Except that the South used to vote overwhelming Democrat. What changed that? The Democrats racial platform. Its a historical fact that the White South will vote overwhelmingly in favor of whichever party has the more regressive racial policy. So I don’t doubt that Kerry, Gore, et al. did equally bad in the Deep South, but that just helps to prove my point.
Well, this is the Pit, I was deliberately over the top and offensive. Look I know there are a lot of decent people in the south and that there are neanderthalic racists everywhere. What I have a continuing issue with is the clannish, insular, ostentasiously religious, holier than thou, anti-anyone different than me, good old boy culture that has had way too much influence over the South for pretty much its whole history. That part about being dragged into modern times at the point of a gun TWICE is historical fact, after all.
You’re right - the author of that article was ignorant and racist. He wrote an entire article based on the concept that someone’s skin color has meaning or value in any way, shape, form or fashion. That is ignorant and racist.
But this is faulty reasoning. “Stereotypes exist for a reason”? They exist because people are willing to believe in them and repeat them, even in the absence of wider data to back them up. It’s harder to find a “Masshole”? How hard was it to find this example: It’s in the by-God New York Times! But if they had found an equally biased crowd in Massachussets or Idaho and printed that article, you would have found that example with equal ease. You “find” what’s put in front of you. So why is it always the South?
And if those of us who live down here in the “deep South” lived “amongst large groups of people like that”, we too would react with horror and fear. But we don’t live around thoese groups; that’s the point. I don’t know where they find these people, but they’re not from around here. Thus the OP’er is not justified in extrapolationg from three or four people in BumFuck, Alabama to “The Deep South”.
As someone who avowedly doesn’t like the South, you see what you want to see. I could deride the elitist, pretentious, ostentatiously secular, holier than thou, anti-anyone different than me, the-world-end-at-the-Eastern-Jersey-border culture that has had way too much influence over New England for pretty much its whole history, but then people would rightly accuse me of engaging in gross over-generalizations to justify my own set prejudices. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Soul Brother Number Two
Your post was not inflammatory to me. I’ve been sitting here somewhat disbelief at the vitriol directed toward me in the OP. There are many on this board that can come in and say that they are from the South and voted for Obama. Or if they did not, they can give a reason they did not vote for Obama that has nothing to do with race. But I fear that no reason will be good enough because in MichealQReilly’s eyes we are all just stupid rednecks anyway that are covering for the fact that we won’t vote for a black person.
I’ll never argue that there are people in my area that are vehemently racist. I can see the quote mentioned in the OP coming out of the mouth of some of my customers. But there are people like me, and like many here at the Dope, that live in the Deep South, have lived in the Deep South all our lives and simply do not live or believe as racists and in fact do what we can to combat it. Those people like me read the OP, though, and wonder what the point is in the long run if we are painted with the same brush as those we are trying to change.
OP - To be told not to vote, however, is offensive in the extreme. My vote shouldn’t count because of the attitudes of those I live around? I should not vote unless I agree with you? That, sir, is what makes me want to put aside my very Southern upbringing to say Fuck You.
Bless your heart, so full of hate.
- ShelliBean, the apparently unacknowledged yellow dog
A lot of people are taking offense and brining up anecdotes, but the data is pretty telling. Look at map #3 - almost the entire nation, including the lilly white states in New England and the Upper Midwest and Rockies, even Utah and Idaho - swung towards the Democrats, except for a small and clearly defined area in the South and Appalachia. Those areas bucked the national trend and swung even harder to the right.
You can’t just say that because I know a bunch of people who voted for Obama you can’t make any generalizations about the region. You can.
Look at this article on polling from the Washington Post a week before the election: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-the-numbers/2008/10/post-abc_tracking_in_the_final.html
*Obama is outperforming any Democrat back to Jimmy Carter among white voters, getting 45 percent to McCain’s 52 percent. But in the South, it is a very different story. Obama fares worse among Southern whites than any Democrat since George McGovern in 1972.
Whites in the East and West tilt narrowly toward Obama (he’s up 8 and 7 points, respectively), and the two run about evenly among those in the Midwest. By contrast, Southern whites break more than 2 to 1 for McCain, 65 percent to 32 percent.
That stark divide is not simply a partisan difference. While white Democrats outside the South give Obama margins of 80 points or more, he leads by a more modest 65 points among white Southern Democrats. The Democrat is up 55 points among liberal whites in the region, far under his performance among those voters elsewhere, where he is up by 79 points.
Southern white independents are also far more likely than politically independent whites in other regions to support McCain: They break 62 to 33 percent in his favor. White independents in the West favor Obama by a similarly wide margin, 63 to 34 percent. White political independents in the East and Midwest divide much more evenly.*
Face it, the South is different. Maybe there is another explanation that excludes race. maybe there isn’t.
Oops… my bad. Thought I might have been whooshed, but snarked anyway. Apologies.
I’ll be sure to tell my half-black, half-jewish, fair-skinned, bisexual wife, married to a black agnostic/borderline atheist that she’s backwards, ignorant, and racist.
But if you don’t know that there isn’t, you shouldn’t assume there isn’t. IOW, “racist redneck assholes” may be where you end up when the analysis is over, but we don’t have to start there.
True you could. The difference is New England does not have a history of strident, and at times, violent opposition to pretty much every progressive thing this country has tried to do; actions that pretty much fit the Southern stereotype to a tee.
No one is saying that all Southern whites are racist: this is about overall statistics, not particular cases.
I’m not starting anywhere or assuming anything. I’m looking at the data.
I haven’t seen any statistics here supporting the notion that the South remains overwhelmingly racist. Perhaps I missed them because when I was in Mississippi yesterday and was kissing my wife, I was lynched and murdered. You, of course, being in Ohio, have a somewhat better perspective.
I’m not sure what you’re asking for here, but the numbers are that, in 2004, Kerry got 41% of the white vote nationally. Obama won 43% of whites nationally. According to CNN, 10% of whites in Alabama voted for Obama. 19% voted for Kerry in 2004. Is that 9% significant? Seems like it might be.
However, 14% of whites voted for Kerry in 2004 while 11% voted Obama in 2008. That does not seem particularly significant to me. So, not sure what to think. It does seem clear though, now that North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida have (perhaps temporarily) defected, the Southern Strategy isn’t going to be a sure thing anymore.
Obviously everything isn’t sweets and candy. I’m well aware of the NYC race riots during the civil war, any amount of forced busing riots, neighborhood racial compacts, and all that. But do you really want to suggest that those things are anything like the pervasive, sustained, institutionalized, opposition to pretty much any progressive (not just racial) issue that has characterized the South for pretty much its whole history?
I have read that the KKK is strongest in those bastions of the Confederacy, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
You’re a fucking idiot. And a bigoted, backward, ignorant one at that.
Also wanted to add…
Your own quote starkly illustrates the difference. In New England you have a member of the school board saying:
Contrast the South where it’s the Governor himself using the National Guard to prevent integration.