# To all the ignorant people out there - stop making the South out to be some unique villain. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 2, 2015, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024 "2015-07-02T04:59:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 23
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/441 "2015-07-07T14:31:33Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > It was Jamestown. My last name is Pace. My ancestors there were Richard Pace the 1st and Isabelle Smythe, It is well documented on Wikipedia and other sites and always has been. All of my genealogy is if you want to see it. I went to the site of their plantation last year just across the James River from the colony itself and met with a historian that wanted to see our family records and show us some sites related to our family. It was extremely cool. > > That is another way the South gets the shaft. Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in the current day U.S. but forget about all of that. The South lost the Civil War so the major publishing houses based in the Northeast (Boston and New York primarily) had to come up with another founder myth. The Plymouth Colony was what they had to work with so they ran with it. That is the reason that schoolkids today learn all about the Mayflower and ‘the first Thanksgiving’ even though they are both bullshit. I am pretty sure that the tradition of Thanksgiving precedes the Civil War and has been associated with New England Christians of some type or another for a long long time. If you want to argue that the FIRST Thanksgiving didn’t occur in New England, that’s fine but it probably wasn’t in Virginia either (unless thanksgiving by Spanish explorers don’t count). I cannot find any pre-war reference to thanksgiving being widely associated with Jamestown prior to the civil war. Can you provide a cite? ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/442 "2015-07-07T14:44:08Z")
> [@GrumpyBunny](#): > > I think that you’re conflating race and class divisions. I’ve lived within the 128 loop for six years, and have been in Lowell for about a year. As far as I can tell, in the ‘burbs no one cares if the new neighbor is black, but they do care what class the neighbor is. If the black dude is a professor at Northeastern University and his wife is the manager of an IT team at Tufts Hospital, that’s fine I lived in Lowell for a while. When a friend of mine bought a new house in Pawtucketville (A middle class-ish section of Lowell, better than the Acre, but not as nice as Belvedere) the new neighbors came over to welcome him on the first day. They were ecstatic that a white guy bought the house. Have to keep the neighborhood white, you know. I’m sure it wasn’t black people this racist was worried about though. Not too many blacks in Lowell. It’s the Asians that they were concerned with. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/443 "2015-07-07T14:50:12Z")
As to the OP, **Shagnasty** certainly has a point. If people just had this attitude, I would be in agreement with them: > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > The South-defenders in this thread still are missing the point, I think. It’s not that the South is a terrible place, and Southerners are evil – the South is a great place (as good as any region of the US), and Southerners are fine people (as good as any people in the US). But the place and people aren’t perfect. And the major problem, in my mind, is that so many Southern white people (not all, but many or most) refuse to accept the truth of history – that Southern culture and tradition up until recent decades (and even beyond, in some ways) was dominated by white supremacism, and treated black people abominably, through slavery and a century beyond. And that there is good reason for many people to see the Confederate battle flag as the symbol of this abominable treatment. Not accepting this doesn’t make one evil, but it’s a flaw, and a correctable flaw. Well-meaning people should recognize this flaw and try to correct it. > > That’s it. The South isn’t bad, and Southerners aren’t bad. But there’s still a problem here. But it goes a LOT further than that. People, especially liberals from the North, love hating and belittling the South in ways that go way beyond correcting one flaw. It’s recreational outrage on a massive scale, and it’s not helping. ---
**Author:** ![Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Living_Well_Is_Best_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/444 "2015-07-07T15:00:57Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Wait…did you just claim to get your information on various parts of the country from _The Jeffersons_? :smack: He must have watched it with his Mammie. Everyone knows NYC hasn’t been dangerous in years. It’s like a big Disney store now. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/445 "2015-07-07T15:21:53Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Wait…did you just claim to get your information on various parts of the country from _The Jeffersons_? :smack: Talk about a gigantical, stupendous, fantastic whoosh! **Shag’s** point is that many of the stereotypes and assumptions about the modern South are equally inaccurate as any stereotypes of New York City that Southerners would get from watching “The Jeffersons”, set in 1970s-1980s NYC. That’s not to say that there aren’t some racists and knuckleheads, but rather, that they’re the minority, and that the majority of Southerners aren’t any more or less racist or ignorant than anywhere else, and that in some ways, Southerners can be less racist than people elsewhere. To use anecdote as an example, my paternal grandparents grew up in Galveston during segregated days, and remained separate from the black community. However, I NEVER heard either of them say a disrespectful word about or to a black person- both grandparents were always courteous and polite. They just didn’t mingle with “colored” people socially. However, when my grandmother’s housekeeper passed away about 10 years ago, my grandmother was literally the only white woman at the AME church for her funeral. My other grandparents grew up in a literally all-white coal mining town in southern Illinois, and were polite, loving, respectful, and gentle in all ways but one, where they were surprisingly and dismayingly hateful toward black people, and slung the n-word around like it was nothing, even up into the early 1990s. So the blanket statement that Southerners are automatically racist or hateful just isn’t true; in the last generation in my family, the hateful ones were the Northerners. In the next couple of generations (my parents and mine), nobody cares in the least bit about the color of anyone’s skin. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/446 "2015-07-07T15:22:52Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > As to the OP, **Shagnasty** certainly has a point. > > If people just had this attitude, I would be in agreement with them: > > But it goes a LOT further than that. People, especially liberals from the North, love hating and belittling the South in ways that go way beyond correcting one flaw. > > It’s recreational outrage on a massive scale, and it’s not helping. Well, unless you’re more specific, there’s clearly no way anyone can respond to what you’re saying, since we don’t actually know what you’re talking about. I will make one possibly relevant comment, which is that there are multiple different issues. For instance, lots of southern states are very conservative, and the SDMB is very liberal, so it’s not surprising that the south as a whole might be mentioned as opposing gay marriage. Which is obviously using a bit of a broad brush, because not every single person in the south is against gay marriage. But it’s also obviously not just random groundless prejudice. But I don’t think that has much to do with racism and confederate flags. There are also a bunch of general quality-of-life statistics in which bunches of southern states always rank near the bottom, which again doesn’t have much to do with racism or confederate flags, but which certainly gives one pause when people go on and on about how fantastic the south is. For instance, [teen pregnancy](http://www.livescience.com/45359-teen-pregnancy-rates-decline-in-every-state.html). The state with the highest rate is actually New Mexico. But the next four are all former members of the confederacy. The Five states with the lowest teen pregnancy rates are all in New England. ---
**Author:** ![GrandWino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grandwino/32/67_2.png) [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/447 "2015-07-07T15:27:03Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > The whole point to this thread was to ask people to stop painting **the most populous (and growing) region in the U.S.** with such a broad brush. Bolding mine. I’ve seen Idiocracy so I know how this is going to turn out. Maybe we can start a Kickstarter to send some condoms down there or something. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/448 "2015-07-07T15:27:35Z")
> [@bump](#): > > So the blanket statement that Southerners are automatically racist or hateful just isn’t true Dude, you just blew my mind. I mean, I was SO certain that literally every single one of the hundreds of millions of Southerners were automatically racist and hateful. I literally honestly believed that. Every one. Every last one. But you opened my eyes to the truth, man! ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/449 "2015-07-07T15:30:57Z")
> [@bump](#): > > To use anecdote as an example, my paternal grandparents grew up in Galveston during segregated days, and remained separate from the black community. However, I NEVER heard either of them say a disrespectful word about or to a black person- both grandparents were always courteous and polite. They just didn’t mingle with “colored” people socially. However, when my grandmother’s housekeeper passed away about 10 years ago, my grandmother was literally the only white woman at the AME church for her funeral. My other grandparents grew up in a literally all-white coal mining town in southern Illinois, and were polite, loving, respectful, and gentle in all ways but one, where they were surprisingly and dismayingly hateful toward black people, and slung the n-word around like it was nothing, even up into the early 1990s. Something I once heard/read. Or think I heard/read. Or paraphased. Or just plain made up. In the South racism is more institutional than personal. Elsewhere racism is more personal than institutional. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/450 "2015-07-07T16:22:26Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > Request acknowledged - request denied. The whole point to this thread was to ask people to stop painting the most populous (and growing) region in the U.S. with such a broad brush. You are as guilty of stereotyping as anyone could possibly be. The modern day South represents all groups including an exceptional number of minorities. Can’t you see the problem with that? The great thing about my request is that it really doesn’t technically target all Southerners, as much as you want to act like a victim for the South. I’m not caught up on the statistics, but I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a whole lot of black people in the South clamoring for States Rights. Its silly to read that as me demeaning the entire South, I’m demeaning those who think that “States Rights” means anything except bigotry. Same thing with heritage. How many black people are celebrating their ancestors being slaves and that it was a better time? None of my requests are that difficult. You can do it, and you can do it yourself without resorting to the “poor South” shtick. Just don’t use “States Rights” as an argument when you simply want your state to be able to do something different from the Federal government. Honor your ancestors but repudiate what they did to keep slavery alive and oppress minorities. A sample conversation may start like this: “I love my great grandfather but he was a fucking racist and a terrible human being” Correct the misleading claim that Republican are the ones who are on the minorities’ side whenever you hear someone mention it. You know that’s not true anymore. Tell people about the Dixiecrats and the Southern Strategy. Admit that conservative social engineering has been an utter failure and point to states like Kansas as proof. I’m not pointing to all Southerners. I’m pointing and laughing at the ones who still refuse to do the above. You want to play the martyr and defend them all? Then you’re the one stereotyping. > [@Shagnasty](#): > > That is the modern day South. Most people in this thread have focused on issues that happened before I was even born (I am I not even that young anymore). If it makes you feel better about yourself, isolate yourself in your own mental capsule but realize at some level that it does not reflect current reality and you are no better than any other ignorant prejudiced person because you have no idea what you are talking about. See, right here is where you try to create this strawman about demonizing the whole South. You keep doing it, and so are some of the other apologists. What I’ve listed as things everyone should do and believe are not blanket attacks, they are simply things that every good and decent person should already be doing. If you’re not going to do it, then that’s the person I’m attacking, those fucking racists. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/451 "2015-07-07T16:59:15Z")
The reasons why I think the south is backwards have nothing to do with one individual, but there are plenty of reasons. This is not an exhaustive list and some items are related to others: [Poverty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_poverty_rate) [Median and per capita income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income) [Life expectancy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_life_expectancy) [Education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_educational_attainment) Mississippi in particular is objectively awful by many metrics. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/452 "2015-07-07T20:52:27Z")
> [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > The reasons why I think the south is backwards have nothing to do with one individual, but there are plenty of reasons. > > This is not an exhaustive list and some items are related to others: > > [Poverty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_poverty_rate) > [Median and per capita income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income) > [Life expectancy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_life_expectancy) > [Education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_educational_attainment) > > Mississippi in particular is objectively awful by many metrics. As far as poverty is concerned, this site has a really interesting table. [http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/](http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/) ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/453 "2015-07-07T21:08:09Z")
That table is kind of neat, and it underlines my point. If you sort by ‘total’, you’ll see that 19 states are worse the national average. Of these 19, 10 are confederate states. Of the 31 states above the line, only Virginia fought on the side of the confederacy. ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/454 "2015-07-07T21:50:01Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > That is the modern day South. Most people in this thread have focused on issues that happened before I was even born (I am I not even that young anymore). If it makes you feel better about yourself, isolate yourself in your own mental capsule but realize at some level that it does not reflect current reality and you are no better than any other ignorant prejudiced person because you have no idea what you are talking about. I think one thing you’re missing is that it’s totally possible to acknowledge that the modern day South as a whole isn’t racist, but seems somewhat more _tolerant_ of racism than other areas. Look at a map of where the active KKK chapters are some time. You’re not going to convince me that the South is just like everywhere else until there’s enough social pressure to make the racist minority want to keep their mouths shut about it, or until enough people say “dang, Bubba, you and I both know we’re not racist, but maybe flying this rebel flag and saying stuff like ‘the South will rise again’ **does** make it seem like we yearn to bring back the days of slavery…we should work on our public image because it’s setting forth a damn poor impression and also happens to embolden actual racists by making them think we’re on their side. Dag nabit!” ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2015, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/455 "2015-07-08T00:20:51Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I don’t think people discriminate against southerners based on heritage any more than they discriminate against South African whites based on heritage. No, I discriminate against some South African whites because of that damned Afrikaans accent. I hear it and am reminded of PW Botha and I get all punchy inside. I can’t even fantasize about Charlize Theron because she starts talking in it! :mad: ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2015, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024/456 "2015-07-08T13:56:41Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > Something I once heard/read. Or think I heard/read. Or paraphased. Or just plain made up. > > In the South racism is more institutional than personal. Elsewhere racism is more personal than institutional. I think you’re right about that. One of my more shocking moments of self-revelation was actually on vacation in the UK (Aberdeen Scotland to be particular), and came back to my room to find a white, red haired woman on her knees scrubbing the toilets. My first instinct was to tell her that she shouldn’t be doing that. Not because I actually thought about it and decided that scrubbing toilets was above white people (lord knows I’ve scrubbed enough, professionally and otherwise), but because in a sort of visceral sense, it didn’t seem “right” and not what white women did. I was startled, stunned and more or less struck dumb by my own reaction and what it implied. That’s the sort of institutional racism that we have down here in the South, and when you combine that with fairly rampant classism\* that’s also disturbingly correlated with the color of one’s non-whiteness, and you get a lot of behaviors that aren’t at all consciously or venomously racist, but that can be perceived that way if you don’t know what’s actually going on. - By rampant classism, I mean that there are a lot of things people look down on, or don’t want their kids involved with, etc… not because the people doing them are black or hispanic, but because they’re what poor people do. But the fact of the matter is that “poor people” and “non-white” overlap significantly in most of the country (go look at the table I posted the link to upthread), so it’s awfully hard to tease out what’s actually racist, and what’s actually classist. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-all-the-ignorant-people-out-there-stop-making-the-south-out-to-be-some-unique-villain/724024.md?page=22)