In America, could you get in trouble for being 'too nice' to black folk?

[Shagnasty]

@Gary_T

Sure, if you didn’t mind living in a place where being Jewish was only tolerated because of your husband’s rank, and where people had no qualms about making threats – and, you can be sure, seeing them through – over your treating others too well.

It’s dumb question because it ignores post after post in this thread which make it quite clear that there’s a whole lot more to the issue than the amount of a tip.

I don’t dispute your story but it implies something that isn’t true in the way many people think it is. The South in general has never been particularly anti-Jewish and it is mostly pro-Jewish and pro-Israel especially today.

There are many extremely old Jewish families all over the South and many of them have been integral parts of their communities for an extremely long time. For example, Charleston, SC has one of the oldest continuously active synagogues in the U.S. dating back to the 1700’s and that is only one of many that are nearly that old. New Orleans also has a very large and influential Jewish population and I know more Texas Jews than I can count mainly because of the oil industry. I read an article recently that lamented the loss of deep-rooted Jewish families in smaller Southern cities because of the recent economic crisis. We are talking about true Southern Jewish Belles that have to relocate to larger cities and nobody is happy about it.

For some reason, people think that Southerners hate groups that they don’t. It is always much more nuanced than that unless you are dealing with true white trash. In those cases, everyone else hates them and example of those appear all over the country including Michigan.

I am from the extreme backwater Deep South and never saw any hatred towards Jews. It was usually the opposite. The Evangelical and Fundamentalist churches absolutely loved them because they thought they were protecting the biblical homeland and the influential business people liked them as well because they had money (I know it is a stereotype but generally a true one). There was no hatred of indigenous Jewish at all. They were basically honored.

If the story is true (I have no reason to believe that it wasn’t), it wasn’t because she was Jewish, it was because she was a Yankee. That still doesn’t go over well to this day even though I am a Deep South transplant to the Northeast for 18 years. I have to play both sides on this divide and understand both sides of the argument. The prejudices in the Deep South are not nearly as clear-cut as outsiders think they are. It is based on a complicated us versus them mentality and the ‘us’ can and does lots of different types of people you might not expect.

[md2000]

@Shagnasty

I am from the extreme backwater Deep South and never saw any hatred towards Jews. It was usually the opposite. The Evangelical and Fundamentalist churches absolutely loved them because they thought they were protecting the biblical homeland and the influential business people liked them as well because they had money (I know it is a stereotype but generally a true one). There was no hatred of indigenous Jewish at all. They were basically honored.

Ummm… not before 1948, then…
And of course the implication is, “they’re fine over there”
And… since when did having money (let alone suggestions of how it was obtained) make you “loved” by the great unwashed masses?

I think it’s only in the 70’s and later that evangelicals began finding the prophecies about how many generations after the reestablishment of the Jewish homeland to expect the second coming, that Evangelicals thought that was more important that “let His blood be upon us and upon our children…”

before then, anyone different was just that - different. Certain areas may have tolerated their locals, but Yankees, Catholics, Jews, eye-talians, “do-gooders” from the north, etc. were outsiders.
It wasn’t a dumb question, but the idea that the locals would get upset over a simple wage level suggests they would take insult from anything. Why stick around and see what stupid notion offends them next?

[Nawth_Chucka]

I wish she was still alive for me to ask her exactly what she feared but having known her, I expect it was that she was alone w/ 3 small kids surrounded by strangers who not only knew she was Jewish but didn’t like it enough to mention it. Having grown up during the Zionist movement she knew about antisemitism plenty, Michigan background aside, but that was in the abstract.
One of my uncles from Kentucky explained to me that rejecting Jesus condemned Jews to Hell and he wanted no part of knowing any; this was in response to telling him about the fun I had at a friend’s Bat Mitzvah. Are their Northerners who think that way? Of course. But the only person I know who felt personally threatened by it was in the South when she felt it.
And I understand the plural of anecdote isn’t data.