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I just receive a pretty good job offer $90K annually but I need to be relocated to Madison,MS. Actually I live in north of Chicago I know the temperature in Madison is hot most of the time but my concern is about my race, I'm latino and I know down there the population is almost 100% white, not sure If I can find some resistance .Please tell me if there races issues still in MS.
Latino is not a race. But anyway, there is considerable racial diversity is Madison.
Just be aware that it is THE demographic high-ground for the whole central part of the state. It's a classy place. There are certain norms for dress and deportment in Madison, which are higher than elsewhere.
If you arrive with a Brooks Brothers or Luciano Barbera wardrobe (that includes casual garb - the 'tweedier' the better...), and a factory spec car (tricked-out/'mods', etc. will get you shunned socially, and maybe even fired from your job), then you will be able to blend-in in Madison. If you are pulling down 90k, then presumably you don't have tattoos or piercings, which obviously would reduce your social opportunities by 99.9%, and make your chances of advancement at work an absolute zero.
If you currently drive a Chrysler product, sell it before you move to Madison. There, the consensus is that Chrysler = Drug Dealer. Jeep is OK, though, as long as it's factory spec. A "performance muffler" will, at best, get you shunned and fired from your job. At worst, it will get you "disappeared". Rumors abound. Top-level/powerful people live in Madison, who can arrange anything they want. In-general, sporty vehicles are considered sleazy. A Camaro would be the social kiss of death.
As far as dating white girls goes, there are two options. To date morbidly obese trailer-trash types, you basically just have to be breathing. Girls like that don't generally live in Madison. Other communities, however, are full of them.
Then, there are the smart, fit, high-achieving, high-IQ girls from good families. My sons are brown, and had no problems dating girls like that. But we were in the orbits of the (Reform) Synagogue and the state's most elite Baptist congregation. We drove Volvos, dressed well (the boys were outfitted by Great Scott, which would be an even better sartorial bet for you, than Brooks Brothers), adhered to Upper Middle Class norms, and had heavily-landscaped/professionally-decorated homes which had been published. Those were requisites. The selling points, though, beyond the requisites, were that the boys have big trust funds, big units, and big muscles (...and were, even in high school, clearly on paths leading to 'Surgeon' and 'CEO'). As long as you are willing and able to exceed the norms (in multiple categories), then you will have no trouble dating across racial lines. If you've seen the movie 'The Help', then it is interesting to note that in reality, the Jackson "High Society" in the 60s was nearly 100% 'Mediterranean White' of one sort or another (They didn't look anything like the people in the movie). Those people all became Protestants and married Whites. All that really matters, around Jackson, is that you have a lot of money, and can conform to social expectations.
Oh, and if you're worried about the lynch mobs and KKK rallies... well... It's unlikely you'll have problems with that sort of thing.
Madison is a nice area and I doubt it would be different from nicer suburban areas around the country. I've never heard of problems towards Latinos, ever.
Thanks for your reply. It doesn't scary me the fact that we need to fit to their etiquette rules but I'm catholic and it the way You presented the facts it sounds that part of the rules to advance in my career I should belong to their religious groups . I read about the 'bible belt" and for me it looks like that society stuck in the 80's.
Mods, is there a way that we can combine the two threads on the same topic that the OP posted? It just makes it easier for the OP to receive advice if it s in one thread.
Thanks for your reply. It doesn't scary me the fact that we need to fit to their etiquette rules but I'm catholic and it the way You presented the facts it sounds that part of the rules to advance in my career I should belong to their religious groups . I read about the 'bible belt" and for me it looks like that society stuck in the 80's.
I would imagine that your current religious affiliation would be an ADVANTAGE in advancement at work. The switch in identities that I described among Jackson's 'elite' happened prior to the 1960s. Since then, things have changed quite a lot.
As it is, the two dominant religions in Madison are Baptist and Catholic. Their institutions seem locked in a power struggle. But frequently, they combine forces, to muscle-out others - as happened when they successfully blocked Methodist Hospital's expansion into Madison.
I had assumed you were Catholic. That's why I was emphasizing the need for you to appear as tweedy/preppy/traditional as possible, to fit-in among the area's elite Catholics. There are plenty of Catholic congregations in the area. I'm not sure which one attracts the best people. If they're anything like the Episcopalians, though, the 'grand' types (helmet-haired, jewel-encrusted matrons of the Pat Kluge/Amalia de Fortabat variety, and the cabal of powerful businessmen) belong to the Cathedral in Downtown Jackson, while the more 'cool', erudite, wealthy independent thinkers belong to some small, quirky congregation in Madison County (for Episcopalians, that would be Chapel of the Cross).
Elite Catholics in the area are predominantly Lebanese and Argentinian. The blonds are predominantly German, with some Irish (the Maloneys) and even a few aristocratic French families mixed-in. There are lots of Sicilians - frequently with Frenchy-sounding last names (Bourbons, have, at times, owned Sicily. And the New Orleans area has the largest Sicilian population outside Sicily - including the family of my 'Real Daddy'). Anyway, to have social access to the better Catholics, you are going to have to look as 'trad' as possible.
For casual wear/outdoor gear, I'd shop here: Circle7Online.com | Fine Outdoor Apparel - MENS APPAREL There is absolutely nothing in that store that is not socially acceptable. Our sons buy a lot of footwear & gear there, whenever they fly in (Madison's airport gets a pretty steady stream of tiny jets).
Otherwise, these people epitomize the local sartorial aesthetic: Great Scott Notice that on the intro page, two of the men are wearing brown shoes with dark suits. These guys are the ones to go to, if you DON'T want people to read you as some Greaser hoodlum wearing shiny black shoes in the daytime. The best people in town shop there. There are plenty of other stores in the metro which, despite carrying some good labels (and I'm thinking, in particular, of one in Highland Village), will have you looking like an organ grinder's monkey: they cannot be trusted.
And speaking of GREASERS, be aware that visible hair product is enormously frowned-upon in the Deep South. And combing/greasing your hair backward is considered absolutely revolting - nauseating. In the South, Bama Bangs never go out of style, which is a very good thing, IMHO. Plenty of men there do fall into fashion traps with flipped-up hair, spiked hair, fauxhawks, etc. But they marginalize themselves by doing so, and their over-controlled hair pretty-much announces to the world that they're sickos from authoritarian backgrounds.
As far as your home goes, it is good to know that 'Motion Furniture' is unacceptable for Upper Middle Class people. No recliners. No sectionals with built-in recliners... Big Screen TVs are considered shameful, unless hidden in some way. And, in-general, the higher a family's social position, the smaller their televisions. As you move down the social pecking order, the upholstery gets bigger and puffier. So, NO PUFFYCHAIRS!!!
Displays of family photos are generally considered tacky - particularly the ones in color, printed on the paper that supposedly makes them look like oil paintings. I've overheard things like, "Oh, those people are sooooo Baptist! They have all these big, tacky 'professionally-did' family portraits. Some, with everybody dressed in white... Some with everybody dressed in black... I think they moved up here from Hushpuckena or Shubuta or somewhere." Here's a family of Redneck social climbers from around Monroe, Louisiana, in one of the typical (and apparently obligatory, these days) family-portraits-in-matching-clothes-on-the-beach.http://aattp.org/wp-content/uploads/...b31dcb351f.jpg(part of the Duck Dynasty clan, before they latched onto the Demented White Trash schtick that's made them so much money). Pictures like that are fine for albums. But actually putting stuff like that on the wall will get you labeled as a nobody going nowhere.
I think it's important to have good design input from the beginning. You'd qualify for a three hundred thousand Dollar house. But maybe you should buy in the $200,000.00 range, initially, and start collecting good furnishings. The other option is to buy the bigger $300,000.00 house and simply keep it absolutely empty, except for a mattress set in the master bedroom, and a couple of barstools in the inevitable big, gaudy Redneck show-off kitchen(You can not buy a house in Madison that does not have a big, gaudy, Redneck theme park of a kitchen. In fact, some subdivisions mandate granite counter tops.).
Plenty of young surgeons in the big money specialties go for the 'absolutely empty' look. It's perfectly acceptable. It shows people that you are too important and busy to waste time on furnishings. It's a very manly approach, actually. The reason you buy the big house is that it gets you better neighbors, and helps you amass Net Worth. People tend not to entertain, anyway, and so, furniture is really a waste for a single guy (Women are going to sleep with you, either because you make a lot of money, or because you are overwhelmingly attractive, physically. They don't care about whether you have furnishings.) But the 'empty look' only works when you really keep the place empty - really empty, except for the clothes in the Master Closets. Just buy a really expensive duvet & sheet set (Frette, Porthault...), and the gold diggers will continue giving out 'free samples' indefinitely.
But let's assume you opt for the less pricey house, with furniture. In Mississippi, everybody who's anybody has a Decorator. Ours is a member of our original 'pod' of friends/co-investors, which we formed as freshmen at a pitiful little backwoods Mississippi college for poor kids. He grew as we grew. Anyway, without him guiding us aesthetically, we never would have climbed out of the gutter. He helped us gentrify our first apartment buildings, back when we were still students. Working with no budget at all, he decorated our first few personal apartments well enough that we could entertain college Presidents/Senators/Governors... who were charmed by our brashness and ambition - and flattered that we would invite them to our little parties. He helped us transform a warren of pigeon coops and storerooms on top of one of our buildings... into a penthouse - which was published. That led to an insider's deal on a foreclosure (which, of course, we renovated, got published, and sold at substantial profit) at the edge of Eastover (then, the state's top power neighborhood). Basically, being published (and being model minorities) we were recruited to the neighborhood. This would not have happened, if not for our Decorator.
Being recruited to that neighborhood led to all sorts of things. Then, when Jackson started its demographic decline, we moved to Madison, where our Decorator transformed a 'builder nightmare' monstrosity of an overgrown spec house into something publishable and respectable. That gave our children entree to the better cliques in the public schools there (saving us hundreds of thousands of Dollars in private school tuition). Around Jackson, children judge each other on the quality of their homes and cars. That house had been 'unsellable' before our Decorator transformed it. We almost doubled our money on that one, and moved into a semi-custom McMansion that our Decorator was able to make pretty gorgeous, since he could correct its 'bad bones' during construction.
We did well selling that next house, and moved into what was supposedly our designed-for-us 'Forever Dream Home' - a walled 'Creole Compound' in a gated enclave. I loved the place. Not a blade of grass on the grounds - just saturation plantings of native plants and fragrant exotics. Inside, I went with a 'Rothschilds in the Swamps' theme, with my Decorator's erudition and insistence on quality turning what could have been tacky into something quite sublime. Well, realtor friends kept bringing us informal offers on the place which were millions over what we'd spent. Our Decorator had made it unique, and big money moving in from elsewhere wanted the instant perfection it offered. I wouldn't budge. Then, what amounted to a White Trash lynch mob destroyed the gorgeous new CVS building, and I realized that no town in Mississippi was ever going to be anything other than a backwater nowheresville - and I relented. We took the highest offer, and moved out here to where the kids had picked colleges.
None of this would have happened, had we not had a great Decorator as part of our life-strategy.
So, assuming you're going to have furniture, I'd suggest you go to one of the more chic places, and let them start building your collection. Personally, I'd stop in here, and start buying as my budget permitted: SummerHouse - Furniture, Accessories, Interior Design - Ridgeland, MS Unless things have changed, one of the young designers who comprise their sales staff will offer her design services, and you can build a working relationship which may span decades. It's better to buy one good thing at a time, than to buy a lot of cheap, embarrassing garbage. Wealthy Catholics in the South tend to prefer Anglophile furnishings - which SummerHouse can certainly supply, but in a lighter, fresher blend than a lot of the design houses (who can get really stuffy/Williamsburg-ish)
If you buy a home, be aware that you will be judged on the quality and quantity of greenery on its grounds. Scummy people plant the legal minimum (codes, in Madison, will not allow a home without a decent amount of shrubbery), while better people plant more - the most elite people planting veritable jungles around their homes.
In Mississippi, to a degree greater than anywhere else in America, there is a very sharp dichotomy, between People Who Matter, and Everybody Else. Your projected income could place you solidly among the People Who Matter, if you play your cards right.
Last edited by GrandviewGloria; 04-13-2014 at 03:06 PM..
Gloria, I can see some of your own story in those advises and are remarkable, thanks for all your help, by the way tomorrow I'll take the offer and pretty soon heading to MS
...........In Mississippi, to a degree greater than anywhere else in America, there is a very sharp dichotomy, between People Who Matter, and Everybody Else. Your projected income could place you solidly among the People Who Matter, if you play your cards right.
I dunno. 90 grand? It's just not all that big a deal.
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