, it doesn’t go over well.  Hence why transplants to Cleveland tend to stick together and not mingle with the natives.  The locals don’t seem to be entirely at ease with us outsiders.

Part of the problem may come from one essential fact about the Deep South: its shrinking.  Certainly not all parts of the region have always been identical.  Yet in the past few decades, parts of the South have changed dramatically.  One can see it in the big cities such as Atlanta, Charlotte and New Orleans.   People moving down from the North have altered the character of those areas.  The change is reflected in the way people speak and interact, but also in the politics.  Its not too long ago that the idea of a state such as North Carolina voting for a black president (as it did in 2008 and nearly did so in 2012) was unthinkable. Even here in Mississippi things feel different.  The Delta is changing with the influx of TFA corps members, the opening of the Grammy Museum, and other developments around Cleveland.   Some new (or relatively new) establishments – Hey Joe’s, Delta Meat Market, Delta Dairy – have changed the character of the town a bit.  Its hard to put my finger on it, but things don’t feel exactly the same as they did two years ago.

It helps to keep in mind how the South fits into the rest of the country.  Its always been the poorest part of America along with Appalachia.  There are a lot of negative stereotypes about the people who live here.  Being from the South or even sounding so, can be a real handicap in other parts of the country for those reasons.  Its not hard to see why Southerners would be defensive about their culture given its uniqueness and retreat in recent years.

Unfortunately my experience of the South is limited to Mississippi and a few other areas.  Most of my time here is spent around Cleveland.  I’ve been to Atlanta, Vicksburg, Memphis, Jackson, and Northeast Alabama.  Its hardly enough to truly understand this part of the country.  However I’ve seen enough to get a sense of how things are.   Its not quite as cut and dry as outsiders imagine.  Most people seem genuinely friendly.  Yet there are always bad apples, people who prove the stereotypes correct.  So its important to be patient and listen to people.  You can’t understand a place without living there.  By the same token one cannot understand a people without talking to them.  Therefore its important to keep an open mind and be willing to experience new things.

But something got me thinking.  Recently I ran into a map which brought all the above back into focus.  Done right, maps can put things into perspective and show things in a completely different light.  This one was no different.  It was created by the  Demographics Research Group at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia.  They took aggregated data from the 2010 census and plotted it out on a map.  Each person is represented by a dot which is then color coded to represent race.  Of course I scrolled over to Cleveland, MS. Here are the results:

The visual representation drives home how starkly divided Cleveland is.  Historically the dividing line was the railroad which ran through the center of town.   The tracks are gone, but people still live on either side of where they were.   The only exception is Delta State which is the mixed blue/green area off to the left.

Looking at the map, I realized so much of my life is lived in the white part of town.   My apartment is two blocks from Delta State, all of my friends live within a few miles of it, and most of my favorite places are there too.  Clearly my perspective is shaped by life in only one part of Cleveland.  Suddenly calling it an oasis does not seem entirely appropriate.  The fact is, I have no clue what life is like on the other side of town.

When it comes to segregation Cleveland is not remotely unique.  The map does an excellent job of representing America’s racial divisions. They’re especially stark in big cities such as New York, Baltimore, or Philadelphia to say nothing of Detroit and St. Louis.   So its not fair to single out one small town just because its in Mississippi and happens to be divided along racial lines.

Ironically the African American side of town if the one people are most likely to see.  Davis Ave, which runs through the center of the map, is the local name for Highway 61.  As the main North-South thoroughfare in the Delta, it is the one route through which people are guaranteed to pass through Cleveland.   When they do so, all they see is Walmart, strip malls, fast food, and Cleveland’s African-American population.  To the uninitiated, the town must look little different from any other Delta town.  Everything which makes it special is off the beaten path and thus invisible to passing travelers and, I suspect, journalists.

My experience upon first coming here during my job interview reinforces the above point.  All of the hotels in Cleveland are located along Highway 61 and the restaurants I went to are not far from it either.  So my first impression of the town was of a flat land filled with a giant Walmart, some fast food joints, a few strip malls, and a lot of poor people.  Delta State is in a nice area and the library’s Assistant Director drove me through the neighborhood around it, but it was a whirlwind tour.  In any case, we ended up going through some less desirable areas where I saw more poor people and a broken down strip mall.  On top of everything, the weather was cloudy and dreary much of the time.  Cleveland seemed like the saddest place on earth.

It wasn’t until I began living here that I realized there are a lot of cool things happening.   The problem is they are well hidden.  Not only is the most developed part of town off the beaten path, but the inhabitants don’t really advertise themselves.  Many people in Cleveland aren’t too keen on self promotion it seems.  And there is no reason for them to be.  If you work at Delta State and have friends who live in the nearby neighborhoods there is not much incentive to tell strangers about your life.  On top of that a lot of the natives are rather insular.  Its possible the local culture is hidden by design.  The only time we all come out of our collective shell is when Teach for America arrives in June.  Of course in that case there are more incentives than usual to put on a good face and show the newcomers around.

Nevertheless Cleveland is still a great place to live.  There is certainly life on the other side of the tracks.  The Senator’s Place is on that side of town.  I’ve also heard great things about East Side High School.   It may not be an oasis, but the town is still far more developed than most others in the Delta.

The Atlantic recently ran an article about the Delta.  Titled “How White Flight Ravaged the Mississippi Delta” it chronicles how the out migration of affluent white residents has hurt the region. The tl;dr version is: a lot.  Driving through the Delta feels like stepping back in time.  This part of the country feels frozen in time. People have been leaving for years a fact which can be seen in run down buildings and empty streets.  The Atlantic does a good job of showing that.

However there are a few problems I have with the article.  First of all the writer doesn’t seem to have a solid idea of  where the region begins and ends. Its boundaries are the Mississippi River to the west and the Yazoo River to the east from Vicksburg north to the suburbs of Memphis.  So while Tchula is indeed a Delta town, Philadelphia, MS is not.

More importantly, the situation in the Delta is complex.  Its telling that whenever journalists come through they never mention the town I live in.  Cleveland is a thriving college town which attracts people from all over the world.  We’ve got a strong local culture and a lot of stores and restaurants.  It is not your average Delta town.  Furthermore there are efforts, such as the Grammy Museum opening this year to improve the situation.  Farming is also big business which is why the USDA has a huge research lab down in Stoneville.  The Delta also attracts tourists looking to explore the history of the Blues as well as Teach for America Corps members.

Yet the broader picture is not so rosy.  Cleveland’s success proves The Atlantic right in many ways. Not every town can have a university.  And while the hope is that the Grammy Museum will bring in more tourists that is in the future.  Based on how hard it is to find the existence of the museum on their website, I am not encouraged.   Hopefully my doubts will be proven wrong.  So while there are some bright spots, the Delta is still a deeply impoverished placed.

And there are macroeconomic trends to consider as well.  The article quotes a hardware store owner as saying “We need everything. But now we need police cars foremost. Our streets need to be redone. We need to try to find somebody to open some businesses. Nobody is really coming in until we get our infrastructure improved”.  That’s a problem too.  For all the attention the Delta gets from TFA and Blues travelers there is little to actually attract businesses.  Again Cleveland is an exception in this regard.  But most towns are decaying fast.  Without some sort of government assistance its hard to imagine life turning around.  Perhaps that’s for the best.  The Delta has some of the most fertile soil in the country and so maybe its wide open spaces should remain that way.  I don’t have many answers to these questions and increasingly don’t seek them.  It is the way it is around here and only time will tell if life will ever change,

Though I am not involved in the movement as anything more than a supporter, a few points jive with my experience.  First of all, there is the perception of backwardness.  Really this needs no explaining. People both inside and outside of Mississippi are well aware of its perception around the country. Within the state, the Delta is seen as a rough land of poverty and desolation, forgotten by time. Certainly the facts do not look good, but as I will mention below they are not the full picture. Second, Mississippi is more diverse than most outsiders realize.  A lot of folks, particularly up North, think that everyone down here is all about God, guns, and the SEC and really not much else.  But I’ve found that not everyone is religious or a football fan or deeply conservative.  Just like much of the rest of the country is not monolithic, neither is the South.

Some of that the perception is shaped by a few people.  Politics in Mississippi tends to be dominated by a few people who pass policies which, at best, are unhelpful to the rest of the state. Likewise businesses and money are concentrated in a few places such as the Jackson area.  Not everyone agrees with this state of affairs, but there does not seem to anyway to change it.  So people shuffle on as best they can.

But its more than that.  Take, for example, this article from the BBC from a few years ago.  It talks about poverty in the Mississippi Delta and what progress has been made since the 1960s.  The answer the give is: very little.  Yet articles such as that one tend not to mention Cleveland.  Admittedly there are better known Clevelands (such as that one up in Ohio).  But I’ve seen folks come right through town and not even mention it.   Anthony Bourdain even went to the Senator’s Place which is in Cleveland and did not so much as mention the name of the town.  We manage to attract people from all over the world and yet the media hardly mentions us.  It’s frustrating enough that I can see the point the authors of the Advocate article were trying to make.  A little recognition might do some good for projects like the Grammy Museum which will be opening next year or for Delta State itself.

Then again it may not.  In regards to poverty, there are a lot of macroeconomic factors at work. The Delta has decline in part due to white flight, but there have been changes in the nation as a whole. Cotton is grown in many places other than Mississippi.  The Delta has other crops too, but farming can only employ so many people.  Then there are the politics.  Those are not so easily changed. People vote the way they do for a variety of complex reasons.  Its hard to see outside influence having much of an impact on state politics.  Just look at what happened to the Affordable Care Act down here. And on the issue of LGBT rights you run into the power that religion holds on the culture of the state. The fact is this is a very religious state and its hard, for me anyway, to imagine that changing just because of increased funding for some groups. You can certainly change laws, as may happen this week, but cultural attitudes are a whole different ballgame.

However people are fighting all the same.  As a progressive it can be difficult to see the bright side of things in a year like this which is exacerbated by my tendency to not follow local politics.  But there is opposition to the status quo in this state as embodied by groups such as Mississippians United Against Personhood, The Campaign for Southern Equality, and Mississippi First and people such as Congressman Bennie Thompson who is a member of the House Progressive Caucus.  These folks tend not to make national headlines which makes their fight harder.

So we need to be careful about self-fulfilling prophecies.  Politicians have a way of staying in power whether or not they have any true support.  By buying into stereotypes about places like Mississippi, people end up glossing over the complexities of the situation.  Just because a situation is bad doesn’t mean it has to be so.   People in this country often live in bubbles and its important to examine our assumptions about places we’ve never been to.