Racism isn’t as talked about when you live in the white, rural north. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. People might not have cause to bring up their racism, but there’s still a lot of it if you scratch the surface.
As for the south, my only extensive knowledge is from Kentucky, where saying racist things is waaaay more open than it is here, though I’m just one state to the north.
(And the sister-in-law (from a Thanksgiving Pit thread by me) who had to share the “niglet” statements is from Missouri , not Kentucky.)
It’s always funny to me to hear folks who live in lily-white regions patting themselves on the back about how there’s no racism where they live, and how the one black kid in their high school was treated with great dignity and respect, and how he even dated their neighbor’s daughter and there were no problems! And it’s always funny to me to hear such people cluck their tongues about those horrible racists down South. It’s funny, and then it’s annoying.
But on a more careful reading of your OP, I see that’s exactly what you’re saying, that Obama hasn’t yet been tested because there hasn’t yet been a primary in a state where white and black people interact in large numbers.
I don’t think it’ll be a problem. I cited above Georgia’s record of voting for black candidates in statewide elections. And I’ll add to that some anecdotal evidence about how racists think:
I know an elderly lady in north Georgia who is a yellow dog Democrat. Now this lady is also a racist; I’ve heard her use the “n-word” on several occasions (though she at least recognizes that it is not socially acceptable to use that word and is visibly embarrassed about it when she lets it slip). Last week I ran into her, and since she is always eager to talk politics, I asked her about Obama. She loves the man. Loves him. And yes, if he gets the nomination, she will vote for him.
Racist in the abstract, but open-minded when dealing with particular black people. And I think that is pretty typical.
I went from Virginia to the University of Wisconsin and was shocked at the level of rascism I saw there from people who had little to no contact with black people at all before college. People from small towns in the north who may only have encountered a black person in a basketball tournament against some team from Milwaukee. I’m talking 20 some years ago when these towns were lily white and had been for generations. I don’t know exactly how they picked it up, but they damn sure did.
I haven’t been exposed to a lot of casual Northern racism but it seems true that there are a depressing amount of people who do dislike others based on race despite never having met many of them.
It does seem, however, that the level of vitriol in each given person isn’t as large: the casual racism seems more, well, casual. As others have opined, it’d be a different story if they started moving into one’s town. (And even then, I wouldn’t expect actual violence even from town racists, whereas from what I know of the South, if there are people in any given community that are so bold as to openly espouse their racist views, they would be much more likely to follow through with this. I can’t think of any racially motivated killings in the small-town North in the past 150 years.)
Agreed. Among the people I know, all of the racists (or at least all of them who are vocal about their racism) were from rural Minnesota. And they didn’t move there to get away from black people; they were born there.