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You always hear a common thing on here anytime you dare speak ill of anything southern. It is like "oh you don't know the south has changed so much" or "oh we all get along in the south" but facts are facts and the fact is that the south still is much like it was 100 years ago. Especially outside its largest urban areas. It still drips with the poison it has always had and nothing has changed there at all. Racism is a proud tradition there and remains so. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/ma...anted=all&_r=0
My experience in the South was varied. Raleigh seemed very well integrated socially. In fact, coming from Michigan, where there's still a TON of racism, I was surprised at how easily whites and blacks interacted with each other. The rural areas are different. My students had no problem interacting with each other, but some of the comments I heard from the older generation were appalling. It was a good reminder of why we passed the Civil and Voting Rights Acts.
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Originally Posted by Sally_Sparrow
Whatever. I could find several anecdotal examples of racism in other places without much trouble.. even in <gasp> the northern US!
Of course, a segregated prom is awful. Any form of racism is awful. I think it is still a problem in MANY rural areas though, not just the southern US, and in some ways it is worse in northern states because people aren't as blatant about it.
In fact I have heard the most hateful, constant racist remarks coming from my wife's family in Iowa, regarding "all these $&#! Mexicans"... ignoring the fact that my wife's father was Mexican so she is, therefore, 1/2. More venom there than I've ever heard in Texas, really.
Not surprising. Every time I think about all the racist comments I heard in the South, I think about all those comments I heard around all the dinner tables, behind closed doors up North, and realize that Northerners can be pretty nasty too, if not about blacks, then about Mexicans. It makes my blood boil. We're just a racist country, regardless of region. It sucks.
You always hear a common thing on here anytime you dare speak ill of anything southern. It is like "oh you don't know the south has changed so much" or "oh we all get along in the south" but facts are facts and the fact is that the south still is much like it was 100 years ago. Especially outside its largest urban areas. It still drips with the poison it has always had and nothing has changed there at all. Racism is a proud tradition there and remains so. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/ma...anted=all&_r=0
Racism is not exclusive to the south. Plenty of it here in Ohio which is...wait for it.... a NORTHERN STATE!!!
And another thing you always hear a common thing about on here is how dreadful the South is. Yes, we had problems. Yes, we still have problems. Yes,we will always have problems. I suppose everything is rosy evrywhere else, without exception.
They are either too blind or too stupid to know that racism exists everywhere. There is as much racism in the North as there is in the South. It's just that the ignorant refuse to acknowledge this. They have to feel better about themselves, so they put down other places in the country. Like the comedian Dave Chapel says, they just know how to hide their racism better.
Yes and no. It still shows something is going on, and that the South still has a ways to go. Especially when the black side of town is the one that is more poverty-stricken and crime-ridden.
When I lived in the North until the mid 70's it was exactly as you described. Black side/ White side. I never saw a black person until they initiated the forced desegregation in the school system. This was susposidly because the black side was more impoverished and the schools werent up to par (I would have thought putting all that money on bussing into building new schools and hiring better teachers would have been better spent). Moved to TN and this didnt exist. There was racist people of course that is everywhere, but there was no form of segregation or black side/white side.
Again, similar to the other thread, bet the vast majority of those people are professed Christians who believe that they will one day go to a place where every group of people will be represented would not be so preoccupied with such matters. If you can't deal with diversity down here, how can you be fit for "up there?"
Racism is not exclusive to the south. Plenty of it here in Ohio which is...wait for it.... a NORTHERN STATE!!!
Last year my family went to the San Jacinto Monument outside of Houston, where we struck up a conversation with a man from Ohio. He was here for a job, but he said he could never move here because there were too many foreigners and black people. I was a little shocked that he thought we might agree since we're white people from the South. Houston is a very integrated city, so I've grown up with people of all colors and nationalities. I went to Pittsburgh several years ago and didn't see many black people at all. If Ohio is like that, then the guy was probably in culture shock down here.
Many polite church-going otherwise civilized people in the South are quietly racist, especially the older ones.
Well the thing is those older folks lived in a different time. They were taught prejudice and society accepted it (and not just in the south). Thankfully, over time attitudes and acceptable behavior have changed and are still changing. My grandmother, bless her heart, was born in 1908 and passed in 2012. Although she didnt hate or dislike black people in any way she was taught and grew up in a society that believed they were different/better because they were white and you could see it although I never heard my gma say anything nasty she did call black people darkies or negros for most of her life. Even she change in her later years and used the word black for descriptions sake. I wouldnt consider her racist but a product of her environment.
This is a small, ~2500, town and when I was a child I heard way too many racist remarks (although I heard basically the same stuff when I lived in the north) now there are several interacial marriages and I seldom hear racist remarks. My particular area has become about 98% more diverse than it was 30 years ago.
Last year my family went to the San Jacinto Monument outside of Houston, where we struck up a conversation with a man from Ohio. He was here for a job, but he said he could never move here because there were too many foreigners and black people. I was a little shocked that he thought we might agree since we're white people from the South. Houston is a very integrated city, so I've grown up with people of all colors and nationalities. I went to Pittsburgh several years ago and didn't see many black people at all. If Ohio is like that, then the guy was probably in culture shock down here.
I live in the Cleveland area, and we do have a lot of black people here. In the city itself, and some of the inner-ring suburbs they are the majority of the population. In some of the outer-suburbs, and exurbs not so much. Though my town has a sizeable black population. Not that it bothers me, because it doesn't. Even growing up in a predominantly white community I never got hung up on skin color as some others do. Because if you're logical, and can think for yourself, then it's about the character of the individual, and not their skin, religion, or sexual orientation. At any rate, our New York friends came here to visit us (right after 9/11). They had never been here, or anywhere in Ohio for that matter, so they thought that we were country folks. I guess when you live in the largest metropolitan area in the country NYC everywhere else is small potatoes. So, they get here, realize that we are indeed a major metropolitan area. We took them downtown, and when we left the city, she had called her parents to let them know she and her finance' (now husband) had arrived safely. The first thing she says to her mom "wow there are a lot of black people here!" I said to her, "but you live near NYC, a city of 8 million people, not to mention you're a NYC cop, and you say we have a lot of black people?" She went on to say, that the difference is that NYC as big as it is has many more cultures so, it wasn't as noticeable. I was like "OK, whatever."
Just shows that every region has it's stereotypes. Look at my region. We're constantly told by national rags like Forbes magazine how miserable we are here, and how it's a dying rust belt town. We're too fat, too poor, yada yada.... Yes, we've had decline, and yes there are some serious issues with poverty in parts of the region, but we are actually experience a bit of a renaissance with a bunch of different projects popping off downtown. Not to mention the local Ford plant is adding about 300 or more jobs (don' t remember the exact figures so I'll have to look) being relocated from Spain. The moral of the story, never judge a book by it's cover.
You always hear a common thing on here anytime you dare speak ill of anything southern. It is like "oh you don't know the south has changed so much" or "oh we all get along in the south" but facts are facts and the fact is that the south still is much like it was 100 years ago. Especially outside its largest urban areas. It still drips with the poison it has always had and nothing has changed there at all. Racism is a proud tradition there and remains so. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/ma...anted=all&_r=0
Right, because a 4-year old article from the race-baiting New York Times says so..
wow.
Anyway, you gotta love how the OP just fired two trolling shots and disappeared.
I never believed the South changed. They still are bigots.
That is not true at all. It was never true to start with.
Bigotry is everywhere and always has been. At the KKK's height in the 1920's, Ohio had more members than any state in the south.
One of my best friends is a transplanted Mississippian who now lives in the west. He goes back to his home town regularly, as he still has many friends there, and until a few years ago, still had family there. He has seen all the changes, as only those who do not live there can.
There are many things he does not like about Mississippi, but there are just as many things he loves. He hates bigotry, acknowledges that it still exists, but at the same time has seen the apartheid he lived in as a child evaporate.
I was born and raised in Idaho, about as far away from the south as it gets, but I spent some time there. It was easy for me to see why southerners always keep the south in their hearts, even when they move away and stay gone. There is a lot to their lifestyle that is very attractive in comparison to how most of us live these days, and one does not have to become a bigot to appreciate that.
The south has always been slow to change as a region, but each state is not the same as another, and in the whole, all are slowly changing. Bigotry will always exist, but numbers count. Southerners are changing just as the rest of us are, just only a bit slower than in some other areas. That's why there are black folks moving back to the south... if things weren't changing, they wouldn't be moving back.
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More venom there than I've ever heard in Texas, really.
Yes, we've had decline, and yes there are some serious issues with poverty in parts of the region, but we are actually experience a bit of a renaissance with a bunch of different projects popping off downtown. Not to mention the local Ford plant is adding about 300 or more jobs (don' t remember the exact figures so I'll have to look) being relocated from Spain. The moral of the story, never judge a book by it's cover.