New City Resources

An Essay on Knoxville Culture
By Kenny Woodhull
Occasioned by a Request to Contribute to Knoxville Salt & Light Guidebook (2009)

Describing the culture of Knoxville is akin to asking the proverbial blind men to describe an elephant. One man, grasping the trunk, says an elephant is like a large hose. Another, holding the tail, declares an elephant resembles a stiff rope. A third, clutching a leg, says an elephant is like a sturdy tree. A fourth declares that the other three are altogether wrong: an elephant, he explains, is an immovable wall of skin and muscle as big as a house.

Point of view is everything. Let me acknowledge at the outset that this perspective on Knoxville culture is one man’s limited assessment of a monumental issue, a subject so large and diverse that no single person or perspective can hope to do it justice.

First things first: definitions. Knoxville I take to include the metro area inclusive of Halls, Farragut, Seymour, and Strawberry Plains. The word “culture” here with Webster’s Dictionary refers to “the sum total of the beliefs, accomplishments, and behavior patterns of a group of people.” Culture is captured therefore by our actions and the way in which these actions develop into habits, rituals, values, worldviews, and lived-out aspirations.

We start by stating the obvious: Knoxville is a suburban culture with an Anglo-American ethos. We enjoy four distinct seasons and social rhythms associated with being a University community. 7% of the metro population is Black or African-American.¹ Most of our roots as an Appalachian city are rural. 13% of us live at or below the poverty line.² And though few of our families lived the farm life the desire for land and the opportunity to be creative with it are evident in a variety of outdoor interests and avocations. That we live in the shadow of the Great Smoky Mountains and on clear days can enjoy their natural beauty seems to exert a certain influence upon us all.

Like most mid-size cities in America, we are a car culture, and we have cataracts of strip-malls, mega-malls, storefronts, and shopping centers to prove it. At one time in recent history, excluding San Francisco, Knoxville boasted more restaurants per capita than any other city in America. Since we are on the border of the Deep South church buildings are everywhere representing a rich variety of Christian traditions, a majority of which in Knoxville spells Baptist.

Knoxville culture plays itself out across city-county lines in clusters of socially, economically, and racially homogenous neighborhoods that extend North along Broadway, South on Chapman Highway, East along Magnolia Avenue, and West down Kingston Pike. Except for a few large corporations-Covenant Health, the University of Tennessee, Sea Ray, Pilot Oil, and TVA-Knoxville is a culture of small businesses that make for a stable local economic environment. The mantra here is “neither boom nor bust” and this carries over into a conservative approach to the way we handle our money and most everything else–especially art, religion, and politics. Expressed in educational standards, the status quo reigns and the rule is mediocrity.³ Where there is money there are exceptions.

With varying degrees of pride and prejudice most of us self-identify in terms of East, West, North, or South Knoxville. “The Strip” fixes people near the University and “downtown” has recently re-emerged as a distinct place on the cultural map of Knoxville. Of course, these designations connote far more than geographic locations. Rather, through their unique commercial, political, social, educational, and religious histories each of the areas represents somewhat distinct cultures within the larger culture of Knoxville. Tribalism is too strong a word here, but there might be something to the theory that the Scots-Irish penchant for in-fighting is to some degree a part of our DNA.

The roar you hear echoing through the heart of Knoxville’s neighborhoods is the concrete confluence of the two busiest roads in America (Interstates 75 and 40) doing violence to our city’s peace, beauty, and sense of unity. Because TDOT will not allow us to re-route fifty gazillion pounds of concrete, part of our cultural heritage involves coming to terms with the wound of our disconnected neighborhoods and the resulting social segmentation.

Accordingly, where we would look for cooperation, all too often we find territorialism and entrenchment: hence, Knoxville loses its AA professional baseball team to a smaller town a few miles up the road. Local business leaders and government officials refuse to put the interests of the city ahead of their private interests, and The Aquarium is built down-river in Chattanooga. Chris Whittle invites Knoxville to serve as the flagship of a national initiative for education reform, and local power blocs balk at the disruption of the status quo, and a whole generation of creative professionals depart Knoxville. Political dysfunction descends to a new low in the wake of Danny Mayfield’s death as his widow is denied her late husband’s seat on city council.⁴ And thanks to Bart Simpson’s infamous road trip to Knoxville, even the success of the 1982 World’s Fair is now a source of national notoriety for us.

And yet, deep within the soul of our city-like every city-there is a longing for purposive unity, a coherent identity reflective of indigenous assets, and a common commitment to a cause larger than our sectional self-interests. In the absence of a compelling vision, this cultural impulse today finds expression in Knoxville’s shared allegiance to-and, dare we say, adoration of-the University of Tennessee’s place in the pantheon of America’s national sports scene. In itself, recreational fandom can be a positive aspect of any city’s cultural life. But problems arise when this devotion supplants other more meaningful expressions of civic purpose.

And this is precisely our cultural challenge today: nothing unites the disparate strands of our community like UT Sports. Black, white, rich, poor, young, old, male, female, professional, laborer, white-collar, blue-collar altogether gather in mass at Neyland Stadium, Thompson-Boling Arena, or-if we can’t get seats–in front of our big screen tvs. And then we talk about it the rest of the week-on the radio, at the copier, before and after the business of our meetings. Let me be clear: I am not saying our cultural “problem” is that we cheer on the Vols. The issue here is that we have a default mechanism at work deep within our collective consciousness, and the time and energy we spend on all things Orange reflects-and does not respond to–our gnawing need for a more enduring sense of unity and purpose.

In this light, six years of progressive governance under a uniquely conscientious City Mayor as well as a sustained push for downtown renewal feels like it could be the very fresh, historic wind of civic achievement, corporate unity, and cultural advance for which we have waited so long. A genuine sense of excitement and unprecedented hopefulness therefore are in the cultural air of Knoxville today.

Bottom-line: we are a hard-working and optimistic people principally concerned to provide for ourselves and our families in a mid-size Southern city shaped by unrealized expectations. Whether through affluence or prejudice we too often succumb to pride and the status quo.

Because Knoxville sounds too much like Notsville, it is my hope as a citizen and my prayer as a Christian that God’s people would come to embrace our calling to embody the collaborative unity of the Kingdom in a good city with great potential that still hasn’t found what it’s looking for. Only in this case, it is not What we should seek, but Who.

1. www.census.gov/acs/www/products/profiles/single/2003
2. www.census.gov/acs/www/producst/profiles/single/2003
3. In an often quoted piece, Knoxville Chamber Partnership CEO, Mike Edwards writes: “We have hit an iceberg, and our ship is sinking.  Our ship – our public education system – is not going to get us to our port, and all hands will be lost if we don’t do something quickly.  By any national standard, our public education system is not preparing students to face the future that the world is presenting them. We are at the bottom of every national ranking – test results, educational standards, graduation rates, and funding.  Fundamentally, we are not providing our children the tools they will need to succeed in a world that requires critical thinking, technical skills and competence in math and science. Our local economy is dependent on a workforce that has these skills.  Without these skills, our workforce cannot do the job, our businesses cannot compete and our economic well-being is at great risk.  There is increasing acknowledgment at the local and state levels that major changes are required for our education system to meet these challenges. www.tbroundtable.org/library/docs/Mike%20Edwards%20Article%2007.doc  
4. “The night it all came down I could not stop shivering. It changed the way I viewed a lot of things. For the first time, sitting on Council [with Mayor Victor Ashe], I really felt I was in the presence of evil. I had disagreed with people on many occasions and felt strongly about many things, but I never ever had felt something I could describe as the presence of evil. Until that night. There was just darkness. Hopelessness. But never, until Danny’s death and the appointment of someone other than his wife, and knowing the orchestration that took place to make it happen, did I realize that I could never again go back to that body without carrying with me my belief that they were capable of the worst possible actions.”  -City Councilwoman Carlene Malone, Metro Pulse, “Malone Alone”, December 13, 200