 If I'm what pops into your head when you picture a Southerner, you're doing it wrong. See, the forces of history and primetime television have conspired to make bearded white dudes with an affinity for denim the face of Dixie. In reality, the South is one of the most diverse regions in the United States. We're home to 60% of the country's African American population. And of the 10 states with the fastest growing Latino populations, 8 of them are Southern. Despite our less than illustrious history of race relations, diverse new groups of folks keep moving down South and improving the place. We got descendants of Vietnamese refugees adding their traditional spices to crawfish boils down in the bayou. We got a 10,000 strong Syrian Lebanese community in Mississippi. I'm serious, head on down to Abe's and Clarksdale and the chef will load up your lunchbox before your duck hunt. Hell, we even got different types of white folks. Like the descendants of German immigrants in Texas who speak 100 year old dialects and still f*** with polka. To understand how the South became so diverse, we got to talk about slavery. I know there's a certain portion of the audience that don't want to hear this stuff, but it's a critical part of the origin story. It's kind of like how DC has to show Bruce Wayne's parents getting popped in every single movie to explain why he became an emo crime fighting bat. Here's some numbers that might put things in perspective. Back in 1690, there were about 250,000 people in the South and 80% of them were Native Americans. By 1790, the overall Southern population had hit 1.7 million, but by then Native Americans made up just 5% of it. So what happened? Well, if you didn't look like a cast member of Gossip Girl, it was basically a century of nightmarish tragedy. This time period went a long way toward destroying Native American populations in the United States, but with the influx of settlers and slaves, new cultures were created as well. Like the Gulligichi people who were brought to the colonies as slaves in the 18th century and still inhabit the South Coastal region today. The Gulligichi were relatively isolated in the South's low country, so over years of forced assimilation to colonial customs, they still passed on their language and traditions that tied them back to West Africa. Now these people have a unique culture that's distinctly West African and Southern. Take their language, which scholars say is one of the last true surviving mixtures of English and African dialects. They came from different societies and places in Africa and they had to learn to talk to each other, as well as to the Europeans who were around, and so they very creatively crafted this language that exists nowhere else in the world. So do say, I don't want me for coming down here now, for talking to the people and them, and I've been here, you tell me, say don't talk. Or their food, which basically helped create the bedrock of Southern cuisine by mixing African grains with Native American spices. Basically, no Gulligichi, no Gumbo. Now there are no recorded instances of the Gulligichi ramping a 69 Dodge Charger over a police car, but does that mean they have any less claim to be in the face of the South than the Dukes of Hazard? Hell no! I think if people when they thought of the South like among the first things that come to mind were like outcast instead of the Dukes of Hazard, I think that stigma wouldn't be as pronounced as it is. You guys have had pretty bad branding. Yeah, I think if Andre 3000 just put out another album again, that would solve a lot of our problems. Another group who played a crucial role in defining the South's identity is the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Thanks to the near constant efforts of the federal government to relocate or eradicate the Seminole, they've ended up embodying the Southern spirit of defiance more than any good old boy with stars and bars mudflaps on his lifted F-350. Among their career highlights is repeatedly sticking their thumb in the eye of America's racist great-uncle Andrew Jackson. Back in 1817, old hickory dickory d**khead kicked off a series of wars on the Seminoles because he wanted to recapture freed slaves that were living on their land, then steal their land, and then relocate them. Seminoles were outmanned, outgunned, and thus nearly obliterated in these wars. A group of Seminoles were relocated to Oklahoma, but many stayed behind in Florida and never surrendered. They remain the only Native American tribe to have never signed a peace treaty with the U.S. government. There's nothing more Southern than that telling the government to go f**k themselves, right? Hmm, fighting to the very end against a tyrannical government that wants to steal your land and freedom in a glorious lost cause? Basically, all the cool and inspiring s**t Confederates made up about themselves is actually true about the Seminole people. The reason all this matters is because, as crucial as these groups are to defining the South, their contributions are rarely acknowledged, and some of these communities may not be around too much longer. The Gulligichi have seen their historically insulated communities broken up by real estate developers. And though I would bet on the Seminole to hang on longer than anyone would expect, their lands are under attack by climate change. There's not a single magic bullet that can put an end to these threats, but we can't begin to solve them if we don't even recognize the people exist in the first place. There's a solid quote by a South Carolina historian named W.J. Cash who said, There are many Souths. And the sooner we all recognize and appreciate that truth, the longer it will remain one.