Refugee thread!

[Maffis]

Mine is a Carolina girl twang.  As soon as people hear the grits flying, in their minds my IQ drops several dozen points.  I was born in South Carolina, raised in North Carolina, have a B.A. from a respected (and expensive) private college and have a respectable IQ.  Graduated cum laude and was a member of Phi Theta Kappa, Kappa Nu Sigma, Psi Chi and Delta Psi Omega.  I was the department's official tutor for one of the two most difficult psychology courses.  But the accent is never going away, so I suspect I will always be viewed as "less than."  

Of course all that pales by comparison to how much my value as a human being (in the bible-belt) dropped in the minds of the people in Tinytown upon revealing my atheism.

  

My husband is from South Carolina.  He was raised in Columbia SC and his family still lives there.  He's an actor so he had to lose his accent.  It helped that  he went to  University of Southern California and came out talking like a Californian. But when he travels back to see his family and if he's there for more than a week he comes back with a full-on South Carolina accent.  

Hey, I've lived near Columbia, SC for 15 years now. Moving to Ohio for work in a few months though. I always liked to believe I wasn't adopting an SC accent but sometimes I hear it in my voice, especially when I'm tired/lazy and slurring words. And I pretty much never say the g on -ing words. And say y'all a lot.