What do you call a co-worker these days? Neither teammate nor confederate will do, and partner is too legalistic. The answer brought from academia to the political world by Henry Kissinger and now bandied in the boardroom is colleague. It has a nice upper-egalitarian feel, related to the good fellowship of collegial.

Maybe we've been brainwashed by 130 years of Yankee history but Southern identity now has more to do with food accents manners music than the Confederate past. It's something that's open to both races a variety of ethnic groups and people who move here.