By Seba
Last March at the Pagans of the Deep South Gathering, I was rather stunned (okay, I was Hopping John pissed) at the derogatory use of our term “tribe.” It came off about as un-Southern as it could have, was spoken to my husband and went something like so, just how invested are you in this, um, TRIBE? The speaker might as well have said so, how faithful are you to your, um, WIFE? As relieved as I was (and remain) that my little country ass wasn’t standing there at the time, it still riles me up a spell to think of our sacred unity being hurled about like a racial slur. And I don’t hanker to those very sweetly, either.
Now, I could have pulled on my doctoral robe and gone stomping into our university library in search of academic defense, but I reckon the Oxford Dictionary Online website does nicely enough in defining the term: