Newsflash: The Deep South Still Backward, Ignorant, Racist

[Mr.Excellent]

@MichaelQReilly

Please, show me where I’m wrong. Surely I’ve missed the many progressive policies implemented by the Deep South over its history.

Tennessee Valley Authority.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Jodi

You’re kidding, right? .

You realize you’re in Chinatown, right?

[What_Exit]

@Crocodiles_And_Boulevards

And on a personal note as a minority, I tend to find Northerners much more offensive and ignorant about the politics of race in general. No one I know in the South claims that racism is over or that racism isn’t an overt and practical problem to the everyday minority. The only people I know who say that are Northerners cloaked in their impenetrable blanket of progressive illusions.

I just found your last broad brush statement about as offensive as the Ops. Do you really think we in the North think racism is over? Just because the Op is spouting off easy platitudes that insult a wide region, why answer in kind? Even where racism against blacks has lessoned, the racism against Muslims and Indians is pretty damn casual to my ears. We are afraid to offend blacks in particular which is good as it makes us think about it and for most of us we realize bigotry is bad and stupid. Hopefully this is true everywhere in the country especially in the younger generations. I note that even in the South the young whites were far more willing to vote for Obama or even Kerry than the older whites. Despite the country getting better, it seems to me that people don’t think twice about stereotypes of Muslim and Indians. I know this is true in my area of NJ at least and I hear it from Whites and Blacks. At least the stereotypes for Eastern Asians are positive overall but for Middle-Eastern and Indian it can be brutal.

Jim

[Ogre]

Since I’m not interested in busting chops with an ignorant fuck like the OP, allow me to just say:

Bless your heart.

[Captain_Amazing]

@Voyager

Are you joking? Hiram Revels was indeed a Senator - during Reconstruction, when those evil Yankees forced the south to let black people vote. When Union troops pulled out after the 1876 compromise ending Reconstruction, tell me how many blacks got elected.

Not so many. But at the same time the evil Yankees were making sure Hiram Revels got elected Senator in Mississippi, how many black senators were there from the Northern states?

Look, I’ll agree with you that the South isn’t a racial utopia. I’ll even agree with you that there’s more of a history of racism, or at least overt racism in the South than the rest of the ocuntry. I’ll even agree that (and I know people will disagree with me here) that there’s more racism in the South now than in the rest of the country.

But all that being said, it’s both unfair and wrong to bring up racial tensions of 50 years ago and assume that represents the current state of race relations. The South, and even “the deep South” has changed a lot since then, and you do modern Southerners a disservice.

And just so you know, here’s a list of elected black statewide officials from 2007:

http://www.jointcenter.org/index.php/current_research_and_policy_activities/political_participation/black_elected_officials_roster_introduction_and_overview/table_2f_black_officials_holding_elected_statewide_offices_2007

Of the 47 of them, 20 are below the Mason-Dixon line, 21 if you count Oklahoma.

[Camus]

@Mr.Excellent

Tennessee Valley Authority.

Nitpick - this was a federal creation signed into law by FDR.

[ShelliBean]

@Ogre

Bless your heart.

Oh honey he’d already been blessed. Any more and he’ll start to burn.

[Voyager]

@Captain_Amazing

Not so many. But at the same time the evil Yankees were making sure Hiram Revels got elected Senator in Mississippi, how many black senators were there from the Northern states?

Look, I’ll agree with you that the South isn’t a racial utopia. I’ll even agree with you that there’s more of a history of racism, or at least overt racism in the South than the rest of the ocuntry. I’ll even agree that (and I know people will disagree with me here) that there’s more racism in the South now than in the rest of the country.

But all that being said, it’s both unfair and wrong to bring up racial tensions of 50 years ago and assume that represents the current state of race relations. The South, and even “the deep South” has changed a lot since then, and you do modern Southerners a disservice.

And just so you know, here’s a list of elected black statewide officials from 2007:

http://www.jointcenter.org/index.php/current_research_and_policy_activities/political_participation/black_elected_officials_roster_introduction_and_overview/table_2f_black_officials_holding_elected_statewide_offices_2007

Of the 47 of them, 20 are below the Mason-Dixon line, 21 if you count Oklahoma.

I’m old enough to be well aware of the level of racism in the north 50 years ago. The article did not claim that even in these counties there was institutional racism still, or that there was any effort to stop African Americans from voting. It did say that racism was expressed at the ballot box in these areas, which seems indisputable. The reason I asked about the age breakdown is that I think it is fully possible that those brought up in an atmosphere of segregation are dying off, and the younger generation will be better. Even in the North my kids have a lot fewer issues than my generation does.

[Q.E.D]

@Jodi

Don’t let a little thing like historical fact get in your way.

Don’t let a little thing like geography get in yours. Only the events in the last of your links occurred in New England.

[LouisB]

This kind of shit keeps coming up and I look at every map I can find and I just don’t see anything labeled The Deep South. I’d like to know where it is just I can avoid it; it sounds like a terrible place to me.

I was born in Texas and I’ve lived in California, Oregon, Kansas, Arizona, South Dakota, and Florida. It would be hard for me to pick the single state where I’ve heard the most of the racist drivel associated by the OP with the South. My ex-wife was from Michigan; her father told me he had been invited to join the KKK as well as a militia that was organized to stem the black hordes when they came after the white women; the fact that he declined both opportunities doesn’t mean he isn’t a racist bastard because he is.

Anyway, out of Southern politeness I would like to extend to the OP an invitation to come to the South and preach his prejudices off the back of a truck or in whichever bar catches his eye.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@LouisB

My ex-wife was from Michigan; her father told me he had been invited to join the KKK as well as a militia that was organized to stem the black hordes when they came after the white women; the fact that he declined both opportunities doesn’t mean he isn’t a racist bastard because he is. .

The sad thing is, at the last meeting of the black hordes, we decided that, when the day comes for us to overrun you guys, the black WOMEN will be raping the white MEN. I’m chairing the committee to raise funds for powered, thorny strap-on dildoes.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Zsofia

I have read that the KKK is strongest in those bastions of the Confederacy, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Not so. The largest remaining Klan groups are based in Arkansas and Indiana.

Ohio and Pennsylvania have a lot of racist fringe groups, but most of them aren’t Klan groups (ie., they’re skinhead/Neo-Nazi or black separatist groups).

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

I encourage everyone to have a look at that map. You might be surprised to learn about your state.

[LouisB]

@Skald_the_Rhymer

The sad thing is, at the last meeting of the black hordes, we decided that, when the day comes for us to overrun you guys, the black WOMEN will be raping the white MEN. I’m chairing the committee to raise funds for powered, thorny strap-on dildoes.

Keep me posted on this, will you? I assume we will all be friends, free of racial stuff, when this raping stuff is all over.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@LouisB

Keep me posted on this, will you? I assume we will all be friends, free of racial stuff, when this raping stuff is all over.

Like I’m not planning on betraying my own side when it’s all over. Why else would I have volunteered for the Obama campaign except to lull everybody into complacency.

[Liberal]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

Ohio and Pennsylvania have a lot of racist fringe groups, but most of them aren’t Klan groups (ie., they’re skinhead/Neo-Nazi or black separatist groups).

Better the Sturmabteilung than the Schutzstaffel, I suppose.

[Captain_Lance_Murdoch]

It seems a lot of people here are ignoring the New York Times article and just attacking the yankee in the OP, but you really should look at the map included. It’s shows the whole country by county demonstrating where McCain beat Bush '04 and where Obama beat Kerry. Almost the whole country is blue except for a band through the predominantly white, poorly educated areas stretching from Texas through Kentucky. It’s not the entire south nor is it entire states in the south, although in some cases it is pretty much the whole state (like Arkansas). It’s a swath from Texas through Appalachia. There is nowhere else in the country like this. Not even red, red states like Nebraska and Utah show anything of the sort. Overwhelmingly white states like Iowa have no such trend. So why is it this band exists if not racial bias? I can think of no other explanation.

[Liberal]

What’s the minority population percentage of the swath? Maybe it could be argued that, in many cases, racial bias among widely dispersed minority populations accounted for the overall blueness of other areas.

[What_Exit]

@Captain_Lance_Murdoch

It seems a lot of people here are ignoring the New York Times article and just attacking the yankee in the OP, but you really should look at the map included. It’s shows the whole country by county demonstrating where McCain beat Bush '04 and where Obama beat Kerry. Almost the whole country is blue except for a band through the predominantly white, poorly educated areas stretching from Texas through Kentucky. It’s not the entire south nor is it entire states in the south, although in some cases it is pretty much the whole state (like Arkansas). It’s a swath from Texas through Appalachia. There is nowhere else in the country like this. Not even red, red states like Nebraska and Utah show anything of the sort. Overwhelmingly white states like Iowa have no such trend. So why is it this band exists if not racial bias? I can think of no other explanation.

So you just ignored the hard numbers I posted where it shows McCain only beat Bush in 2004 by a few small percentages in the two states where according to mhendo’s full run down the vote went most heavily for McCain. You can run the numbers for the rest of the states. It is not hard. Were these Social Conservative states confused and thought Kerry was Black too?

I think it has something to do with racism but mostly it is Social Conservative Values that pushed those states to McCain and not some vast proof of bigotry.

[MichaelQReilly]

@Jodi

You’re kidding, right?

The New York Draft Riots – “The largest civil insurrection in American history other than the Civil War itself” which “degraged into a virtual racial pogrom, with uncounted numbers of blacks murdered in the streets.”

The Springfield Race Riot of 1908 – “Anti-black race riots in northern cities were nothing new in the first decade of the twentieth century. White hostility towards blacks was just as strong in the North as the South in this period. Segregation of the races was frequent in the North, and in Springfield and elsewhere blacks were barred from many restaurants, hotels, parks, and other public facilities. Numerous race riots had occurred in the North as early as the first half of the 1800s.”

The Haymarket Riot.

The Pullman Strike.

Pennsylavania mine violence.

Sacco and Vanzetti.

It must be nice to know so little about your own history that you can blithely claim a complete allegiance to progressivism, without violence or stridency. Don’t let a little thing like historical fact get in your way.

You clearly missed the subsequent post where I noted the NYC race riot, among others. Nice try though.