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Most of the obesity and poverty problems are in the Delta. The Mississippi Delta unfortunately is the same has it was 60 yrs ago. No growth what so ever.
The Mississippi Delta is not the same as it was 60 years ago. Sixty years ago it was thriving and most people envied Delta people.
Today most Delta towns are ghost towns. Changes in agriculture, combined with changes in the way people shop, combined with the effects of school integration (the biggie) have resulted in most businesses closing and about two-thirds of the whites leaving.
As for the OP, you can find poverty anywhere. You can find bad race relations anywhere. If I wanted to send my children to public school, I wouldn't move to Harlem in New York, nor would I move to Greenville, Miss.
I'm curious why the OP needs these assurances. If he plans to move to Mississippi, he should pick his community carefully. If he likes the cosmopolitan city life, he shouldn't pick Iuka. If he's white and wants to send his children to public school, he shouldn't pick one of the many all-black public school towns. Mississippi is a big state; look at each region and each town, not the state as a whole.
The Mississippi Delta is not the same as it was 60 years ago. Sixty years ago it was thriving and most people envied Delta people.
Today most Delta towns are ghost towns. Changes in agriculture, combined with changes in the way people shop, combined with the effects of school integration (the biggie) have resulted in most businesses closing and about two-thirds of the whites leaving.
As for the OP, you can find poverty anywhere. You can find bad race relations anywhere. If I wanted to send my children to public school, I wouldn't move to Harlem in New York, nor would I move to Greenville, Miss.
I'm curious why the OP needs these assurances. If he plans to move to Mississippi, he should pick his community carefully. If he likes the cosmopolitan city life, he shouldn't pick Iuka. If he's white and wants to send his children to public school, he shouldn't pick one of the many all-black public school towns. Mississippi is a big state; look at each region and each town, not the state as a whole.
Greenville is the WORST! I hear nothing but bad things about that city and their defunct school system. It's probably on par with Detroit's public school system, which is why the only people with money still living there will send their kids to private schools, consequently making the public schools over 90% black. Kemper County in eastern Mississippi is also extremely bad.
I'm not planning on moving to Mississippi. I live in Arizona right now and planning a road trip to Florida sometime in the early summer, and Mississippi will be one of my stopovers.
When I take road trips I like to explore the place a little. So was just wondering about Mississippi as a whole. Looks like the Gulf Coastal areas would be the better locations, looking at Biloxi specifically. I should probably avoid the Delta areas.
Many thanks to all that replied. As I said before, I have never been to or through Mississippi but I heard so many negatives about the state as a whole from the national media, I wanted a local perspective. I know you can't believe everything on T.V.
I'm not planning on moving to Mississippi. I live in Arizona right now and planning a road trip to Florida sometime in the early summer, and Mississippi will be one of my stopovers.
When I take road trips I like to explore the place a little. So was just wondering about Mississippi as a whole. Looks like the Gulf Coastal areas would be the better locations, looking at Biloxi specifically. I should probably avoid the Delta areas.
Many thanks to all that replied. As I said before, I have never been to or through Mississippi but I heard so many negatives about the state as a whole from the national media, I wanted a local perspective. I know you can't believe everything on T.V.
Why don't you just visit the area and form your own opinion? The delta area may not be as bad as you think. I have spent a little time in Arizona and some of the Indian reservations are just as bad if not worse.
Why don't you just visit the area and form your own opinion? The delta area may not be as bad as you think. I have spent a little time in Arizona and some of the Indian reservations are just as bad if not worse.
There is nothing of any value or interest in the Delta for tourists, even people inside the state do not like traveling through there. I'm sure there are other places as bad or worse than the Delta, but none so infamous as it.
My friend from Florida visited me this summer. We visited the Delta. We had catfish in the catfish capital of the world. Visted the little musuem. Took funny pictures with all the Catfish statues. We drove out to the 1000 year old Cypress tree and walked the bridge over the swamp. We visited the BB king musuem, which was AWESOME. Visited the Delta Blues museuma and Ground Zero.
It might interest some of you to know that tour buses travel the Delta with tourists!!!! The ones we ran into were from Japan!
However, If I were only going to visit one place the gulf coast is pretty neat.
My friend from Florida visited me this summer. We visited the Delta. We had catfish in the catfish capital of the world. Visted the little musuem. Took funny pictures with all the Catfish statues. We drove out to the 1000 year old Cypress tree and walked the bridge over the swamp. We visited the BB king musuem, which was AWESOME. Visited the Delta Blues museuma and Ground Zero.
It might interest some of you to know that tour buses travel the Delta with tourists!!!! The ones we ran into were from Japan!
However, If I were only going to visit one place the gulf coast is pretty neat.
I wonder if the rows of houses stricken with mass poverty that have since been abandoned for decades were on that bus tour? I wonder if the complete lack of any outside business activity in the city was noticed by the tourists? I wonder if the poorly maintained roads, public buildings, and plethora of poor people was noticed? Hmm, I wonder if there are better places to tour.
I keep hearing how bad Mississippi is, lots of poverty, obesity, bad education, bad race relations, swampy, humid, not much to do, but how true is all this?
I've never been to Mississippi I admit it but I looked on Google Maps and other photos of some of the Gulf Coastal areas and they don't look too bad. Beaches seem to be nice and some of the towns like Biloxi have some great entertainment. Casinos, Hard Rock Cafe, and other amusement like a small-scale Las Vegas.
Really now, how bad can it be? Is race still a problem? Nobody is segregated or forced to eat at separate counters or move to the back of the bus like it used to be in the south.
How about the poverty? Is it really so horrible? After that last recession you won't find too many people livng high and mighty anywhere. If you want to see poverty go to Detroit and some old east coast cities where the industry is all but gone. How bad are conditions in Mississippi? It can't be anything like the old sharecropper shacks, or the old stereotype of fat suspender-wearing hicks driving beat-up trucks can it?
How about bugs, snakes, or alligators? The media makes it look like Mississippi is a bug-infested wasteland with snakes and gators living in swamps in everybody's yard. Can't be all true now can it?
I just need some reassurance that Mississippi isn't the Hell pit it's made out to be. I have a hard time believing what I read or see on T.V.
Mainstream Media has its own alternate reality, which exists to serve the Orwellian/Marxist objectives of the Frankfurt School. The MSM's Alternate Mississippi Reality is an exceptionally extreme departure from the reality one experiences in the Real World.
You seem, however, to have sifted quite well through media lies and distortions, and to have assembled a very good laundry list of questions.
Yes. There is a lot of poverty. Yes, obesity is rampant in Mississippi. Yes, education (even in private schools, sometimes) is far behind education in most states. Lots of swamps, although the Corps of Engineers seems intent upon draining them, just to have something to do (I heard they're currently lowering the water table in the Delta, which is killing the Pecan Orchards...lovely...).
Race relations, however, are far better than Big Media and Big Government want them to be. Big Media and Big Government continually try to stir up trouble. But Mississippians continue to refuse to hate each other with sufficient intensity to satisfy the powers that be. Blacks and whites have been coexisting in Mississippi for two solid centuries. Most whites there are descended from "indentured servants" (white slaves purchased with the intent of working them to death before their 'terms of servitude' were over). So, most people in the state, regardless of race, are descendants of slaves. That's some pretty solid common ground.
Prior to World War Two, Mississippians of both primary races were, for the most part, desperately poor. Just about EVERYBODY lived in sharecroppers' shacks. Just about EVERYBODY dressed their children in burlap bags (real flour sacks, made from actual cloth, were luxuries). Just about everybody had Pin Worms from going barefoot. Malnutrition was rampant. The Robber Barons on America's Upper East Coast, following the Civil War, had raped the state, economically. This was not too different from the farm crises and financial panics widespread across America during that era - except that in Mississippi, things were so much more severe. If I remember correctly, on one single day during the Depression, one third of the land in Mississippi was sold at auction (foreclosed.... seized for nonpayment of taxes...). Most everybody, both black and white, barely survived that era. Blacks and whites helped each other survive, and emerged from that solid century of hellish poverty as one nation. Mississippi is a nation surrounded by America.
There is a collective trauma in the history of Mississippi, which exists almost as a hidden force. Broken down, it is the trauma of the African Slave Trade, added to the trauma of the traffic in white slaves of the British Empire, and the horrific chapter in that empire's history known as The Highland Clearances. Fear and loathing of the Norse/Norman/Roman overlords is ingrained in the common culture of Mississippi. Oddly cryptic modes of communication in Mississippi are baffling to outsiders, and probably have their origins in the slave's inability to speak ill of his masters. Innuendo, body language, sayings with variable meanings... Mississippians have a way of communicating which is basically impenetrable to outsiders.
We Indians have watched the others (those among our people who failed to categorize the newcomers, and to distinguish between 'the good kinds' and 'the bad kinds'... well... those Indians fared badly), and see things others do not see. I have noticed racism directed against the ones with the delicate long limbs/short torsos/almond-shaped heads/dark hair, by the ones with the blondish hair/long torsos/short, thick limbs/broad faces. In the unspoken way that Celtic people seem to understand things, the second group seems to recognize the first group as the racial subgroup of its former masters and racial enemies. The persecution is subtle: school bullying, gossip, ridicule, exclusion - that sort of thing. But it's there.
And there is the black-white antagonism hoped for by Media and Government: just not as much of it as one would expect.
The weather is pretty horrible, five months of the year. If you step off a small private plane, you'll feel like you're walking into either a steam room or a sauna... depending on humidity, and on whether or not there is direct sunlight. And there are maybe two months' worth of days when it is cool enough to really dress up. Being an Indian from the Southern Tribes, and having had a 'Real Daddy' who was a Sicilian, I'm comfortable in Mississippi's heat. My Husband, on the other hand, being a Cajun with heavy descent from Eastern Canada's First Nations, cannot take the heat at all. He was miserable, sweating in his unlined tropical-weight suits and whisper-thin Sulka shirts, eleven months of the year, when we lived in Mississippi. He learned to wear ultra-short loafer socks, and loafers... and to kick off his shoes under conference tables... just to shed body heat.
Big men in the Deep South learn what kinds of floors are the coldest. I heard DH and another bodybuilder debating the merits of various floors. Concrete and granite keep you cooler, longer. Naps on marble and alabaster floors, though, are not as cooling. Marble takes on your body heat too quickly. Staying cool, for most people in the deep, deep South, can become an obsession. I know a Mississippi/Louisiana family of giant Swedes, who refuse to get in the car without sufficient ice on hand to cool them down in an emergency. Part of their morning routine is to load coolers with ice packs. They've learned the hard way... Summer heat down there can cause severe health issues, and even death. I leave my Husband at home, when I fly down to check on things. He's so much happier in Oregon.
Roses that grow in 'normal' places turn into gaunt skeletons in Mississippi. To grow roses there, you have to memorize the kinds that will grow. "Polyantha Noisette likes her AncientTea in a China cup." Those are the four primary races of roses that can be grown down there. Our best friends followed us up here to Oregon. The Wife was thrilled to finally grow Old Garden Roses (Portlands, Albas, Gallicas...). My taste is not so pure: I ripped out the tennis court, and put in all the trashy Floribundas and Teas I'd never been able to grow in Mississippi. ... and all the other things, like Delphiniums and Astilbe, that it's just too hot in Mississippi to grow well.
Those friends are headed back to Madison (new acquisitions in the region). She is all weepy about the restrictions the climate makes inherent in planning the new rose garden. "Well, I can try my luck with the new Hybrid Bracteatas, and the fresh-out-of-quarantine Australian Hybrid Giganteas, and the wider spectrum of Banksias now available.... but my heart's not in it. What allure do the various Moschatas have, when I'm having to leave behind my Spinosissimas and Rugosas?"
After a kvetch like that one, I know exactly what you're thinking. And so now is the moment to bring up the huge dichotomy in Mississippi:
On one hand, you have people who think men aren't attractive until they have "a little belly on 'em", and who think being a good mother entails making sure your kids are so obese nobody will want them (thereby assuring they'll always need their Momma's luuuuuuv). On the other hand, you have room after room, at gym after gym, filled with perfect female bodies in perfect outfits, doing aerobics, then spinning.... or yoga, or gossiping with gals like me, in the Cardio Theatres in gyms conveniently dotted throughout every town of any size. The Aerobics Set don't eat even one bite at funeral spreads Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide To Hosting the Perfect Funeral: Gayden Metcalfe, Charlotte Hays: 9781401359348: Amazon.com: Books, while the others glare at them.
You have people who have never fried anything in their lives. They tend to be a pound or two underweight. On the other side of the great dichotomy, are people to whom 'cooking' and 'frying' are synonyms. If they've ever heard of steaming foods, they think it's one of those things weird unsaved people do in far-off countries.
On one hand, you have people who listen to whatever lowest-common-denominator-pop drivel is played on the radio. On the other hand, you have people whose devices are playing Baroque concerti and German Techno.
You have a great many people who have never even tried an illicit drug or smoked a cigarette. On the other hand, there are people who are proud to have smoked while pregnant, and who don't count 'MJ' as 'doing drugs'.
Sizeable swaths of every town are characterized by intensively-landscaped homes, filled with better furnishings than you'll see in comparable neighborhoods anywhere else in America. Scalamandre, Brunschwig & Fils, Zuber et Cie,.... silk brocades, silk passementerie, cut velvet as wall covering... draperies costing several thousand Dollars per window... redundant sets of china and crystal... On the other hand, you have people who cut down every living thing in the yard, put up a chain-link fence for the Pitt Bulls, paint the trim in orangey browns, buy prints of howling wolves at WalMart, and stick plug-in air fresheners in every toxic room.
Mississippi's dichotomy is far more sharply drawn than in most states. Winners vs Losers; Flabby vs Fit; Affluent vs Poor; Smart vs Dumb; Righteous vs Damned; Those who can reliably afford air conditioning vs Those who have window units and can't afford to fix the air in their cars: in Mississippi, one chooses (or is assigned by Fate and genetics) to walk in darkness, or to walk in the light.
There are two Mississippis, and each of those is subdivided. One learns to live in one's own bubble.
Mainstream Media has its own alternate reality, which exists to serve the Orwellian/Marxist objectives of the Frankfurt School. The MSM's Alternate Mississippi Reality is an exceptionally extreme departure from the reality one experiences in the Real World.
You seem, however, to have sifted quite well through media lies and distortions, and to have assembled a very good laundry list of questions.
Yes. There is a lot of poverty. Yes, obesity is rampant in Mississippi. Yes, education (even in private schools, sometimes) is far behind education in most states. Lots of swamps, although the Corps of Engineers seems intent upon draining them, just to have something to do (I heard they're currently lowering the water table in the Delta, which is killing the Pecan Orchards...lovely...).
Race relations, however, are far better than Big Media and Big Government want them to be. Big Media and Big Government continually try to stir up trouble. But Mississippians continue to refuse to hate each other with sufficient intensity to satisfy the powers that be. Blacks and whites have been coexisting in Mississippi for two solid centuries. Most whites there are descended from "indentured servants" (white slaves purchased with the intent of working them to death before their 'terms of servitude' were over). So, most people in the state, regardless of race, are descendants of slaves. That's some pretty solid common ground.
Prior to World War Two, Mississippians of both primary races were, for the most part, desperately poor. Just about EVERYBODY lived in sharecroppers' shacks. Just about EVERYBODY dressed their children in burlap bags (real flour sacks, made from actual cloth, were luxuries). Just about everybody had Pin Worms from going barefoot. Malnutrition was rampant. The Robber Barons on America's Upper East Coast, following the Civil War, had raped the state, economically. This was not too different from the farm crises and financial panics widespread across America during that era - except that in Mississippi, things were so much more severe. If I remember correctly, on one single day during the Depression, one third of the land in Mississippi was sold at auction (foreclosed.... seized for nonpayment of taxes...). Most everybody, both black and white, barely survived that era. Blacks and whites helped each other survive, and emerged from that solid century of hellish poverty as one nation. Mississippi is a nation surrounded by America.
There is a collective trauma in the history of Mississippi, which exists almost as a hidden force. Broken down, it is the trauma of the African Slave Trade, added to the trauma of the traffic in white slaves of the British Empire, and the horrific chapter in that empire's history known as The Highland Clearances. Fear and loathing of the Norse/Norman/Roman overlords is ingrained in the common culture of Mississippi. Oddly cryptic modes of communication in Mississippi are baffling to outsiders, and probably have their origins in the slave's inability to speak ill of his masters. Innuendo, body language, sayings with variable meanings... Mississippians have a way of communicating which is basically impenetrable to outsiders.
We Indians have watched the others (those among our people who failed to categorize the newcomers, and to distinguish between 'the good kinds' and 'the bad kinds'... well... those Indians fared badly), and see things others do not see. I have noticed racism directed against the ones with the delicate long limbs/short torsos/almond-shaped heads/dark hair, by the ones with the blondish hair/long torsos/short, thick limbs/broad faces. In the unspoken way that Celtic people seem to understand things, the second group seems to recognize the first group as the racial subgroup of its former masters and racial enemies. The persecution is subtle: school bullying, gossip, ridicule, exclusion - that sort of thing. But it's there.
And there is the black-white antagonism hoped for by Media and Government: just not as much of it as one would expect.
The weather is pretty horrible, five months of the year. If you step off a small private plane, you'll feel like you're walking into either a steam room or a sauna... depending on humidity, and on whether or not there is direct sunlight. And there are maybe two months' worth of days when it is cool enough to really dress up. Being an Indian from the Southern Tribes, and having had a 'Real Daddy' who was a Sicilian, I'm comfortable in Mississippi's heat. My Husband, on the other hand, being a Cajun with heavy descent from Eastern Canada's First Nations, cannot take the heat at all. He was miserable, sweating in his unlined tropical-weight suits and whisper-thin Sulka shirts, eleven months of the year, when we lived in Mississippi. He learned to wear ultra-short loafer socks, and loafers... and to kick off his shoes under conference tables... just to shed body heat.
Big men in the Deep South learn what kinds of floors are the coldest. I heard DH and another bodybuilder debating the merits of various floors. Concrete and granite keep you cooler, longer. Naps on marble and alabaster floors, though, are not as cooling. Marble takes on your body heat too quickly. Staying cool, for most people in the deep, deep South, can become an obsession. I know a Mississippi/Louisiana family of giant Swedes, who refuse to get in the car without sufficient ice on hand to cool them down in an emergency. Part of their morning routine is to load coolers with ice packs. They've learned the hard way... Summer heat down there can cause severe health issues, and even death. I leave my Husband at home, when I fly down to check on things. He's so much happier in Oregon.
Roses that grow in 'normal' places turn into gaunt skeletons in Mississippi. To grow roses there, you have to memorize the kinds that will grow. "Polyantha Noisette likes her AncientTea in a China cup." Those are the four primary races of roses that can be grown down there. Our best friends followed us up here to Oregon. The Wife was thrilled to finally grow Old Garden Roses (Portlands, Albas, Gallicas...). My taste is not so pure: I ripped out the tennis court, and put in all the trashy Floribundas and Teas I'd never been able to grow in Mississippi. ... and all the other things, like Delphiniums and Astilbe, that it's just too hot in Mississippi to grow well.
Those friends are headed back to Madison (new acquisitions in the region). She is all weepy about the restrictions the climate makes inherent in planning the new rose garden. "Well, I can try my luck with the new Hybrid Bracteatas, and the fresh-out-of-quarantine Australian Hybrid Giganteas, and the wider spectrum of Banksias now available.... but my heart's not in it. What allure do the various Moschatas have, when I'm having to leave behind my Spinosissimas and Rugosas?"
After a kvetch like that one, I know exactly what you're thinking. And so now is the moment to bring up the huge dichotomy in Mississippi:
On one hand, you have people who think men aren't attractive until they have "a little belly on 'em", and who think being a good mother entails making sure your kids are so obese nobody will want them (thereby assuring they'll always need their Momma's luuuuuuv). On the other hand, you have room after room, at gym after gym, filled with perfect female bodies in perfect outfits, doing aerobics, then spinning.... or yoga, or gossiping with gals like me, in the Cardio Theatres in gyms conveniently dotted throughout every town of any size. The Aerobics Set don't eat even one bite at funeral spreads Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide To Hosting the Perfect Funeral: Gayden Metcalfe, Charlotte Hays: 9781401359348: Amazon.com: Books, while the others glare at them.
You have people who have never fried anything in their lives. They tend to be a pound or two underweight. On the other side of the great dichotomy, are people to whom 'cooking' and 'frying' are synonyms. If they've ever heard of steaming foods, they think it's one of those things weird unsaved people do in far-off countries.
On one hand, you have people who listen to whatever lowest-common-denominator-pop drivel is played on the radio. On the other hand, you have people whose devices are playing Baroque concerti and German Techno.
You have a great many people who have never even tried an illicit drug or smoked a cigarette. On the other hand, there are people who are proud to have smoked while pregnant, and who don't count 'MJ' as 'doing drugs'.
Sizeable swaths of every town are characterized by intensively-landscaped homes, filled with better furnishings than you'll see in comparable neighborhoods anywhere else in America. Scalamandre, Brunschwig & Fils, Zuber et Cie,.... silk brocades, silk passementerie, cut velvet as wall covering... draperies costing several thousand Dollars per window... redundant sets of china and crystal... On the other hand, you have people who cut down every living thing in the yard, put up a chain-link fence for the Pitt Bulls, paint the trim in orangey browns, buy prints of howling wolves at WalMart, and stick plug-in air fresheners in every toxic room.
Mississippi's dichotomy is far more sharply drawn than in most states. Winners vs Losers; Flabby vs Fit; Affluent vs Poor; Smart vs Dumb; Righteous vs Damned; Those who can reliably afford air conditioning vs Those who have window units and can't afford to fix the air in their cars: in Mississippi, one chooses (or is assigned by Fate and genetics) to walk in darkness, or to walk in the light.
There are two Mississippis, and each of those is subdivided. One learns to live in one's own bubble.
This is my favorite part because it rings so true and I see it every day!
I can't rep you anymore, says I need to spread my points around, but if I could I would! Great post! You always bring some of the best insight to these Mississippi forum threads.
I wear shoes and drive on paved roads and have all the latest tech I could need, I dont wear overalls, not that there is anything wrong with that. I am not impoverished but I grew up poor, not dirt farmer poor but starving artist as a father poor and I went to one of the best junior colleges ranked in the nation MCC in meridian and then followed over to a four year. I am not obese, 5'11' and about 145 to 150 pounds and everyhting I need to buy I can find on line as it is 2013 and when I turn down a road I know exactly where it goes. I lived in 5 states and 8 cities before I was twelve years old and havent been planted here and my boots have not grown roots so I have never been sheltered. I make a good living and the cost of living is cheap so for me its all good in this fried chicken loving neighborhood!!!
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