I don’t get this (but then I’m Southern, so maybe I’m a little thick ). Who said all Southerns were something and was that something racist? I’m really not playing coy. Again, the way I interpreted the OP, he seemed to be saying “these are the things I’ve seen that reinforce the stereotype I arrived in the South with” not “all Southerners are racist” or even “my stereotyping of Southerners originated with and/or are justified by my experiences.” Well, except for the thread title, which I agree, is most unfortunate. Most of us phrase things poorly when we are frustrated, so maybe we can cut a little bit of slack on that?
I didn’t take it that way. Even rereading the OP, I didn’t take it that way. Rereading the OP, of course, the tone does come off more harshly than I remembered. Maybe merijerk can clarify what he meant with regard to whether or not the OP is a blanket indictment, or an indictment of people he descibes as being Southern and like county, which is how I took it. I took it as him describing a certain mindset here of which county was a representative example, not that the mindset applied to all Southerners.
I think that lack of objectivity is a mirror of the nation, and to some extent, the world. The Southern White stereotype is pretty widespread, I know because I’v travelled some, and because my best friend has made a life of globetrotting. I agree that it needs to be addressed when it rears it’s ugly head. You seem to be doing a pretty good job of it, though you could be a little more enthusiastic. (kidding!) Don’t give up! I’ll try and help.
I’d like to chime in with my experience about living in the South, but I live in Asheville, North Carolina which is definitely not in the South.
I’m from Chicago. My girlfriend is from Chicago. My best friend in town is from Ohio. And my girlfriend’s best friend is from New York.
There just aren’t a lot of people here who are from here. If I remember right, you’re not from here either, Daniel.
The Triangle also draws a lot of people to it from parts elsewhere and, although I haven’t spent a ton of time there, is probably not quite as southern as its geography would indicate.
I can’t help wondering if maybe ** Merijeek ** is projecting his own forbidden thoughts and feelings on Southerners in much the same way a repressed homosexual might become a gay basher. You know how that goes:
“Okay, another day at work. Hey, there’s Gary, the guy who spends so much time at the gym. Nice abs. Nice face, too. I wonder what it would be like to open his pants and put my mouth on … * No!!! * Nice people don’t have those thoughts!!! I * didn’t * have those thoughts!!! But I bet Bruce over there in the mailroom thinks that kind of stuff all the time. Everybody knows he’s queer. I bet Bruce would just love to get Gary’s pants down and put his mouth on … Nasty little queer. Goddam nasty little queer.”
I can just picture the same thoughts going through Merijeek’s mind: “Okay, another day at work. Hey, there’s Lamar, the black guy who got that promotion instead of me. Goddam affirmative action. I’d like to take a baseball bat and pound his face until … * No!!! * Nice people don’t have those thoughts!!! I * didn’t * have those thoughts!!! But I bet Billy Bob down there on the loading dock thinks that kind of stuff all the time. Everybody knows he’s a redneck. I bet Billy Bob would just love to shove his fist straight into … Goddam racist redneck. Goddam ignorant racist redneck.”
Some neo-Confederates claim that Southerners have been made the scapegoats for the nation’s racial sins. I suspect there’s some truth in that.
I grew up in the panhadle of Florida. For the most part, it’s rual, economically depressed and the school system is pretty bad. The whole area is a stagnant breeding ground of racism and ignorance. I never knew how bad it was until I joind the Army and ended up living around DC.
Too be fair, just about any place you go to in this country that is under the same conditions will probably have simular levels of ignorance and bigotry. I think the problem with the South is that it seems to have more than it’s fair share of poverty.
Some peopel say the South isn’t backwards, and others agree that it really is. I think it all depends on where you are and what the local economic conditions are. (bad economy + bad school system + no mixing with other areas = bassackwards thinking)
I live in the South and I’ve lived in the north. I’d say that my hometown was very racist in the outspoken kind of way, and the more silent kinds of ways. However, I wouldn’t say that the actions in the OP are dead on. I don’t think it’s often THAT extreme, there were times when I have felt racism that was unbearable, and times when I knew I should go to a certain place, or community because I was black. But I don’t think the south is all that the OP made it out to be. I’ve had many wonderful experiences, the down-homeness of the south, and the comforts I’ve felt.
I still plan to move to the north or even overseas.
I’m 17 years old in the Air Force and all excited because I’m goin’ home on leave with my friend Al. Al lives in Detroit, and I’ve never been Up North before. Now I’m goin’ to a Big City!
We get there, and Al don’t live in Detroit proper, he lives in Dearborn. So we mess around with cars and stuff like guys do for a couple of days. Then it gets to be Friday night, and Al says we’ll go to the dance at the Dearborn Rec center, and maybe get lucky with some girls.
Dance, girls: Now we’re gettin’ onto subjects I know somethin’ about! We get in there, and I’m lookin’ around pretty good, and I say to Al: “It’s all white kids here. I thought y’all was integrated and stuff.”
Al says: “Well, to come here you have to be a resident of Dearborn, or else be invited by a resident. There ain’t no black people livin’ in Dearborn, and fer sure nobody’s gonna’ invite one. Let’s drop this shit and hit on some chicks.”
It doesn’t take long before Linda says she “Loooves” my southern accent, and Al finds a girl that kinda’ likes him, and we leave the dance with these two girls to go ridin’ around.
Once in the car, I again mentioned that I found it odd to go to a dance in Detroit and there’d be only white people. So Al gets a little pissed and says: “You wanna’ see niggers, I’ll show you some.”
He drives us to a place called Hasting Street, and we ride for a mile or two through a scene of the most hopeless, abject poverty I’ve ever witnessed.
That set me to thinkin’, and after our leave was up and we’re drivin’ back South, I says to Al: “You sum-bitches are doin the same goddam thing you’re accusin’ the South of. The only difference is you’re lyin’ about it.”
Al says: “Fuck you” and we didn’t talk about it no more.
Merijerk: Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, etc.
I lived in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area for a number of years before moving to rural Arkansas. I don’t hear the word nigger all that often but I’ve heard it more in rural areas then I have in Dallas or in Little Rock. Almost everyone I’ve heard use that word were in their 60’s or older.
Bullshit. I call bullshit. Thats a completely fabricated story and I am willing to bet it never even happened. I live in Knoxville TN - I have spent many weekends in Chattanooga and never once have we had a damned Klan meeting after the black guy left the store.
I don’t know you Q, but it is my guess that you are a troll of the worst order - the kind that believes they have a “purpose” for spreading lies.
I am from the south, I have lived in the south for half my life. I lived all over the US during the other half. The brain dead stereotype spewing OP is not fighting ignorance but rather is furthering it with this garbage.
Hey not worth my trouble mentioning starter of OP:
There are assholes and racists and ignorant people everywhere. Keep your lies and slander and vitrol in Wisconsin (or wherever else it is you incorrectly believe is free of the aforementioned people).
I can stop you right there. We aren’t. I mean, I’d love to go through your post and refute it bit by bit, but I’d rather not delve into such hatred.
I am Saint Zero, and except for 20 months in exile near the Indiana border, I am a resident of Jackson, Mississippi. I have lived here for most of 35 years now. I have to say that I hope you don’t espouse these ideas in the real world, because you’d be about as bad as some people I have met.
I have met racists, they come in all colors. I have met some fantastic people of all colors. Let’s get over this concept that hatred is limited to white people, okay? You’ve displayed a fair amount of it yourself, if you were honest enough to admit it.
Should I defend my region of the country as being free of idiots? That’d be pointless. I think everyone else in this thread has shared enough personal stories of morons everywhere to at least show that hatred is common everywhere.
People celebrate him. They’re not ready to celebrate MLK, simply because of quite a few dozen reasons. In his own way, King did disrupt and “conquer” (if you want to use it that way) the ideals of a generation which hadn’t had the sense to toss off old ideals they’d inherited from their parents, and back on to the War. People don’t worship their conquerors.
The “N Word”*is common. Both sides use it. I could rehash a dozen threads on that, but it’s not worth the time.
Jackson has a problem with Pawn Shop zoning, but that’s the fault of the adminstration, not the common citizenry.
The rest of it… ech. I won’t discuss. If you look hard enough, you can find racism in any place I can find on a Globe. Just realize that Jackson isn’t the hellhole you make it out to be. I’ve lived here about 10 times longer than you have, so not only have I heard all this, I know how to put it in context. I also know that in my travels across thirty-something states, and living in Louisville, KY, I can say I don’t think we have the corner on stupidity.
Context: Jackson, like every other human city, is a complex place. The city was burned in the Civil war, occupied by Northern Armies, and all that implies from that sorry era. Then America gave up on equality. I’ve seen the newsreels of the KKK massing huge rallies in Washington DC, I know their history and I know a lot of it wasn’t simple Southerners bent on vengance. I know the nation failed to follow through, and the south didn’t care to let on to that fact. I know it took brave men to bring that fact up, and show the nation we hadn’t made any real progress. Now we honor those who meant well, while groaning at those who’d use their status to further their own political gains.
This city is no different that any place you’d care to name. I missed Mississippi, and we came back here. We are learning slowly to get over the past, and look to the future in a better light.
Merijeek, I wish you’d learn. You don’t know this place. You aren’t qualified to judge us. With that attitude you won’t learn. You’ve got quit being judgemental, it won’t help you.
Yes, Southerners are touchy about things. We have been bashed, hated on sight, laughed at, revilled and worse. Can you blame us, when people like you exist making things worse?
People, things change. They are changing. They will change. But only with help, not hatred. Hatred is what got us into this mess in the first place.
*[sub]I love how Ms Walters says that… THE :hush falls over the audience: :very softly: “N Word.”[/sub]
I lived in Columbia, SC for five months in the winter of 1987/88. This does not qualify me to speak for the entire South.
My first day at PMSC (Policy Management Services) in Columbia, the Director of the area I was working with (as a rep from my company, their client) had a little talk with me. I was fairly disturbed when he talked about his team and blatantly said that he was planning to “fire that nigger”. The only black person on his team.
Having said that, I’ve seen just as much racism up here in Minnesota, on all sides of the table. I spent 11 years in a neighborhood that went from roughly 70% white/30% black to 50% black/25% white/20% Hmong/5% Other (mostly Arabs and Hispanics) in that time period. Been harassed on the street many times by blacks, several of whom seemed severely offended that I was out walking in “their” neighborhood. (Gee, can you imagine if a white man said that to a black person?) Heard the Arabs complaining about the Blacks, the Blacks complaining about the Hmong, Arabs and Mexicans. The Hmong complaining about the Arabs and the Blacks.
I’d say the only difference is the free use of the word “nigger” by white racists. Much less acceptable in the North.
What bothered me more was the fact that people acted like they personally had fought and lost the Civil War (or whatever term they want to call it this week) and were just waiting for the opportunity to start the whole thing up again. To them I say;
Fuck You. You did not fight in that war. Your grandfather did not fight in that war. It ended 138 years ago. GET THE FUCK OVER IT ALREADY.
Cincinnati is not Northern. It’s the northernmost Southern city in the US. I’m from NJ, have lived in Cincinnati, and have been to Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia many times. Trust me–Cincinnati is Southern.
Arghle. I’m on a few cough meds, so I mucked that sentence up while coughing. It should have said “Now we honor those who meant and did well for us all, while groaning…”
Well, I’ll tell you something Marjie, I don’t have a problem with the word “gay.” I also don’t have a problem with other people’s sexuality. (Might surprise you to know that I belong to and attend an “open and affirming church” - you probably didn’t know we had them down here did you.)
Might also surprise you to know that I also am aware of and support “free speech” as provided for in our constitution. That’s probably because you didn’t bother to read the words in my posts. See, my problem was that I didn’t believe that your (or whoever’s) interpretation of a violation of the constitution was necessarily correct. See, just because you say it doesn’t make it so. It just makes it your opinion. Like mine.
An opinion as to a violation of law doesn’t equate to supporting what was said. Think about it a minute.
As far as the rest of your OP is concerned, well, that is also your opinion and you are certainly entitled to it, although I disagree with much of what you posted.
As someone who has spent half his life in the South, I can sympathize with the OP. That is not to say that I think that the OP is 100% correct, but I can certain understand where he’s coming from. I’d also like to say that I’ve heard comments similar to what AdmiralQ claims to have heard.
Assuming that the level of racism in the South is the same as the North (I’ve no idea if it is or not, but let’s say that it is), the South seems more open about it’s racism than the North does. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in a bus in Selma, AL., not Selma, MA. Not too far from where I live, there’s a statue honoring the founder of the Klan, and the state run university I attended for a while had a plaque as late as 1987 on one of it’s buildings honoring him. Rumor has it, that there’s a town here in TN (Tracey City) which has a billboard on the outskirts that reads, “Welcome to Tracey City. Largest Coon Ever Killed Weighed 165 lbs.” I don’t know, I’ve never been there, and from the stories I’ve heard about the place, I never want to go. I never heard anything like that about any place in Ohio when I was growing up (even Cleveland, OH wasn’t described with the horror that Tracey City is).
When I was growing up in Ohio, I heard racist talk, but it was always in quiet, hushed tones. Here, some people will begin spouting racist comments at the drop of a hat. Also, Southern folks seem a lot more defensive about the South than Northerners are about their region of the country. Were a Southerner to make a blanket statement about how the North is inferior for this or that reason, the Northerner would generally respond with a “Fuck you, asshole.” and ignore whatever else the Southerner has to say. Reverse the situation, and the Southerner will quite often launch into a tirade that goes on for several minutes (the worst ones always start out with, “I’ve lived in the South all my life…”).
I’ve also met folks here, who, quite honestly, remind me of a character out of Deliverance. Whether all of them are the product of inbreeding (one of them I know for certain was), I’ve no idea. I do know that I’ve met them while living in areas of TN that have populations of upwards of 20,000 people, yet in growing up in a town of less than 5,000 people, I never met one.
And for a Northerner, moving to the South (as I’m sure an Easterner moving out West would experience), there is a culture shock, that at times can be overwhelming.
So while I can understand the folks born in the South getting upset at a Yankee bitching about things “down here,” they need to remember that any person transplanted from one place to another is going to bitch about crap from time to time, and that the person bitching is just blowing off some steam.
). Who said all Southerns were something and was that something racist? I’m really not playing coy. Again, the way I interpreted the OP, he seemed to be saying “these are the things I’ve seen that reinforce the stereotype I arrived in the South with” not “all Southerners are racist” or even “my stereotyping of Southerners originated with and/or are justified by my experiences.” Well, except for the thread title, which I agree, is most unfortunate. Most of us phrase things poorly when we are frustrated, so maybe we can cut a little bit of slack on that?
