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In reading a thread on the general South Carolina forum, I came across one titled "Moved to PeeDee -- Big Mistake??" In reading through it, I was astounded at some of the postings that talked about how bad South Carolina was in terms of being backwards, racist, poverty-stricken/ignorance as a way of life, high crime, etc. In fact, below is one comment from a native South Carolina:
"Marx...omg...Im so sorry but I laughed until my sides hurt over this whole thread!!! I know thats bad because I know what your going through but, darn it, it was just so doggone good to hear someone FINALLY speak the truth about SC!!!!
And before all ya'll get your feathers up, Im a SC native, born an bred. I've lived here in a small town in the Lowcountry my entire life (and in true Suthun womanly stahl, I'll not admit to mah age) and I know EXACTLY what you mean. SC has two faces...the one they put on for the tourist (Can ah git ya'll some moah tea?) and the one they put on when they get home from work! (Did you SEE what that dam Yankee lef me foah tip?). As far as I can tell, from reading my SC history and listening to tales from my great-grandmother, SC has ALWAYS been that way and there isn't much foreseeable change on the horizon. Do what you want to "help the community"...God knows I have over the years...but you won't change the heart and soul of these people. Racism, ignorance and intolerance are bred into us from birth. It took me years to overcome it myself. Even though I was always a bit "different"...I didn't enjoy sitting around tellin N****r jokes, I didn't like listening to my family members denegrate the neighbors because they were of a different religion, I didn't enjoy listening to sick comments about people with a different sexual orientation,yet, I still found myself harboring some of these feelings when I became an adult. It takes a conscious act of will to throw it off and try to treat all people with respect."
So, please tell me the Greenville area is not like this! I know from a visitor point of view I haven't experienced this, but like so many have said, you don't really know an area until you have lived there. I would assume that since Greenville has such an international presence with the likes of BMW, Michelin, and other large companies, that it couldn't possibly be like this. I have read other threads that talked about the Florence, SC area being high crime, a high percentage of poverty, and other negative things, but I'm assuming Greenville is much farther along socially, economically, and culturally speaking.
Just wanted to get some other views on this issue from other natives/locals.
Having lived here for a long time now, I can assure you that this is not at all typical in this part of the state. Greenville itself is quite progressive in terms of shedding the "Old South" cultural, social, and economic ways. This city is a great representation of the positive change in the "New South."
The Pee Dee is an unfortunate part of the state. Its not very wealthy, not very successful economically, and not very forward thinking. The Upstate is more or less the exact opposite of that.
The Good, the Bad, the Ugly.
First of all I am going to tell you the embarassing truth even if it hurts. I am a South Carolina native and have lived in Greenville more than 30 years. Airing Dirty Laundry is never pleasant but if you are going to move here you should know about it. Know that we want more people to move here who do not share the bigots view of things because we wish to make Greenville a better place and change the attitudes of the past for the better. You might find it difficult to adjust at first but it will come and with your help and activism it will. IF gay people and other diverse groups did not move here ---we would be overrun by the bigoted 'Conservatives' who need to be a very tiny minority instead of being somewhat more than that.
My friend who is a businessman from New York seems to think that Greenville is one of the most backward places he as ever tried to do business. I am sorry to say that he is very prejustice and does not realize that Greenville does not now share New York State values although many of these would be welcomed here to help bring about change.
I am sorry to say that there are parts of South Carolina that even shock me as to how backward they are. So I am not surprized at what you heard about the 'plantation' attitude you heard about. I was recently invited to apply for a teaching job at Estill High School. There are at least 3 blacks to every white person in this community. I knew nothing about this community and arrived to early and decided to have a look around and went to a restaurant for lunch. The 1960 civil rights era never got here. Blacks still go to the back door of the restaurants there. In Abbeville, the Confederacy seems to live on with the Sons of the Confederacy which is not as innocent group as they like you to believe. Abbeville was a very nice town until these folks arrived.
South Carolina can be dividend into four Geographic areas: the Low Country that includes the coast;. the Midlands ---mostly flat lands; the Piedmont and Mountains of which Greenville is part of. Each region has its own customs and kinds of dialect and speech. If you listen carefully you will know where someone is from by the way they speak. Charlestonians sound much like they are Englishmen. Midlands folks sound like the Late Senator Strom Thurmond and when you hear a slow like twang or a Scottiish kind of accent---that is definitely upstate. The twang is particularly noticiable when people say that they are from South Carolina---they will pronounce it as South Kuh----LINE--Na with Lyn held on longer than the rest of the word. The days when it seem like it took someone forever and a day to get three words out of their mouth are long gone---changed by television. The South has different accents--none of the fake Gone with the Wind stereotyped accents which never were like that here.
Here in Greenville, our main problem are fundamentalist folks and Southern Baptists who preach hatred towards gay people, members of certain races and religions etc and think that everyone must be as intolerant as they are and believe as they do---their preachers go to the extent of telling members how to vote and if they do not they are thrown out of the church. These are the people who preach hatred and up at North Greenville University kick out gay people simply because they were born gay. They are the ones who are in the long run reponsible for the murder of Sean Kennedy which was a hate crime which local authorities and State law does not want to recognize it as such. Sean's murderer, Stephen murdered basically got a slap on the wrist for what he did.
First Baptist broke with these fascist bigots and even have gay people serving in their church which they welcome warmly. Furman University also broke with them and is one of the finest Private Universities in the Southeast as the result---the Southern Baptist Convention was telling Furman, as they tell North Greenville University, today, that they could only hire Baptists and they had to fire all Jews and gay faculty and anyone who was not Baptist, Christian or who was an atheist. Jews have traditionally been a part of Furman since at least the 1930s when Alfred Einstein's son Hans moved here and taught at Furman. Until Alfred died, it was common to see him around town. The Einsteins still live here and also operate a Business. Just because these people are here it is very important that you move here to help those of us who do not share these folks opinions balance out things so that they do not rule the roost as they did a few years ago and engaged in ethnic cleansing by passing a County Ordinance that required all gay people fo the county to leave by Sundown or face arrest and fines. This created quiet an uproar which still has not died down after more than 10 years and has blackened the name of Greenville ever since. Church and State are separate but Bob Jones University folks had taken over the County Council and this resulted in some politicians being booted off the Council because they followed the Bob Jones line including Gloria Haskins as Bob Jones graduate, who is only a US Citizen by marriage---she got caught up in the illegal immigrant anger of the people and then her hatred of gay people( she was one of the leaders of the pack in ethnic cleansing of Greenville of gay people), got her out of office. Greenville County is much the better that she is gone. Through all of the this; the City of Greenville was very supportive of our gay community. The City has always been a kinder place than the county.
Many household name celebrities are from here and still have relatives here or visit. In 1960; Jesse Jackson needed to use the the public library. Although his parents paid county taxes that went to support the Library; he and his buddies went in and were ask to leave because of their race. More recently the issue of Martin Luther King Holiday came up and county council, again led by the Bob Jones Factions, refuse to honor this Holiday. This brought Jesse back home (his relatives still live here). County Councilmen tried to send Jesse back home to Chicago because they said he had no business here since he no longer lived in Greenville---not fully true. It took much pressure but Council finally relented after more than 3 years and made Martin Luther King a County Holiday. Many people here are very embarrassed by Bob Jones University and its antics and wish it would leave town as it did when it moved here from Tennesse in 1949 as their more extreame Baptist members were responsible for bringing Fred Phelps to town which no one welcomed here and even ask Fred to please leave. Most of the Community were schocked when for once Bob Jones joined in with the rest of the community in not welcoming Fred just as we recently were when a Gay Christian protest group came to town to protest Bob Jones treatment of gay people. While they were not permitted on campus; the University did bring out food for them and were hospitable otherwise. Jesse Jackson is one of many famous people from Greenville or who have lived here for awhile---that includes some noted authors as my friends: Dorothy Allison, actor Wallace Merk, the former conductor of the USSR Symphony Orchestra. and many more.
I remember when Greenville was Hicksville personified. Harper's Magazine came to town and said that Greenville was a place of where crude redneck country bumpkins went to bed with the chickens and got up with them and was dominated by Bob Jones University holy rollers who annoyed people preaching on the street downtown, and where mill owners engaged in subtle forms of slavery by failing to pay their employees fair wages thereby keeping them always in debt to the company store. IF an employee had a falling out with a supervisor--- the employee could find himself, his family cast out of his rental house, owned by the mill owners, on the coldest of winter nights with no appeal or mercy. Mill owners ran their businesses as oligarchs of a private fiefdom in which true democrasy did not exist. This situation was furthermore aided and abetted by the South Carolina State Employment Agency who always came down on the Employers side no matter how unjust doing so it was and also sought to interfer with fair bargaining rights by telling the would be employee what the job paid which the candidate could take or leave but most put up with low wages. Mill owners often had politicians and police in their pockets because they paid most of their salaries. Today, most of these people, who lived through the mill period, are elderly and living on welfare benefits and a pittance of Social Security because they never made enough money to save and were forced to lived hand to mouth. Back then Greenville was known as the Textile Center of the South---basically a one business town which the mill owners did what they could to stifle the development of other diversified businesses because they feared that these businesses would deprive them of their slaves and force them to pay more. Unions were a dirty word back then and more than one person not only lost their job for joining the Union but also found themselves on the Street on the coldest of winter nights.
Greenville is a very nice place and is growing rapidly and has changed drastically since the 1960s. We have several legitimate theatres (where some well known Hollywood actors got their start), a Symphony, several art museums and other museums and are very conviently located between most major cities--- 1.5 hours to Atlanta and about an hour to Charlotte, a hour to Asheville, North Carolina ---which is like New York City in many ways. We have parks and downtown biking and walking trails along with waterfall downtown. Numerous publications are published here. We are a financial center also among other recommendations of you comming here. If you come invite your friends from elsewhere to also move here. Greenvillians love their trees and we regularly go to battle over folks and others who want to chop them down and make us a concrete jungle which Greenville use to be until around 1970 when Mayor Max Heller got a master plan going for the city and planted trees downtown as well as began landscaping downtown with flowers and sculpture. The Plan sought to turn Greenville into as beautiful city as Vienna, Austria which Max Heller had known before being forced to leave by the Nazi's. Our International Airport is one of the most beautiful in the United States---it is more like entering a palatial estate that has been landscaped with fountains and sculpture and art rather than the industrial concrete jungle of say LAX in Los Angeles or Boston International. The runway is currently 2 miles long and thus large jets can land there. There are more than 10 Universities, Colleges and Insitutions of Higher learning in Greenville or nearby.
I have live away from Greenville but seem to keep coming back here. I know just how backward and bigoted Greenville once was. This is now changing and you would do our community a great favor by moving here and help us change it to a more balanced and diverse City and County.
Well that was indeed a fascinating history of Greenville, thankfully it was just that history!
Having come from NY myself I know the same can be said for the racial tensions up north in the 60's. I remember (actually was told about) the race riots in the 60's, where my Father had to bring his gun to take me to the doctors office which was in the city.
My point is the whole country has come a long way from the 60's. Being new to Greenville I have not noticed any racial/gay tensions here. I'm sure it exists, because it exists everywhere. But I can honestly say that at least it seems to me that people (all people) get along better here than where I lived up north.
I don't know. I keep reading these same questions in the forum and it really bothers me. It just not true! Greenville is a beautiful place with some of the nicest people I have met. I can't tell you the number of times that I'm driving through a neighborhood looking at houses (house shopping) and people will wave. That just didn't happen up north. Or I'm walking downtown and people say hi. I can honestly say that so far I love this area, and do not regret leaving the so very "progressive" north for 1 minute.
That's just my $.02
I am a minority, I moved up here 3 years ago. I've been treated really well. Everyone here is really nice.
But, I never know what they say when I'm not around. They may not be so nice when my back is turned, but I can't live my life worrying about that or I'd be miserable here.
My experience here has been fantastic. I prefer to give this place the benefit of the doubt and not dwell on the negatives.
Greenville has grown quite a bit since I first moved here. Alot of the people that move here are from big cities and are more accepting of different lifestyles / races.
The fundamentalist right is definitely here, but people are people wherever you go. All that stuff takes a back seat when you get to know someone and all of the stereotypes go away.
In closing, this really is a great place and the people as far as i can tell are some the nicest I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.
I'm not so sure why people think that South Carolina in general is a racist place. Because, having lived here (Spartanburg) practically my entire life, I have never had major issues with racism or discrimination.
As for high crime? Huh? Crime is really not an issue in the majority of the upstate... I would tend to think it might be in some of the more rural parts of the "deep" South Carolina towns, but not so much.
The upstate is probably one of the safest and nicest places you can live.
Not sure why everything has to always come around to race. For the most part people in South Carolina are like people in every state, they look approvingly on those who work and support the community. They also look poorly on those who sit at home and collect welfare checks and spend the taxpayers money, and unfortunetly the percentages reflect that more blacks (not african americans) collect from welfare than whites, though some whites do also. For most greenvillians dont look at color and focus more on contribution to society, and so should everyone. I am so tired of (mostly blacks) always bringing up race. Nobody should be judged by race, and if it would be dropped, nobody would be.
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Greenville and South Carolina
