That site says California’s not a republic. It, just like all the other states in the USA, is a republic, regardless of what each state calls itself.
I did enjoy the humor on that site, though.
And that “historical society” we’re talking about includes that society in the 1950s and 1960s. That’s not some “far away and long ago” issue. There are plenty of people still alive today who suffered due to that society and plenty of people still alive today who caused that suffering.
Thank you Scylla. As a fellow Tulane alumni, I am happy you appreciate the South (and you always write so very articulately for someone who went to school in Louisiana :)). You sum up the divide in opinions quite well. I live in the Boston area now and appreciate parts of it like the brutally efficient work ethic and greater general wealth but friendly and charming it is not.
Lynchings used as a tool of racial terror–deliberate efforts to punish black individuals for transgressions against the racial caste system–are pretty much unique to the South. Yes, there were a handful of extra-judicial killings in other states, but even that handful (compared to the four thousand that occurred in the South) tended not follow the pattern of some claimed racial transgression followed by mob violence followed by no criminal justice.
Yep. The idea that this is all about extrapolating from the acts of Roof is nonsense. It’s about the continued insistence of many (not all, but many) Southern Whites to wave that stupid flag in the faces of black people. Take that shit down!! It’s not rocket science why so many people are upset about it. Leave it to the yahoos and the rednecks, but if you insist on flying it at the state capital, don’t be surprised when we think YOU ARE ALL YAHOOS AND REDNECKS.
Do you make that claim for all Southern states or just the ones that fly a version of the battle flag on state grounds. My home state of Louisiana doesn’t do that so I guess we are in the clear then. Correct? That was easy.
Incidentally, I noticed a Jeep Wrangler parked next to me at work today with a confederate license plate in MASSACHUSETTS (they aren’t that uncommon in New England at all). It belongs to a very butch and heavily tattooed Portuguese woman that I work with sometimes. I didn’t ask her about it but I am fairly certain that she just put it on her ride as a symbol of general rebellion because that is the way she rolls. Do you think she might be a closeted Southern racist?
I agree. Slavery is not an exclusively southern thing. But celebrating a past in which slavery was such a huge part is pretty much an exclusively southern thing.
You southerners that live in the north can look around and you have to concede that the civil war is no big deal in the north. We don’t constantly talk about it. We’d be perfectly willing to let it go if you were.
But southerners want to fly civil war flags, celebrate civil war holidays, march in civil war parades, and put up statues to civil war soldiers - and then complain when somebody else wants to discuss the issues of the actual civil war.
So to answer your question: No, we don’t “need to walk around acknowledging all the atrocities and injustices that occurred in the North”. And we don’t celebrate them either.
He didn’t say that. No one has said that. He’s speaking to those (the OP included), who insist that life for black folks was hunky dory prior to the great Northern Aggression. The OP knows this for a fact, because he had his own Black Mammy, and she was perfectly happy with her lot in life. Just ask Shaggy.
It’s a Southern thing wave the fucking Confederate flag around and spout gibberish like, “We Will Rise Again.” Can you point to a Northern counterpart to this nostalgia for the “good ol’ days?”
You’re a white man, you idiot. Of course all of this is true for you. Jesus.
What the fuck this has to do with anything is a mystery to me.
And for fuck’s sake, the word is Northerner.
Southern Hospitality is doing rather poorly on Yelp. It seems there was an incident with some African guests. Y’all come back now, y’hear?
Oh dear god do not give Chris Christie anymore dumb ideas . . .
:eek:
It’s bad enough that dumbshit is running for president and making us all of us folks here look like crude buffoons.
I never said that in the least. As a matter of fact, I said the opposite many times. The repeated use of the word Mammy is a very offensive slur to someone that helped raise me from a baby and I loved very much. Her name was Lola and she was like a surrogate mother to me from a toddler all the way through high school. I will have to kindly ask one time only that you do not ever and I mean NEVER again use slurs against my effective family ever again in your lifetime. I loved her with all my heart as and I resent the vapid Gone With the Wind references to something you know nothing about.
I know it is confusing going through life not understanding much of anything and you have my sympathy for it. It isn’t your fault even if the point is obvious to others.
Yet.
Dyslexia. I literally do not see that until it’s pointed out. Sorry.
In the South.
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
Spatteplunk, Nemo… Several others, and I apologize for not naming you… Have consistently come up with the celebrating of racist icons that seems to occur in the South, but not the North.
And it is true, the North does not go around celebrating, it’s pre 1804 racism. I guess that I could argue that George Washington had slaves, and we all seem to get past that and think he was a good guy, so why the problem with Southern culture? Southern culture basically got a hard stop with slavery, and if we say “southern culture,”. Slavery is the biggest association. George has other associations that come before slavery. You can like George Washington without anybody thinking you are a racist.
The other thing is that the confederate flag, the south, and southern culture is a magnetic icon for current racists and for those that oppose them.
This is a problem for somebody who is a southerner, who never owned slaves, is not racist, but who is justifiably proud of the South for its culture, cuisine, hospitality, gentility, etc.
To me, I think that beiing a conscientious southerner means he’s just got to give up the Confederate flag due to its baggage, recognize that racists and neonnazis and assholes in general are attracted to these icons and history and are making them far more relevant than they should be. They also need to be realize that acerbic Noetherners are always going to be intrusive stuck up pricks (I say this as a Northerner.)
Another thing that Northerner’s don’t seem to get about the South ( Frankly, I don’t get it either,). Is that the South seems to have a thing for reformed villains, like they are better than somebody who was never an asshole in the first place, George Wallace being the prime example of this, being extremely popular with the black vote during his latter terms. Go figure.
Dude, the only reason your surrogate mother ever even came up was in a thread talking about servants, where, when someone mentioned that you had a Mammy, you said:
I guess it’s progress that you now realize that the Mammy archetype is not something to say about someone you love. But, still, the fact that your family hired someone who looked and acted just like the Mammy archetype is pretty fucked up.
You don’t have to not love her to admit that racism might have been a factor in her hiring. I have no problem admitting that my grandfather, as much as I loved him, was racist towards Latinos (due to having bad experiences as a child.) Or that my parents who I love more than anything still are dealing with homophobia.
I don’t understand all the historical revisionism in this thread. The Dukes of Hazzard was not a great program. It was purest shit, whatever the flag.
You better not start on the Blackhawks because that is the greatest, most beautiful, sports logo of all! :mad:
You called her your Mammy.
Nobody; but some say it wasn’t so bad, more say Jim Crow and segregation weren’t so bad, and even more say the South has totally gotten past all of this and black people should stop whining about racism (and that the real racism is against white people).
Recent (as in mid to late 20th century) continuing violations of the rights of black people, attempts at voter suppression, and dismissal of legitimate grievances and complaints by black people is a Southern thing as of late, at least with many Southern whites.
I’m a Southerner, and I agree with much of this. And yet many/most Southern white people still haven’t come to terms with how recently the South was an overwhelmingly and actively terrible place for black people due to things that were considered “Southern traditions and culture”, and they still honor a pseudo-state that existed primarily to propagate white supremacy and enrich themselves on the backs and suffering of black people.
“Big fucking whoop”… that most Northern states willingly and peacefully gave up a terrible dehumanizing institution, sparing millions of people 50 years of bondage, while many Southern states only gave it up by force and still claim to vestiges of white supremacy and black oppression for a century or more afterwards. Yeah, that’s a big fucking whoop indeed!