The New South in 2015

[OverVolt]

Second guy started the race past the finish line without even breaking a sweat.

 

[Ichinisan]

It's always entertaining to see typical bigots who can't judge people as individuals lump and generalize and distort reality and demonize and still feel justified because of who you accuse the others of being.

I've lived coast to coast and I've heard more racist and anti-gay remarks from coworkers and the general public in the four years I spent in San Diego than the decades I've spent here, EXCLUDING the elderly. Get over it. The ROOT of bigotry is failing to judge individuals on their own merits and choosing to condemn collectively for what you perceive them to be. This is bandwagoning that people think is justified simply because they appear to be against something unjustifiable (racism and sexism). Two wrongs don't make a right.

It's exactly what I said: generalizing and stereotyping a large swath of individuals based on his own limited and, very likely, delusional experience.

I have collectively spent about a year in West Virginia, a Union state, and found it much more bigoted and racist than the south as well, but I would not venture to condemn them or the SoCal natives as "racist" or "homophobic" just because I have encountered more in those places. People who see the south as "generally racists" instead of "statistically slightly more racists per capita" are so far out of touch with reality because it fits their fantasy which makes them feel superior. It's the same reason idiot racist white people hate black people: it makes them feel superior even without any redeeming qualities. It needs to be called out.

He even tried to associate that recent SAE incident with the south, as if that had anything to do with the region!

Folks in Boston probably believe they're less racist than the average southern town.

 

[cubby1223]

I can walk and chew gum. The ad demonstrates what I have said over and over, that competition is hate. The winners have contempt for the losers and visa versa as seen in this thread. You would have to be profoundly naïve to give that ad a pass, in my opinion, and brain dead to have created it without awareness of the obvious implications.

Competition is life. Life is competition. A select few in this world can be shielded from competition due to others choosing to sacrifice for them. But for the vast majority, life is ever-lasting competition. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is selling you something.

hate
hāt/
noun
noun: hate

1.
intense or passionate dislike.

Some competition is hate. Other competition is strive, motivation, and dedication to live up to our full potentials.

Hell, you are writing on this forum competing for everyone's attention, competing for your views to be accepted above those whom you compete against, often insulting and labeling the competition as damaged. I always suspected you had a shit-ton of hate bottled up inside you Actually explains a lot about your behaviors. Thanks for the confirmation! Be well.

 

[Mursilis]

I think this is a blind spot on a forum that is mostly white, male, and middle to upper middle class. Even in cases where racism is obvious and blatant any mention of it is met with heavy resistance. Hell, even after that damning report about Ferguson you had people saying it wasn't a big deal, and that's about as obvious a case as you'll ever see of systemic racism.

If you can't get some people to even acknowledge that, how do you possibly hope to get them to understand the lower level racism that pervades society?

I think you're partially correct about a blind spot, but I also see some of what's called "racism" today to actually be more "classism". If you act/dress in a certain way (reflective of being very low on the socioeconomic ladder), you are, regardless of race, going to be treated in a certain way (probably with some underlying hostility) by authority figures. Having grown up some around poorer, semi-rural whites, the kind who favored heavy metal t-shirts, jacked-up muscle cars or lifted trucks, mullets, etc., there were no shortages of tales of hostile encounters with law enforcement, but of course that wasn't racism, even if the scenarios played out in remarkably similar ways to what's called racism today. There's a lot of complexity which gets missed in today's overly-simplistic debates about race.

 

[touchstone]

This is the new south, just like the old south but without the money and class!

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

The fact of the matter is that people do consciously/unconsciously judge others based on skin color...including blacks judging other blacks based on the lightness/darkness of their skin. However, it's not the intricate trappings of political correctness that will advance racial harmony...for the vast majority of people, it's the "content of their character" that will trump racism.

 

[Meghan54]

The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error.

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.

The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind — from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics; their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just — but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails.

This is text from Alexander H. Stephens' speech given in Savannah, GA, March 21, 1861, just after secession began. Stephens was, at the time of the speech, the Vice President of the CSA. This speech was given after 7 states had seceded but prior to hostilities.

 

[fskimospy]

I think you're partially correct about a blind spot, but I also see some of what's called "racism" today to actually be more "classism". If you act/dress in a certain way (reflective of being very low on the socioeconomic ladder), you are, regardless of race, going to be treated in a certain way (probably with some underlying hostility) by authority figures. Having grown up some around poorer, semi-rural whites, the kind who favored heavy metal t-shirts, jacked-up muscle cars or lifted trucks, mullets, etc., there were no shortages of tales of hostile encounters with law enforcement, but of course that wasn't racism, even if the scenarios played out in remarkably similar ways to what's called racism today. There's a lot of complexity which gets missed in today's overly-simplistic debates about race.

I think both exist, but I also think that some attributes of what people construe as 'classism' are in fact racism in a different suit. The two definitely are intertwined though.

I'm reminded of those studies about the employability (or lack thereof) of people with black sounding names, and just how valuable it was to have a white name. People originally tried to claim that was a function of classism and not racism, although even that argument itself is problematic. (associating people with african names as being low class is itself racist after all) It turned out though that even when a person with a black sounding name had a degree from Harvard they still faced a negative bias against them.

I agree with you that there are all sorts of biases that exist, and there are plenty of other groups that are unreasonably targeted by police, etc. Regardless, I think racism is a clear and significant problem that exists all over the country today, and we need to be able to acknowledge it better.

 

[fskimospy]

This is text from Alexander H. Stephens' speech given in Savannah, GA, March 21, 1861, just after secession began. Stephens was, at the time of the speech, the Vice President of the CSA. This speech was given after 7 states had seceded but prior to hostilities.

It is a bit tough for a region to shake the racist label when many in it still proudly refer to a war their region fought for the explicit purpose of race based enslavement.

 

[SMOGZINN]

The fact of the matter is that people do consciously/unconsciously judge others based on skin color...including blacks judging other blacks based on the lightness/darkness of their skin. However, it's not the intricate trappings of political correctness that will advance racial harmony...for the vast majority of people, it's the "content of their character" that will trump racism.

Language shapes how we think, there is no denying that. Change the language we use to talk about a subject and you change the nature of the discussion. Political correctness is not about avoiding upsetting people it is about creating a major shift in the cultural story. Convince people to stop using the old labels with all the cultural baggage and you force them to create new labels that will have new connotations attached.

 

[boomerang]

Top Ten Cities For African Americans

No. 1: Atlanta, GA
No. 2: Raleigh, NC
No. 3: Washington, DC
No. 4: Baltimore, MD
No. 4: Charlotte NC
No. 6: Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA
No. 7: Orlando, FL
No. 8: Miami, FL (tied)
No. 8: Richmond, VA (tied)
No. 8: San Antonio, TX (tied)

 

[Subyman]

Nice to see Atlanta on the top. Matches my experience while living there.

 

[fskimospy]

Nice to see Atlanta on the top. Matches my experience while living there.

Man is that a dumb list. Forbes has a history of doing these stupid pseudoscientific rankings.

It measures how 'good' an area is by what percentage of people own their own home, what percentage are self employed (wtf?), unadjusted median income, and unadjusted growth in population percentage.

The only one of those that is not a shit metric is potentially the growth in population percentage but even that one is highly problematic. The % self employed is simply baffling.

 

[CZroe]

Man is that a dumb list. Forbes has a history of doing these stupid pseudoscientific rankings.

It measures how 'good' an area is by what percentage of people own their own home, what percentage are self employed (wtf?), unadjusted median income, and unadjusted growth in population percentage.

The only one of those that is not a shit metric is potentially the growth in population percentage but even that one is highly problematic. The % self employed is simply baffling.

They sound like pretty good metrics to me. Obviously, society is not holding them back as much in those places.

 

[werepossum]

Competition is life. Life is competition.

SNIP

Not if one is a parasite. Then life is just finding an open spot and settling in to suck for life. And if anyone gets between you and your spot, well, that's hateful.

 

[fskimospy]

They sound like pretty good metrics to me. Obviously, society is not holding them back as much in those places.

Do they now?

1. Can you explain why home ownership is an intrinsically good thing? For example, Orlando, Florida ranks very highly on their list. It also happens to be one of the places in the country with the highest percentages of people who are underwater on their mortgage. Same with Miami. This tends to be particularly highly concentrated in groups like black people with lower median incomes, so for them it's even higher.

Do you think owning a home where you have negative equity is a good thing? According to Forbes it is.

2. Can you explain why someone is better off if they are self employed than if they were employed otherwise? That seems to be a totally made up metric. In this case if you're a street performer you're better off than being a vice president at a company because you're self employed.

3. Why median income is a good metric when not adjusting for cost of living? This is just common sense.

4. Percent change inherently overvalues places with small existing black populations.

I could go on. That list is /facepalm worthy.

EDIT: By this list if 1 black person moved to a town with no black people in it, bought a house that they went immediately underwater on and panhandled for a living that city would knock it out of the park. Sure they would be low on the median income scale, but the other 3 would be home runs, and all 4 are weighted equally.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Do you think owning a home where you have negative equity is a good thing? According to Forbes it is.

I think that America in general needs to change it's definition of 'Owning a home' to be 'Having majority equity in a home', because can you really say that you own a home that your lender still owns 90% of?