Question about living in MS

[mrmurdock]

I dont find it all that judgemental in MS. I lived in Atl and L.A. before moving hee and there's virtually no racism compared to those places. People get along and are polite. Tolerance of Alternate lifestyles might be an issue depending on the town, but unless you plan on starting a Gay Parade on the Sabbath near Robert E. Lee's tomb, you wont get lynched.

And to clarify, the "Old South" mentality has nothing to do with racism, ignorance or intolerance. I find its more about manners, respect and not honking your horn like a yankee cab driver : )

[GayleTX]

We had relatives that moved to a suburb of Jackson (from another southern state). They lasted one year and put in for a transfer. They were afraid to go into downtown Jackson even in the daylight hours!!

[auntbee]

I've been to downtown Jackson in the daytime on business plenty of times and I was never afraid. However, I would never go there at night. I don't think it's any different from a lot of other cities. Crime is up everywhere. There isn't much reason to go downtown anyway.

[Angeles]

We recently moved from San Diego California to Memphis, after searching for options to buy a house we decided to purchase a property in Southaven, we have one month living here and we love it so far.... can someone please help me to find a website or a place to explore for family activities ? I have a 3 years old son and like I said I'm pretty new in the area.

Thanks in advance for your recommendations.
AD

[beverloop]

We were thinking about moving to Mississippi too. We are about an hour south east of Portland. Got to love the cost of housing down there!! Have you checked it out? You can get so much more for your $$ down there vs. up here. The only thing holding us back from the move is all our family is here and I don't know if I could deal with the summer heat. I don't think you will find the tolerance in MS that Portland has. Sure you have bigots everywhere, but Portland seems to be much more gay friendly. I took a visit down to MS just before the big hurricane and the people seemed real nice and the food was good too! I went all over the state starting from Biloxi/Gulfport to Memphis. I did notice a bit of racism in Southhaven. I was looking at a few houses up there and the real eastate agent was obviously not to keen to people of a different color. She made sure she pointed out which neighborhoods I should and shouldn't live in because those areas were "black" or "white" and that's the way they liked it. I got a sence of double sided racism. But the coastal area seemed pretty even tempered. I didn't see anything too odd ball down there. The beaches were beautiful!!So, that is my 2 cents. Good luck.

[Phil75230]

I'll sound like the proverbial broken record, but the following from one of my posts on the "General US" thread is practically the watershed of these kinds of arguments

FROM:http://www.city-data.com/forum/gener...lose-home.html

1) Differences within a metro area are ultimately more important than differences between larger-scale areas. This means you have to look at each section of a metro area before judging a place unworthy of your further attentions.

2) For practically every metropolitan area with at least one-third of a million people, older urban middle class neighborhoods have more in common with their counterparts in other cities than with their suburbs, or even their “outer central city” areas.

3) All other things being equal, the closer your neighborhood is to downtown, the more likely it is to be the following, especially relative to suburbs (not to speak of bonafide small towns):

a) be the most liberal section of the metropolitan area

b) be the center of metro area’s the cultural life (even opera, ballet, etc in addition to the “street level” culture)

c) have more diversity (ideological and religious diversity, sometimes racial as well although the latter can’t be absolutely counted on)

d) be “funkier”, artsier, or more bohemian in general.

To my satisfaction, this goes a long way to proving that complaints about such-and-such a city on the basis of its values and attitudes have limited value at best: Every metro with at least 1/3 of a million people (and some even less than that) is likely to offer at least a little something for everyone, even if not quite to the New York scale. This holds true even for the most conservative metropolitan areas.

This tells me that saying such-and-such metro is a conservative metro applies more to middle-to-upper-middle class suburbs than to the metro as a whole

Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not trying to say that Jackson, Miss’s (or any other ‘conservative areas’) funky neighborhood rivals San Francisco’s Castro, or even SoMa in liberalism. All I’m saying is that there’s a whole lot more to an area than meets the eye. In short, I’d say any metro area in these size categories (especially ones with more than one million residents) can be a winner for you if you make the effort to look at all the things the city has to offer and know where to look for it.

[mhogan10010]

Originally Posted by acs.1979

Hello all,

I am looking for a new place to live, somewhere with much more sun than where I am at now (Portland Oregon).

Part of what I am looking for is laid back easy living, but it is also important to me to be in an area that tends not to judge others based on race, religion, politics or sexuality. Does MS have any areas like that, or does the whole state cling to an "old south" mentaility? Any help is appriciated. Thanks.

Moderator cut: personal - off topic I'd say that if you like the culture and politics in Portland, you are going to wither up and die in Mississippi. My sister was down there for almost 20 years. In the country and in the city (Hattisburg). They never let her forget she was a Yankee from Detroit, even though she hadn't lived there since her early 20s.
Try New Mexico if you need more sun, plus you don't have the humidity.

[tennreb]

I have yet to find anywhere in the country that doesn't judge others based on race, religion, politics, or sexuality. Tolerance is a different story, but nearly every locale will carry preconcieved notions about all different types of people. Mississippi is a judgemental place, but it is pretty tolerant for the most part. I know a young gay couple that lives in a rural town in Mississippi, and they have never run into anyone with a problem with them. They like living there. The DeSoto County suburbs are less tolerant than other parts of the state merely because they are the blue collar white section of a metro area. Smaller towns tends to be more tolerant because they have to deal with all different kinds of people. There is no gay part of town. There may be a black part of town, but it is right next to the white part of town, and everyone shops at the same stores and goes to the same schools (except private). DeSoto County is rapidly becoming more black. I wouldn't live in DeSoto County simply because it is the epitome of suburbia. It has nothing in the way of architecture, art, dining, or culture. It's just tract housing and strip malls and friendly people. You may not care. But it isn't for me. More liberal towns of Mississippi include Ocean Springs and Oxford. Natchez seems to have the New Orleans live-and-let-live ideology as it is kind of a baby New Orleans.

[Willy99]

Ignore the Ole Miss alums who are looking back on their time in Oxford with rose colored glasses. Stick with Hattiesburg or one of the many coastal towns. Just about all that can be said about H-Burg has already been said, so I'll just add that it would be the closest thing to what you're looking for as far as Mississippi goes. It's the Hub City, within reasonable distance to many larger cities and metropolitan areas; it's close to the beaches and casinos if you're into that kind of thing; it's a town with a large liberal-arts based university (one of the top writing programs in the country); it's got a quaint downtown that offers diverse nightlife; and for the record, disregard mhogan's biased viewpoint. The whole "yankee" thing is ridiculous unless you're living in Wilkinson county or something. I've never heard anyone called a "yankee" in my 25 years of living here.

[bnjmngrffn]

Hello to you.

Mississippi is a great place to live, the only other place that I find to be in comparison is Columbia, S. C.

I was born and raised here in MS and the one thing that I can, truly, relate is...We have our problems like most other states but unfortunately, We are, somewhat, unable to out live our "PAST."

It has been said, "That one bad apple...spoils the whole bunch", and that can be true...But thank God for Miracles.

Originally Posted by acs.1979

Hello all,

I am looking for a new place to live, somewhere with much more sun than where I am at now (Portland Oregon).

Part of what I am looking for is laid back easy living, but it is also important to me to be in an area that tends not to judge others based on race, religion, politics or sexuality. Does MS have any areas like that, or does the whole state cling to an "old south" mentaility? Any help is appriciated. Thanks.