# Why don’t Tom Steyer or George Soros move black Mississippians to Pensacola or Atlanta? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 28, 2018, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187 "2018-11-28T04:06:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2018, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/41 "2018-11-29T00:18:00Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > People pooh-pooh this kind of activism by saying “they could just move to a place that offered those things if it were important to them”, and maybe you agree with that. I don’t. I recognize that people often are governed by inertia. They may not even know what they are missing. Being offered a carrot (there are no sticks involved in my plan!) can make a difference to spur them to make a change. Would you care to offer some other examples of this kind of “activism” that have been pooh-poohed? ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2018, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/42 "2018-11-29T00:51:23Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Can’t we move all the white Mississippians into the 21st century? Ok, ok, that’s even more ridiculous. Thank you. I am glad I’m not the only one who thought that. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2018, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/43 "2018-11-29T04:21:26Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Pffft. The white population of Mississippi (or 90 percent of them, to be precise) has shown who and what they are. As Riemann archly noted, they are not living in the 21st century, and prospects are dim for getting them there. Yet another false statement on your part. Everybody on earth lives in the 21st century, regardless of what state or country they live, so your claim that 90% of white people in Mississippi are not living in the 21st century is false. Recently there was a Senate election in which liberal, nationwide media bombarded the Republican candidate, Cindy Hyde-Smith with false charges of racism. Those charges were [easy to debunk](https://spectator.org/mississippi-rejects-democrat-race-baiting/). Hyde-Smith is not a racist and even Mississippi Democrats generally admire her fir fairness and bipartisanship, and it’s no surprise that she easily defeated the [very corrupt](https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1994-10-05-9410050185-story.html) Mike Espy. If you had any evidence to back up your implied charge that 90% of whites in Mississippi are racist, you would have presented it by now. You have not presented such evidence because no such evidence exists. > [@](#): > > I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you aren’t purposely strawmanning me. But you need to read more carefully. Right in the OP (emphasis added): > > Recruit lots of Mississippians (but still hire locals too) You seem to have missed the point entirely. You have a plan for George Soros or Tom Steyer to bring blacks from Mississippi to Florida by offering them jobs, but it’s illegal to offer jobs to only members of one race. If George Soros starts hiring people in Florida, he would be required by law to offer jobs to people of all races. Whites from Mississippi could apply for those jobs. So could Hispanics and Native Americans and any other group of people from Mississippi. So could people from any other state. There is no legal way to limit the jobs offered to blacks only. Likewise if Soros or Steyer were to offer housing or transportation, they could not legally discriminate by race. Any offer to assist blacks in moving from Mississippi to Florida would have to be offered to whites on an equal basis. (Admittedly [those working for Soros](https://dailycaller.com/2018/10/17/soros-funded-operative-nevada-assault/) [don’t seem](https://thehill.com/homenews/news/12874-fec-fines-america-coming-together-775000) to care [about the law](https://listverse.com/2016/10/21/10-dark-secrets-of-george-soros/) very much.) ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2018, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/44 "2018-11-29T04:46:17Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Still, I’m glad you raised the Dubuque example, as it shows that the feasibility is greater than the naysayers are allowing. I’m sure those “do-gooders” didn’t have the resources of a Steyer or Soros by any means. And BTW, I’m sure that was at least some help to Iowa’s Democratic Party; meanwhile, Missouri has gone so red, I’d also like to see black Missourians move to more fruitful pastures. In St. Louis in particular, it could be as easy as offering them subsidized housing on the other side of the river, in Illinois, where they could still live in the same metro area and not seriously disrupt their lives. I don’t remember how many people were relocated, but it wasn’t enough to swing an election. A few dozen, maybe 100 at the most, in a city of 70,000 or thereabouts. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2018, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/45 "2018-11-29T05:12:54Z")
ITR, Interesting how that American Spectator article fails to mention that Hyde-Smith went to a segregation academy, then sent her own daughter to one; while Espy bravely became the first black student at a formerly all-white public school. > **[Opinion | Cindy Hyde-Smith Is Teaching Us What Segregation Academies Taught Her...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/opinion/cindy-hyde-smith-mike-espy-senate-mississippi.html)** > > The campaign gaffes of Mississippi’s newly elected senator reveal the way that the past is always present. You keep defending white Mississippians, but it is painfully obvious that every step they have made toward less bigoted policies has been grudging, de minimis, inventing loopholes whenever possible, and only undertaken at all because the federal government has forced them. If they got the full-blown “states’ rights” they are always agitating for, they’d have full blown Jim Crow laws back in force before you can finish whistling Dixie. > [@CarnalK](#): > > Would you care to offer some other examples of this kind of “activism” that have been pooh-poohed? I said “this kind of activism”, not “these kinds of activism”, so what is your point exactly? ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2018, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/46 "2018-11-29T05:21:29Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Yet another false statement on your part. Everybody on earth lives in the 21st century, regardless of what state or country they live, so your claim that 90% of white people in Mississippi are not living in the 21st century is false. > > Recently there was a Senate election in which liberal, nationwide media bombarded the Republican candidate, Cindy Hyde-Smith with false charges of racism. Those charges were [easy to debunk](https://spectator.org/mississippi-rejects-democrat-race-baiting/). Hyde-Smith is not a racist and even Mississippi Democrats generally admire her fir fairness and bipartisanship, and it’s no surprise that she easily defeated the [very corrupt](https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1994-10-05-9410050185-story.html) Mike Espy. > > If you had any evidence to back up your implied charge that 90% of whites in Mississippi are racist, you would have presented it by now. You have not presented such evidence because no such evidence exists. > You seem to have missed the point entirely. You have a plan for George Soros or Tom Steyer to bring blacks from Mississippi to Florida by offering them jobs, but it’s illegal to offer jobs to only members of one race. If George Soros starts hiring people in Florida, he would be required by law to offer jobs to people of all races. Whites from Mississippi could apply for those jobs. So could Hispanics and Native Americans and any other group of people from Mississippi. So could people from any other state. There is no legal way to limit the jobs offered to blacks only. > > Likewise if Soros or Steyer were to offer housing or transportation, they could not legally discriminate by race. Any offer to assist blacks in moving from Mississippi to Florida would have to be offered to whites on an equal basis. > > (Admittedly [those working for Soros](https://dailycaller.com/2018/10/17/soros-funded-operative-nevada-assault/) [don’t seem](https://thehill.com/homenews/news/12874-fec-fines-america-coming-together-775000) to care [about the law](https://listverse.com/2016/10/21/10-dark-secrets-of-george-soros/) very much.) I live next door to Mississippi in Arkansas. I assure you racism.is real and happening. Saying that living in the 21st century is a false statement is just silly. We all know what was meant. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2018, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/47 "2018-11-29T05:44:13Z")
Yeah, that was so silly I didn’t even address it. To “debunk” a statement because it uses a kind of hyperbole in a well-understood idiomatic fashion but is not hyper-literally true? C’mon. It reminds me of when I’d say to my kids “just a second” and then they’d say “okay, that was more than a second”. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2018, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/48 "2018-11-29T14:11:30Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I said “this kind of activism”, not “these kinds of activism”, so what is your point exactly? It was a question. I wondered where this activism had been tried or suggested before where it got pooh-poohed. ---
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2018, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/49 "2018-11-29T14:41:37Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Interesting how that American Spectator article fails to mention that Hyde-Smith went to a segregation academy, then sent her own daughter to one; Just to clarify, are you asserting that the nature of Hyde-Smith and her daughter’s schooling proves her racism? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2018, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/50 "2018-11-29T15:31:49Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > Just to clarify, are you asserting that the nature of Hyde-Smith and her daughter’s schooling proves her racism? Yes. ---
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2018, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/51 "2018-11-29T15:52:42Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Yes. Ok, thanks ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2018, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/52 "2018-11-29T16:20:48Z")
> [@pool](#): > > What makes you think black people in these places are some monolithic group that will pick up and change their whole life because of what some white billionaire theoretically wants them to do? > [@Dacien](#): > > There were so many problems to choose from, and this is one of the better ones. I can’t believe I actually agree with the two of you. Both the application and the optics would be disastrous (apart from the fact that Soros isn’t stupid enough to try this). There are so many better ways he could, if so inclined, spend the money to increase Democratic voting power. > [@septimus](#): > > Trump won Florida by 113,000 votes. To overcome this deficit, about 300,000 new residents will be needed, when children and non-voters are factored in. (Black turnout may be up sharply, but still about ⅓ of eligible black voters do not vote. > > Constructing a new city for 300,000 people (to do what?) while decimating the cities they leave behind in Mississippi would be a gargantuan task. If done blatantly to affect elections it would attract huge bad publicity, and the GOP-controlled government of Florida would pull out all the stops, legal or not, to disenfranchise these new voters anyway. > > Meanwhile there are about **Three Million Democratic voters already living in Florida who _did not vote_ in 2016.** (That’s ‘Million with an M.’) Transporting someone a few miles to a polling station for an hour or so is much simpler logistically than arranging a major life-changing move. Plus note that a lot of black Florida voters (former non-violent felons, especially those imprisoned on drug charges, a population that skews heavily black) have just been re-enfranchised. Might be worth waiting to see how that changes the equation before we start moving whole towns’ worth of people across state lines. > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Your attitude towards the white population of Mississippi is bigoted. #notallwhitepeople, true, but recent evidence does suggest that racism still runs strong in the white population of Mississippi. > [@](#): > > I think what **pool** was trying to say is that you appear to view black people as chess pieces that can be moved around at the whim of a white billionaire. Such a view of blacks is problematic. To say the least. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2018, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/53 "2018-11-30T05:17:15Z")
I almost let septimus get by with cherrypicking Trump’s win in Florida by over 113,000 votes. But earlier this month, Rick Scott won by only 10,000; and of course Dubya won (if he did at all) by only a few hundred votes. So his inflated figure of 300,000 is far more than would be needed for those elections. If we accept his ratio (which is frankly a little tilted, but w/e), that’s more like 25,000 new African American residents to shift the balance. That’s about two percent of the black population of Mississippi. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2018, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/54 "2018-12-02T20:10:22Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I think that’s highly debatable (why did Democrats lose FL and GA then?), but in any case it’s not just about that. These long-suffering people deserve to be airlifted out of that bigoted hellhole. Why write off Mississippi to move voters to a higher-population state? Just for the Electoral College? Mississippi is full of black folks, and could be turned back into a majority black state, _if the dominant culture in the USA would let any state be majority black._ ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2018, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/55 "2018-12-02T20:11:49Z")
> [@pool](#): > > What makes you think black people in these places are some monolithic group that will pick up and change their whole life because of what some white billionaire theoretically wants them to do? _Jewish_ billionaire, because that helps. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2018, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/56 "2018-12-02T20:27:43Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > [snip] Missouri has gone so red, I’d also like to see black Missourians move to more fruitful pastures. In St. Louis in particular, it could be as easy as offering them subsidized housing on the other side of the river, in Illinois, where they could still live in the same metro area and not seriously disrupt their lives. As someone who still lives in Missouri, I don’t want to see it turned even whiter. It seems like your proposals would be as follows: 1. To take Mississippi, the state with _the highest proportion of blacks,_ 5 points higher than Louisiana, and bleed some of them to concede it completely to Jim Crow. 2. To completely concede Missouri, a former bellwether state turned heavily GOP through years of work by the right wing, and give the likes of Rusty Limbaugh and Roy Blunt a bigger cushion against the large minority of voters who turn out for Democrats every election. If we could manage the scale, these would be brilliant political power plays, yes—for the Conservative Movement, not for progressives, Democrats, nor moderates. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2018, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/57 "2018-12-02T20:50:02Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Why write off Mississippi to move voters to a higher-population state? Just for the Electoral College? Mississippi is full of black folks, and could be turned back into a majority black state, _if the dominant culture in the USA would let any state be majority black._ If you are going to _move_ them anywhere, move them into a low populated state like North Dakota. Personally, I am a fan of Amazon or Microsoft or one of thems opening a corporate headquarters with hundreds of thousands of jobs to be had to right about [here.](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.8147288,-104.2180671,9.57z) Moving a million people into that spot would flip 3 states pretty solidly, as there are less than 3 million total people living in those three states combined. Maybe even pick up a representative or two. Just paying people to move is stupid, expensive, and is unlikely to get anything like what the OP wants. Moving people into an already highly populated state even less. OTOH, creating economic incentives for people to move is much cheaper and far less patronizing. Advertise jobs with good pay and benefits, as well as paying for relocation expenses. You may end up paying more than en employee is worth, but in the OP’s scenario, you are just straight up supporting an individual for the purpose of them voting in your favor. It seems you could really just go out and buy votes for far, far less. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2018, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/58 "2018-12-02T21:28:55Z")
Cute. And would the state governments of ND, SD, and MT have anything to say about this? Even GOP governments actually have some state control over economic development. For now, I’m just glad that some states are belatedly passing anti-gerrymandering laws by referendum. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2018, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/59 "2018-12-02T22:09:49Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Cute. And would the state governments of ND, SD, and MT have anything to say about this? Even GOP governments actually have some state control over economic development. > > For now, I’m just glad that some states are belatedly passing anti-gerrymandering laws by referendum. Since when do states have laws preventing people from moving into them or businesses opening? Everything like that, as far as zoning and economic development, is done at county or municipal level. You only look to the states if you are wanting them to give you tax breaks for moving in. Seriously, if I want to build a massive industrial park in West Bowman, ND, what could the state do to stop me? The county could make zoning and permitting a pain, but with a population of barely over 3k, would be easy enough to grease the local politicians to ease such concerns. When I opened my business, my only responsibility to the state was to file a DBA (which is actually optional if you don’t mind that someone else could open a business with the same name) and pay appropriate taxes. I never had to _ask_ permission. You ask if the state govts would have something to say about this, I turn the question around to you, what _can_ the state governments say about this? ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2018, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187/60 "2018-12-02T22:17:54Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > How about doing the math? Make it real easy round numbers. Give someone $100k to uproot to a completely new city that’s at least 4 hours drive away, stay for minimum 1 year, register to vote, etc. . A billion dollars will cover 10,000 voters. > > A billion dollars is a helluva lot of money to me. It’s not so much for a big project. George Soros is worth $8B according to Forbes, and a lot of that probably isn’t in ready cash. George, as rich as he is, can’t afford to relocate tens of thousands of voters, or even ten thousand migrants in a caravan. And Tom Steyer is worth less than a quarter of Soros. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-tom-steyer-or-george-soros-move-black-mississippians-to-pensacola-or-atlanta/825187.md?page=4)