I have definitely heard of “Greenwich Pride” through friends and family members that live there. They have minorities but they are usually honored through their official titles such as “The Cook” or “The Gardener”. Race relations are sometimes discussed in a philosophical way as long as the roses still get trimmed and the rice pilaf comes out just right.
I think there is very good evidence that slavery condemned the bulk of southerners (black and white) to ignorance and poverty. First: the slaveowners did NOT want people to be educated-that is why for years (until well after WWII) the South had the worst public schools in the nation.
Second, the economic effect of slavery was to depress wages-so a poor white farmer could not compete with the plantations.
Third: the lack of an industrial base meant that jobs were restricted to agriculture and servants. There was only a small merchant class. This also contributed to the backwqardness of the south.
Twain was right-the only people who did well in the south were the rich plantation owners.
There is no doubt that CT and other North East states have their own issues with minorities, I never said they had things figured out. I will point out though, that I did spend 3 years teaching in a magnet school in Hartford that the city, state, and local companies poured an awful lot of money into in an effort to overcome some of the problems you highlighted.
I personally am of the school of thought, articulated quite well up thread, that the issues that the South continues to have cross race lines and are largely an outgrowth of the regional culture established there in Colonial times.
Um…basically whenever I stay in ANY hotel in any part of the country. I’ve never seen a hotel where you pay first.
Connecticut has the highest income in the nation, followed closely by New Jersey because of it’s proximity to Manhattan. It’s “culture” if it can be said to have one at all is mostly one of being an affluent suburb state of NYC. (which is better IMHO than New Jersey which has appeared to have embraced the Tony Soprano Italian mafioso guido stereotype as it’s culture).
Last time I checked, pre-Katrina New Orleans was also largely regarded as a shithole and I’m pretty sure that Atlanta has similar racial and economic segregation by neighborhood as just about any other American city.
I wasn’t aware that I was supposed to give a full and complete accounting of the causes of the war. That would take about five volumes and I assumed anyone who had an interest would go to the library.
And I wonder why an educated person does not respect a difference of opinion, but maybe that’s just me.
Sorry, didn’t see this until after I posted.
Yes, but (I’m assuming) you’re providing a credit card when you check in? jtgain is (I’m assuming) describing a place that lets you pay cash the morning you leave. I have stayed at such places in WV and elsewhere.
This gets at one of the big points for me. If we’re talking about my Southern identity, we’re not talking about my racial identity. I’m thrilled to be part of the same culture that produced MLK and Rosa Parks and the lion’s share of our country’s civil rights pioneers. I love that the Greensboro sit-ins changed our country. Jazz does us Southerners proud.
A lot of white northerners, when sneering at the South, seem to forget that there are black people in the South who are agents, who act in their own interests and don’t so much influence as they embody what it means to be Southern, every bit as much as white Southerners do.
To be fair, a lot of white Southerners forget that too. I remember seeing Charleston’s history museum and its account of the terror with which Charlestonians viewed the coming Union army, and I was all like, “Yeah, I just BET the slaves were sad to see the yankees coming!” You hear some of the stories of slaves who sabotaged the Confederates at every turn, it’ll do you proud to be a Southerner.
Daniel
During most of Colonial times, much of the South remained unsettled by anyone other than American Indians.
Although you provide no cites for objective measurement, your comments are in line with what I believe to be generally true about the South. The statistics are a reflection of the continuing effects of the grinding poverty that was the result of losing the Civil War and the resultant punitive Reconstruction. No school child in the South should be taught any pride in the Civil War and no school child in elsewhere should be fooled by the label “Reconstruction” no matter how much money was spent. The result in terms of poverty still speaks for itself.
I agree that it is better than it was sixty years ago. I am sixty-four (and a half). When I was growing up, lots of the people that we passed on the way to my grandmother’s house lived in barnwood shacks with dirt yards. Many of the girls that I went to school with wore dresses that were made out of sacks that flour came in. (I guess they were fifty pound sacks.) The irony is that that fabric is considered vintage now and is expensive on the retail market. I’m sure there are still plenty of people who still live in conditions like this – just not as many as there used to be.
I’ve not read all of the posts here, but I see that enough of the usual cast of characters have shown up to describe the subjective measures that still make it worthwhile to live here. I can tell you that since the last time I tried to describe “it” many months ago – or a year ago – I still have not seen a single Confederate battle flag displayed or heard a car horn that plays Dixie. And I live in Nashville. So if you are wanting to see a bunch of yahoos, look elsewhere or maybe go downtown where the countrified tourists from “wherever” hang out. Just know that they are not us.
If you want to live in a multi-cultural society, the South is one of the best places. There are pockets of multi-culturalism in the North and Midwest and certainly the West and West Coast are multicultural. But I wonder how many of you could match my neighborhood mix: Kurdish community, Hispanic community, Cambodian community, Indians, whites, Koreans, blacks, – and I know that there are three other countries represented because the grocery store has signs up in nine languages. I have an Iranian friend, but she doesn’t live on this side of town. I think there are probably Iranians in my neighborhood. We also have a Russian grocery store.
Is there a higher concentration of blacks in any other area of the country? I know that many blacks moved north for a while, but I believe that I’ve read that blacks are returning to the South. If that’s true, I wonder what the reason is.
LHOD, I posted my comments without seeing yours. I see that we are thinking along similar lines. Bully for us!
Same as whites: Mr. Carrier’s invention.
The pidgeon? 
I keeeeeeeed!
BTW, I mentioned in another thread recently that the man who taught me to sing “We Shall Overcome” in 1961 was standing by MLK, Jr. side when he was struck down. I don’t think I had ever heard of Dr. King back then. Andrew Young was just in his twenties. None of us white kids had heard the song before. Ten years later, there were few souls in the world that didn’t know it.
(So that others don’t have to Google a common word trying to figure out which of the links tom is talking about: Willis Carrier invented the air conditioner)
Are you sure that’s what accounts for the migration of African Americans back to the South? I would assume that the end of Jim Crow and greatly expanded economic opportunities for blacks in the South would have something to do with it, especially in places like Atlanta.
Daniel
True, the culture itself was imported to Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia during colonial times from whence it spread to the rest of the deep south in the late 1700 and early 1800’s.
The only reason I didn’t cite is because I thought it was pretty common knowledge.
I believe you mean that nice Southern boy Dr. Gorrie’s invention. 
Well, the introduction of air conditioning and the general movement of jobs as industries take their factories out of the (somewhat) union-friendly North to the (somewhat) union-hostile South (before they ship the factories out of the country, completely).
My comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I don’t know anyone who moved South “for the culture” although some who have moved South have enjoyed and embraced the culture once they arrived. I would say that (anecdotally) 98% of the people I know who have expressed a desire to move South (as opposed to those who were simply transferred South by their companies or who followed employment opportunities) have listed climate as their first, second, and third reasons for considering a move. Similarly, a number of those who returned complained that summers were intolerable.
What country do you live in?
Which is ironic considering the headway our politicians and businessmen/women have made.
Far too many aggressive, clever Northerners have fallen prey to that sleepy-eyed charm 
Fact: The South is just plain different from the rest of the country. And even after all these years seeing what the city-folk claim is the “better” side of the nation, I can’t say I miss my home any less.
And hell, I’m Korean!
You can take the boy out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the boy – as the cliché goes!
When I grew up there, there was never a sense that Texas was part of the Southwest. Now, there may have been such a sense out around, say, El Paso, but up on the South Plains it was just a wasteland. There were quite a few Hispanics, but no one there equated that with the Southwest. I did see during a visit there, in I think it was 1993, tourist-souvenir stuff – mugs, T-shirts etc – proclaiming Texas to be in the Southwest and even sporting the howling coyote image seen around Albuquerque. That was completely new to me, I never saw anything like that at all, period, while growing up and in my 20s. And I did finally end up living in the Southwest, in Albuquerque, as a young adult, and there was never a sense there that Texas was in the Southwest with them. Even eastern New Mexico felt a little alien.
And even in the other parts of Texas that I saw, Confederate flags seemed to be rare.
I think Texas considers itself to be Texas - it doesn’t concede it’s just a part of some larger region.