That was a deliberate move on the part of Scott Lobdell when he was setting up the book. He deliberately set about to play with stereotypes - while a lot of new X-men characters tended to follow certain stereotypes (for example, the New Mutants), he wanted to create a team that messed around with that, so the "hick" Southerner was the class intellectual, the Latino gang member the nice guy, the cultured Brit taciturn and so on.