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Sweet tea is horrible and the south is literally keeping the rest of us back.
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Jul 7, 2014 02:26
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I can't decide which I hate more, Southerners talking about sweet tea or Texans talking about Shiner Bock.
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Jul 7, 2014 02:29
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Rural and small town areas are pretty much universally poo poo, and unfortunately 'the south' basically contains only those. Sweet tea is liquid diabetes, and evangelical christianity is terrible. At least the orthodox/catholic church have cool traditions, american protestants pretty much just have bigotry and superstitious insanity those are my very nuanced, well thought out opinions, thanks for listening
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Jul 7, 2014 02:34
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There's nothing worse than being a tea drinker in the south. God help you ordering a tea in a restaurant without it coming back tasting like it's turning your teeth into dust as you gulp it down.
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Jul 7, 2014 02:55
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Stanos posted:There's nothing worse than being a tea drinker in the south. God help you ordering a tea in a restaurant without it coming back tasting like it's turning your teeth into dust as you gulp it down. I had lunch at a Cracker Barrel in south Georgia recently because why not. I ordered the sweet tea, and as someone who likes sweet tea, it was undrinkable. It tasted like sugar water with barely the faintest hint of tea in it. I could feel my pancreas hardening trying to process that poison. I quickly gave up and asked the waitress for water. Imagine if the Governor of Georgia went insane and tried to regulate the amount of sugar restaurants could mix into their tea. Sarah Palin would down a 40 ounce glass of tea-colored syrup on stage at CPAC before convulsing wildly to the standing applause of a crowd full of type-2 diabetics who want the government to keep its hands off their Medicare. The way Southerners brag about drinking tea so thick you can stand your spoon in it tells you everything you need to know about Southern culture.
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Jul 7, 2014 03:10
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It's weird because sweet tea where you can just barely taste the sugar is so much better and more refreshing than sugar water. Also, I loving hate sweet barbeque sauce.
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Jul 7, 2014 03:18
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Frostwerks posted:Also, I loving hate sweet barbeque sauce. This too. Why does everything have to be sweet in the South? Even the meat gets slathered in syrup. I remember the first time my grandmother tried nutella she didn't like it because it was too bitter. She did come around to it eventually, so there is hope.
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Jul 7, 2014 03:23
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What I've gleaned from this thread isn't that The South is particularly hosed up, it's that we in the US treat non-whites (especially blacks) like poo poo, and most non-whites live in the South. Correct? I grew up in Michigan, and whoever thinks that extreme racism is confined to the South has never spent much time around blue-collar Northern rustbelt types. I've heard "Detroit should be blown up" more times than I can count.
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Jul 7, 2014 03:24
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Sucrose posted:What I've gleaned from this thread isn't that The South is particularly hosed up, it's that we in the US treat non-whites like poo poo, and most non-whites live in the South. Correct? I grew up in Michigan, and whoever thinks that extreme racism is confined to the South has never spent much time around blue-collar Northern rustbelt types. I've heard "Detroit should be blown up" more times than I can count. The South has turned being a racist, regressive shithead into a cultural identity. This culture is present everywhere, but nowhere is it as ubiquitous as it is in the South. Everywhere is hosed up; the South is particularly hosed up.
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Jul 7, 2014 03:26
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Frostwerks posted:It's weird because sweet tea where you can just barely taste the sugar is so much better and more refreshing than sugar water. Also, I loving hate sweet barbeque sauce. That's usually how it is in Texas, a lot less sugar than to the east generally. Unsweet + one or maybe two packs of fake sugar is the most refreshing poo poo.
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Jul 7, 2014 03:26
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Jastiger, OP of the GBS thread in question, here. A lot of the issues go back to the time of initial colonization. The entire culture from the infrastructure to the recreation to the political process to the economy was built upon the free and/or cheap labor of blacks and poor whites. This means that generational wealth concentration, land boundaries, and social power all became concentrated in the hands of a relative few white land owners. Over the years this built into the power blocks that we're familiar with that the rest of the country has been fighting ever since. Things from the 3/5ths compromise to Iowa becoming a free state in relation to Texas' slave state status. The trouble is that Reconstruction was never really 100% done and in an effort to appease Southern sympathizers all of that generational power, wealth, and social power was never really disrupted. Sure, laws were passed that forced some schools to integrate or outlawed anti-miscegenation laws, but all of the political and social capital remained right where it was-and that capital was far from interested in investment in infrastructure and social equality. You can see it from the small resurgence of black and populist politicians being beaten back with violence both physical and economic to reestablish things like Jim Crow and literacy tests. The laws had changed but the culture and levers of power had not. We see it today with gerrymandering of votes and obstinate resistance to raising taxes for a failing infrastructure. The free labor is gone so the South had turned to the Federal teat while chomping on it all the while in resentment. This means anti-intellectualism and tribalism are more powerful than any chart or graph we can objectively show. So we get abstinence only laws, a clinging to "guns and religion", a refusal to recognize that the ships sailed past them in 1865 and they've bitterly dropped anchor. The South is responsible for climate change even being a "thing". Responsible for "voter ID laws" that target minorities. Responsible for imperialist war mongering in the Middle East and pretty much every where else. Responsible for the retardation of our green energy initiatives and our dependence on fossil fuels. Responsible for religious tests for office for our highest offices. Even though a lot of people in the cities may oppose all of these things, the South keeps sending these politicians to office and create a cultural identity around being intentionally obtuse which in turn brings the rest of the states down due to the sharing of powers between all 50 states. In short, the South needs to sort itself out. People in the cities need to VOTE and leave their religious bullshit at the door. Civilization bastions like Austin, Houston, Mobile, Atlanta, and Little Rock need to stop letting the Rush Limbaughs define their states and turn to their universities for actual solutions to their actual problems instead of chasing after made-up ones. Or, we can send Sherman 2.0 through and do it ourselves.
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Jul 7, 2014 03:39
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e_angst posted:Texas is definitely culturally Southern, at least everything East of I-35 is, but we did a good job of pivoting post-reconstruction into being a "Western" state. State history classes in Texas focused on our winning independence from Mexico, not our loss as part of the confederacy. Gave us more pride than the other confederate losers, so while they basically doubled-down on the southern thing, we kind of kept it at arm's length. Those same history classes that talked about how we should remember the Alamo would also focus on Sam Houston's bitter rejection of succession. A century of young Texans had an education that framed the whole thing was just a dumb goof. The confederacy wasn't a big part of our history, it was just one of the six flags that flew over the state during it's history. Well to be fair Texas didn't really *do* much in the Civil War either. It was cut off after they lost New Orleans and most of the war typically focused on Virginia et all instead. Typical Pubbie posted:This too. Why does everything have to be sweet in the South? Even the meat gets slathered in syrup. I remember the first time my grandmother tried nutella she didn't like it because it was too bitter. She did come around to it eventually, so there is hope. Texas BBQ does not use sweet sauce so that's a point in its favor for not being southern.  (At least Central Texas BBQ which is my personal favorite)
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Jul 7, 2014 03:57
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This February held possibly the biggest American civil rights rally since the 1960s, part of protest movement called Moral Mondays in defense of voting rights, women's rights, and Medicaid.
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Jul 7, 2014 03:59
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Speaking as someone from one of those awkward In-the-South-yet-not-Southern areas (Central/South Florida), the system won't change unless things go completely to hell or someone forces it to. The Democratic party in this state is a punchline and the state government is on GOP lockdown despite Florida often swinging blue in presidential elections. The entire system is hosed and unfucking it will require a great deal of force.
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Jul 7, 2014 04:00
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Jastiger posted:In short, the South needs to sort itself out. People in the cities need to VOTE and leave their religious bullshit at the door. Civilization bastions like Austin, Houston, Mobile, Atlanta, and Little Rock need to stop letting the Rush Limbaughs define their states and turn to their universities for actual solutions to their actual problems instead of chasing after made-up ones. Where do I sign up for the Sherman 2.0 thing? Honestly, Austin, Houston, ATL, et. al are not as progressive as the dramatic media coverage would have you believe. I've lived in Austin for 4 years and there's so much crazy poo poo that goes on here that gets ignored or swept under the rug because Austin is the "liberal part of Texas" that it's insane. I can't wait to move back north.
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Jul 7, 2014 04:04
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Rap Record Hoarder posted:Where do I sign up for the Sherman 2.0 thing? Atlanta is actually really progressive. We didn't earn the title "The City Too Busy To Hate" for nothing.
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Jul 7, 2014 04:15
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I grew up in Eastern NC. Moved to NYC when I was 17 and have lived there for 12 years. The South needs to learn that other cultures can and do exist. Differences ways of life can be had and everyone can coexist among them. The South as I know it is very insular and proud to the point that no other cultures should exist. A lot of cultures have something of that xenophobic aspect but it's really at the core of Southernism. Its in the culture and the politics. So I guess my suggestion would be to somehow expose people to more things, both academic and cultural. Show them places around the world and how other people do things. Different things can be cool and fun  .And yea, that's a pretty sweeping diagnosis and some Southerners are pretty cool and open. But this is the general feel I have. And it can also be applied to most poor, rural areas anywhere where the schools are bad and things don't change much. But as I said, the South has a certain...pride about its insularity.
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Jul 7, 2014 04:30
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Are there any benefits in being a minority in the south? It's not a trick question, I just can't think of any at all. I have visited the south a lot because I have relatives there but it's definitely not a place I would choose to settle. Too much racial and economic stratification everywhere. The food and geography is good though. I love the smokey mtns and rivers in the south.
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Jul 7, 2014 04:36
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HonorableTB posted:I believe it's important because of regional pride. It may be a really silly notion, but Southerners are proud to be Southern. And there's also a really big internal debate about what states ARE considered Southern. By and large, everyone accepts what the "Deep South" states are. There's more ambiguity about Kentucky, Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, West Virginia, and Maryland. Some people support labeling those states as Southern states, and some people think there's a difference in those states that amounts to economic, cultural, and regional differences. If we're going to discuss a region, I feel that it is necessary to properly lay out what areas we're discussing. I get that Southern identity is a big thing, though I still don't see how that makes state boundaries hard and fast demarcations for what's "the South" and what isn't. For example, I've seen and met (as a life-long Oklahoma resident) plenty of people around here who also self-identify as "Southern," complete with the various trappings of Southern culture. However, stinkles1112 posted:Oklahomans would much rather be though of as cowboys and westerners (in the classic, western-movie sense) than they would southerners. is true if you want to add "most" to the beginning of that statement. And, again, it matters where you are in the state. Idabel (far southeastern Oklahoma) is worlds away culturally from Woodward (near the panhandle). In Oklahoma there's a cultural and geographical split between the eastern and western regions of the state, with the (south)eastern parts much more "Southern" and the western parts (surprise!) much more "Western" in identity. Take a look at this map of plurality ethnic groups by county in the U.S. in the 2000 census. As you can see, there's a split in how plurality white counties identify themselves--in the North, Midwest and West whites identify as the ethnic group of their ancestors whereas Southern whites identify as "American." And Oklahoma? For the counties that are (were, I suppose) plurality white, there's a split running diagonally from the southwest to the northeast. I don't think regional pride or self-identification makes for a good reason to exclude certain parts of the country from this discussion based purely on boundaries. See also northern Florida, as that came up in the discussion. Gravity Pike posted:Well, for one thing, politics tends to occur within state, county, and city boundaries. Labor laws, minimum wage, taxes, and welfare programs all tend to be controlled at the state level, and these all contribute immensely to institutional racism. A higher minimum wage means that women and minorities have a higher standard of living. Lax labor law enforcement empowers (usually white, upper-middle-class) business owners to steal from (usually poorer, usually less-educated, often minority) employees. This, however, makes more sense. I mentioned the white primary as a reason Oklahoma could be included as a Southern state; that's a political issue, and would be a reasonable way to include or exclude whole states from the discussion. Sheng-ji Yang posted:I think it's hilarious that someone posting "Please don't start a debate about what is and isn't the South" started a debate about what is and isn't the South. I neither said nor implied "please don't have this discussion," it was "this discussion is going to happen sooner or later, so I guess let's go ahead and have it." vintagepurple posted:I think it's worth making clear (especially to people not from the South) that being liberal and not-racist doesn't disqualify a place from being "southern." Progressivism in the US is very much a rural vs urban thing, inside and outside of the South. This is something that a lot of people, including about 90% of people who either hate things from the South or hate the region wholesale don't grasp. Most things politically left-oriented Americans despise (evangelical protestantism, institutional/social racism, etc.) project on the South and the South only without understanding that those things, while being more concentrated in the South, really are parts of rural culture throughout the country. Again, there's some truth in the prejudice against the South (I'm not going to try to say that institutional and/or social racism isn't a problem or even isn't concentrated in the South), but if you think racism begins and ends at the Mason-Dixon line then boy howdy...
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Jul 7, 2014 04:43
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Nearly lifelong South Carolinian chiming in here. One big broad thing: Small rural towns exist everywhere. Go to the right places in Connecticut and you'll see confederate flags and don't tread on me stickers. Now some South Carolina things. I was pleasantly happy to see that South Carolina was only in the 75% worst of most of the graphs in the OP. But the problem with my state largely boils down to three big issues: 1) Anti-intellectualism: Without getting into church too much, it seems a far better weight of a person's character is their lineage and their religion. There have been countless threads here where people talk about that. Unfortunately, it seems to have seeped into legislature, resulting in defunding of higher education programs resulting in higher tuition, legislature trying to yank funding for use of text books in Universities. At the same time, literally every school in South Carolina is a university that offers a graduate degree; result is a lot of post-bacchaleaureate degrees that aren't worth the paper they're written on. The corridor of shame is a drain on the entire intellectual status of my state that no one, outside of the localize black politicians, wants to do anything about. At the same time, we provide multiple magnet / gifted schools for talented children, but don't really give a poo poo about threst. 2) Pro-Corruption A large problem with the south, which some people have already mentioned, is the good 'ol boy network of nepotism and back-rubs. But it's worse than that. South Carolina has one of the lowest rates of government corruption in the nation (cause, you know, all those terrible unions and mob politicians and such). As it turns out, South Carolina only holds that title because the statistics are skewed against actually measuring corruption (charges vs. convictions, see http://www.fitsnews.com/2013/09/03/south-carolina-is-the-least-corrupt-state/). Recently, the 42 year tenured Sheriff of Lexington county was indicted on bribery charges, along with his counties councilman and a neighboring counties sheriff. 42 year tenure. And that's only one of the 8 sheriffs that have been indicted in the last 4 years. The poo poo runs rampant. 3) Anti-Labor No minimum wage? Check. Right to work? Check. No collective bargaining? Check. We only recently started providing some level of tax breaks to large corporations looking to set up North American headquarters to stop the merciless brain drain that is happening in the state. But rumors have it that BMW isn't particularly happy with the quality of workforce they're getting from all their plants. Those are my big three. It's not even a racism or social mobility or racial divide thing. Everythings crooked from the bottom up and from the top down. Also, Nikki Haley, Mark Sanford, Lindsay Graham, Joe Wilson, Mark Sanford (Congressman this time) and every other politicians we've had that's been down for private school vouchers and slashing education. But a small price to pay to be able to wake up at the beach and go to sleep in the mountains. Fake edit: Did you know the state just passed a law allowing citizens holding a CWP to carry in bars as long as they're on their best behavior and don't drink? 
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Jul 7, 2014 04:45
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I'm from the Mississippi Delta and still live in Jackson, MS and the thing that's the most irritating to me, particularly in the Delta, is this weird behavior that we somehow live in a post racial society. People think that just because a black man can walk into a store and not immediately get beaten or killed (for the most part) that all of a sudden all of our problems are solved! It's embarrassing and I'm really disappointed that the Anthony Bourdain show recently on the Delta didn't dig deep into it. It just glossed over everything. Also I remember being on the set of some movie being filmed down here a few years ago and talking to some Iranian stunt guys who were asking about the confederate flag. I said "people here like to bullshit about how it's somehow about 'heritage or hate' but it's straight up a racist sentiment." A black guy was walking buy and said "that's the first time I've ever heard a white person from Mississippi say that.... I'm gonna friend you on facebook." and he did and we are now facebook friends.
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Jul 7, 2014 04:45
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Modus Operandi posted:Are there any benefits in being a minority in the south? It's not a trick question, I just can't think of any at all. College football scholarships?
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Jul 7, 2014 04:47
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Jastiger posted:Jastiger, OP of the GBS thread in question, here. I think this alludes to why the South is the way it is, as far as being (on the whole) poorer, more socially and economically unequal, and more conservative than the rest of the country. De Tocqueville in Democracy in America noticed how different Southern society was from Northern, even beyond the institution of slavery. He noted that it was much, much more aristocratic and "feudal"--more "old world" than the rest of the country, and this was in the 1830s. A comparison can be made, I think, to Italian culture and politics today. They too have a pretty stark contrast in culture and economics between northern and southern parts of their country. Northern Italy was rid of feudal institutions and industrialized much sooner than Southern Italy did, which to this day still has a primarily agricultural economy. Southern Italy has higher levels of inequality, is more conservative and religious than the north, etc... I won't claim to be an expert, but I'm under the impression that part of the reason why organized crime is such a thing in southern Italy has to do with the "feudal" mindset inherited from centuries past. This is probably stretching the analogy a bit, as I really can't think of an American South analog, but the way power and land was organized in both the American South and Italy centuries ago has very real, direct repercussions today. When wealth, land and power were as concentrated as they were from the 17th-19th centuries, and those things are passed down through inheritance (thus excluding blacks and other minorities, because God knows anyone of status wasn't having official relations with other races), you have the gross inequalities of today.
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Jul 7, 2014 04:58
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Modus Operandi posted:Are there any benefits in being a minority in the south? It's not a trick question, I just can't think of any at all. No, not really.
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Jul 7, 2014 05:13
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Jastiger posted:Or, we can send Sherman 2.0 through and do it ourselves. So your options are 'literally committing war crimes' vs. help those progressives that do, in fact, live in and know something about the South (you're excluded from this, knowing literally jack all about the South as evidenced in this thread and your PYF thread that was thrown into FYD then burned to the ground.) I think maybe working with the current progressives to make reddish purple states into purple, and eventually blue states is the way to go. Mostly because - the way you, and posters like you in this thread an others talk about Southerners, the only thing you're ever going to accomplish is getting them to hold onto their guns more tightly and be less accepting of change. Nobody changes when they're attacked, they may roll over but they'll secretly harbor negativity. You have as much understanding of Southern culture as a Louisiana hillbilly does of Sunni Muslims. The issue is, in all places, a lack of ability to think like the person across from them, and that spans from Louisiana hillbillies to idiotic forums posters with J-names. Also, Texas is a bit of a different thing in terms of whether it is the South or not. It's safe enough to include it in discussions about the South, but it has oddly progressive movements within it, especially in the major cities which are the vast majority of the population (Houston has had an openly gay mayor for 4 years as an example.) The real issue in places like Texas, where a strong and accepting urban population is being choked by a spread of rural idiocy is mostly gerrymandering and other political dickery. The real way to get the South to be more progressive is to understand them, speak to them in ways that don't belittle them, and convince them that you've their best interests in heart. Your alternative is literally. Jastiger posted:gently caress them because of where they were born amirite? lawl lets literally murder everyone there and repopulate it with people i approve of. isnt racism and classism and stuff bad lol
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Jul 7, 2014 05:14
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Modus Operandi posted:Are there any benefits in being a minority in the south? It's not a trick question, I just can't think of any at all. If you're black there's a fairly large support group you can draw from (e.g. friends and family) that are from the area. Also as noted on the previous page you're more likely to be poor in Vermont, Michigan, Ohio, etc than the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, or Texas.
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Jul 7, 2014 05:17
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Hello everyone. I was born in Atlanta and like some sort of sordid creature born in the belly of the beast I thought I might try and give my personal insight that goes a bit deeper than sweet tea. I can't speak much directly about rural issues. To jump to the short conclusion of what might help, it is basically this: Abel Wingnut posted:So I guess my suggestion would be to somehow expose people to more things, both academic and cultural. Show them places around the world and how other people do things. Different things can be cool and fun Fighting for better internet access for everyone and movements like the open wireless movement (https://openwireless.org/) with a related culture of everyday learning is my one suggestion for trying to open peoples minds. Politically I would say pretty explicit democratic socialism is needed across America. Anywho,  This is me on the far left at "Manners School" in the late 20th century. My Grandmother was the daughter of a British colonial in South Africa and married twice- the second time to a Coca Cola executive. I never met my Grandfather. My Father along with his brothers started out of a garage with my Grandfather but grew to small-medium level industrialists in wholesale food distribution and at their height employed something like 300~ employees- mostly people of very low education and Black. My Father sold at a good time before basically every small-medium independent food distributor were completely eaten up by the large conglomerates and none exist now. They call this capital accumulation.  This is me in what I was taught was the supposed high-ideal social environment laid out for me. This is a "very exclusive country club" in Atlanta (it features very heavily in the Tom Wolfe book A Man In Full) that formerly did not allow Blacks and Jewish people as members (It also got it in the news recently because a bunch of members were acting like frat boy shitheels at a golf tournament and getting their dicks out and so on). If you fail to pay the significant dues at this club your name and amount owing gets posted publicly as a sort of no-mercy shaming exercise. Gaining membership to this club for my father who came from a pretty poor background was supposed to be the sort of sign he had "made it". We were, despite our significant comforts, among the poorest members of this club. I don't say this to garner any sympathy but basically to observe that we were some of the newer additions. Until just a year ago I still had residual privileges to access the place so when I was back in Atlanta of course I visited there and got to try eating Quail and had mind-numbing conversations in the mens locker room with some good old boys. Im happy to elaborate but don't want to rant too much but the whole stack of social cards that my father was taught to work for and laid onto me started to fall down when my eldest brother started to display pretty severe schizophrenia and basically through that whole process my family got exposed to the everyday injustice/failure that is: 1. Georgia's criminal justice system 2. Georgia's mental health care system 3. The lack of compassion or understanding among this 'higher class' for the suffering of others... even people that are 95% like them. These three things are readily acknowledged by my Father but he basically can't seem to bring himself to really think about them in any way that has anything to do with class or positive liberty. I have met/observed/seen lots of crap that I associate with the American South in terms of religion, gender, race and so on but I reduce these issues largely down to economic class. The current class system is built upon racism, and race is a modality which class is experienced. I view that the real thing that keeps these lovely social conditions is the comfortable insularity of the kinds of people at the club and elsewhere from examining or being confronted with these class differences. The poo poo that ultimately becomes to oppressive is just how much goes unchallenged or unconsidered in their lives and how much social stature they have. I don't know any of them that are really making productive enterprises that actually make peoples lives better .... what keeps them there are gains from stocks, capital investments and so on. You aren't going to truly affect the attitudes and insularity of these people until something or some external force effectively forces and shakes them out. In my family's case it was being taken out by mental illness and facing problems that well, more regular people face. In terms of observation I would say that most capital really seems to be accumulating above the people who have some that still socially dominate the South and local politics and so on. To the guy who said we should be doing a Sherman 2.0 I say lift your game up. The bigger bosses aren't in the South. So yeah, you want me to prescribe a solution? pretty much explicit socialism. I liquidated my small inherited stock in Coca Cola earlier this year and put it into a productive social enterprise because I knew to myself that I had to put up or shut up and guilt means nothing to anyone. I now work from an old warehouse in a pretty deprived historic area and a needle exchange and prostitutes collective are my neighbours. I wouldn't have it any differently. War to the loving palaces in the South and everywhere. Jacobin fucked around with this message at 07:19 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 7, 2014 05:56
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FYI RE Southern Food this menu is much better than Sweet Tea: http://colonnadeatl.com/ This is also a fine and only partly artery clogging mix of actual Southern Food:  (Pictured: Broiled Shrimp, Lima Beans, Country Fried Chicken, Stewed Corn, Squash, Fried Okra, Collard Greens)
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Jul 7, 2014 06:02
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Jacobin gets it. The problem is not 'The South'. That is 100% as ignorant as saying that the problem is 'The Blacks'. If you want things to improve, socialism and leftist ideas are the way to go. I say that as a guy born and raised in the upper middle class, with a story somewhat similar to Jacobin's. I'm also literally a socialist, and I'm far from alone in being a southern liberal, the conservative madness has created a fairly strong counter culture that should and can be tapped by other progressives if they'll drop the stereotyping and jingoism because people were born to drink sweet tea and eat fried chicken, not drink Faygo and eat cheese curds.
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Jul 7, 2014 06:24
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It's massive wealth inequality, it's that simple. The South is the precursor for the rest of the nation if the wealth gap continues as it is. People who blame racism or whatever are simply displaying their own prejudices. The same misogamy/racism inherent in cronyism exist in the north; wall streets, lawyers/judgeship, Ivys.. The past is always an anchor to the future
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Jul 7, 2014 06:30
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Alabamian, here. My family aren't southerners, but I've lived in the south for 22 years (moved here as a kid). I respect and admire some parts of southern culture, but I've never been able to jive with the south or fit into southern culture. Minority-majority cities don't mean less racism. I've spent the past six years in Montgomery (and partly the past two in Auburn). White people there are still pretty racist. The white-flight towns are worse about it, though, and are kinda snotty about Montgomery. As for Auburn, I've seen way more racism out of the kids not from Alabama/the south, or from non-southern parents from so-called "progressive bastions" like Huntsville. Greek culture is pretty prevalent in AU & UA. I'm guessing it's like that for most southern state schools, but I'm going off of what I have experienced myself. Obvi football is pretty big here, and I think the class divide of Alabama vs Auburn fans is kind of fascinating. Basically, Alabama fans are generally more working class, Auburn, middle-upper middle class. I worked for two companies where nearly the entire front office went for Auburn, while back of the house/warehousing went for Alabama. And the joke goes, if you're wearing an Auburn shirt, you went to Auburn, if you're wearing an Alabama shirt, you went to Wal-mart. This place can be pretty classist, but racism tends to trump classism. Meaning, generally, it's a hell of a lot easier for someone lower-class and white to move up than black. I like that Montgomery is, I think, improving, but I just don't have the will or energy to stay here and try make it better. Plus, I'm just not southern enough to fit in. I'll be glad to leave this place.
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Jul 7, 2014 06:31
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Sucrose posted:I've heard "Detroit should be blown up" more times than I can count. poo poo, I've heard this all the way in CA from people who have never left the state. :/
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Jul 7, 2014 07:08
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The south has a higher concentration of lovely people then anywhere else in the country but this forum has a disturbing trend of masturbating over destroying the south the same way teabaggers fantasize about RAHOWA. Joking around at the expense of shithead Neo-Confederates is cool but if you sincerely want to kill people just because they are from some specific region then you really are no better then any white supremacist scumlord. (And I say this as a person who is as northern as you can get)
Axetrain fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 7, 2014 07:19
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The South has and has always had a more extreme concentration of wealth than the North. Piketty compares the South and North to Britain and France in 1810 on page 161 of Capital in the 21st Century. I'll post some graphs later if I can. Essentially, the system of slavery overcame the relative abundance of land, which gave the South a capital stock equivalent to 6+ years of national income. That level of concentration is approximately in line with Britain and France. The North, by contrast, had a capital stock equivalent to 3+ years of national income. The end of slavery brought K/I in the South more in line with the North, but persistent racism and general backwardness even through the middle of the last century means the south still has the greatest level of wealth inequality of any region in the USA. But, really, this wouldn't be a problem if the South was actively developing a Leftist political movement. I've become reconciled to the fact that we can't just Shermanate the South, and the vast majority of people in the South should be our natural allies in the fight against the capitalist class. Unfortunately, they are electing these people:  http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/09/meadows-boehner-defund-obamacare-suicide-caucus-geography.html To be fair though, Indiana and Ohio also need to GTFO
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Jul 7, 2014 12:59
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Rap Record Hoarder posted:No, not really. Unless the trend has recently reversed, black Americans in the north are generally moving south. For most of us, including me, that's where the majority of our families are. Femur posted:It's massive wealth inequality, it's that simple. Nah. Wealth inequality and race in America are intertwined, and this is true in all regions of the country. In the South, it's just more intense and blatant. Ignoring the racial aspect of it in order to say it's just about wealth is impossible and kinda silly.
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Jul 7, 2014 13:37
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I think the idea is that wealth inequality is at the heart of it. I don't know enough about the history and class warfare to really get in to it. But the elites that run things made an effort to shift the anger of working class whites onto the black minority. The rural poor whites and blacks should have been natural allies. A great deal of white southerners blame the shittyness of the area on the black population instead of on the antilabor policys and corruption of the people who run things. Wealth inequality caused the anger, which was then shifted onto the convient scapegoat of a minority population. I could be wrong of course, but I think that this it the thinking behind the idea that all war is class war, and wealth inequality is the behind the scenes driver of many problems including racism.
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Jul 7, 2014 14:04
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Zeroisanumber posted:You've got a bad political culture built on apathy and good old boy networks that stretch back to Reconstruction (or even further). The best play to break that stranglehold would be to find run locals on a centrist, economy-focused platform after you've spent the previous dozen years building up a volunteer network and voter rolls. HonorableTB posted:Southern states (except for Texas, which isn't really "Southern" per se) take in more Federal tax dollars for aid than they pay back every year To understand the current problems you need to realize that Reconstruction never ended. That is why the chart is the way it is. Southern states get huge amounts of tax dollars from the Fed, this allows them to run with less local tax and offer incentives to businesses to relocate to the South. It also feeds into the Republican core belief that you can have tax less and spend more, because the Feds are footing the bill a disproportionate amount.
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Jul 7, 2014 14:05
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TipTow posted:This is something that a lot of people, including about 90% of people who either hate things from the South or hate the region wholesale don't grasp. Most things politically left-oriented Americans despise (evangelical protestantism, institutional/social racism, etc.) project on the South and the South only without understanding that those things, while being more concentrated in the South, really are parts of rural culture throughout the country. Again, there's some truth in the prejudice against the South (I'm not going to try to say that institutional and/or social racism isn't a problem or even isn't concentrated in the South), but if you think racism begins and ends at the Mason-Dixon line then boy howdy... Without the South, the rest of the country wouldn't have an easy place to point to when they wanted to feel morally superior. EDIT: Xae posted:Southern states get huge amounts of tax dollars from the Fed, this allows them to run with less local tax and offer incentives to businesses to relocate to the South. Which is getting interesting now that Tea Party politicians are starting to win in the South. The population has been fed the government-services-are-evil idea for so long they don't realize how much help they are getting on the federal level. So now they are electing house members that are slashing those benefits because they drank the kook-aid. These guys won't be brining back the pork in the same way the good ol' boys did, and the South is gonna be a lot worse off as a result. e_angst fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 7, 2014 14:19
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WorldsStrongestNerd posted:I could be wrong of course, but I think that this it the thinking behind the idea that all war is class war, and wealth inequality is the behind the scenes driver of many problems including racism. I understand the idea behind it, and I disagree with it, especially given the way the poster I quoted did the goofy thing where people who think racism is part of the problem are the real racists. Downplaying the racial aspect of wealth inequality doesn't do anyone any real favors, it just closes off an important part of the conversation. It's not like racism eventually grew out of already-extant wealth inequality in this country, the two are very much predicated on one another, which is my point. To put it another way, if you don't want to acknowledge race, you can't really understand class in a society like ours.
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Jul 7, 2014 14:21
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Just take a look at the most segregated metro areas in the US. Note that most of them are in the Rust Belt, unambiguously located in the "North." To paint institutional racism as a Southern phenomenon is disingenuous.
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Jul 7, 2014 14:21
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