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Do you think Northerners and Southerners can see race relations with the same perspective?

When I lived in Boulder, CO, we were all progressive as hell, of course, and that included espousing racial equality. Only thing is, there were a total of maybe 25 black people in the whole county (ok I exaggerate. It's a very white town.).
My mother was raised in Wisconsin and she even never saw a black person until she was 18.

By contrast, South Carolina was 54% black in 1780.

It seems like people who haven't lived in mixed race areas just don't get it. I think one has to live and go to school amongst the discrimination to know what it is.

CallMeDave 8 Feb 11
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9 comments

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1

I have traveled all over this country and I found it is pretty much everywhere. I heard it in Wyoming and I'm not sure there are any Black people there. In South Dakota they treat the Native Americans the way they treat Black people in other parts of the country. A lot of White people just seem to need to hate people of a different race. It is amazing how many of them are self-proclaimed Christians. It is so incredible STUPID!

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Y'know, @BenPike, I'm always thrown by the supposed difference of Northerners and Southerners when it comes to race. I was born in Pennsylvania, and my first serious boyfriend was black. It wasn't easy, and a lot of the time it was very hard to deal with the repercussions. There were violent incidents. A biracial boy who worked with me at my teen job committed suicide because of the abuse he took from both sides. The first burning cross I ever saw was on a lawn in an affluent suburb of Pittsburgh. I moved to the south at twenty. Well, kind of the south ... Florida. Different rules there. But still racism.

I guess my point is that we are among racial discrimination pretty much everywhere in the US. Different areas just dress it up prettier, and know when to talk around it.

Pennsylvania is a big state. Parts have been integrated for a long time. I wouldn't consider urban Philadelphia the same as Cowpie, Montana even though it is north of Mason and Dixon.
My point was that people see it differently if they have had no or very little exposure. Historically most of that was in the South. Less so as everyone moves.

"I think that in time the Jim Bonds are going to conquer the Western hemisphere. Of course it won't quite be in our time and of course as they spread towards the poles they will bleach out again like the rabbits and the birds do, so they won't show up so sharp against the snow. But it will still be Jim Bond; and so in a few thousand years, I who regard you will also have sprung from the loins of African kings." -Faulkner

1

Actually, I believe the real separation is not so much Northerners and Southerners as it is educated and uneducated. The North has a higher percentage who have not just graduated high school but who have also attended college. I believe that race relations is more about fear or the lack of it than any other specific item. The more educated one is the less there is to fear and therefore the less there is to hate. Also, religious practices enter the fray as well. The Catholic and Episcopalian churches tend to draw a more educated and intellectual audience and the fundamentalist and evangelical baptists (rampant in the southeast) are typically more poorly educated, ill-informed and therefore much less intellectual than northerners.

2

it is pretty hard to get out of the "birds of a feather" state of mind. most cruel racism is economical warfare

economic

4

I think that progressives are for the most part unbiased as to race wherever they live. I do think that this is reinforced by experience. Face it, there are assholes in all races. There are good, kind people of all races. The more one learns, the more they know that stereotypes are all flawed.

JK666 Level 7 Feb 12, 2018
3

Oh, yes. Most objective and unbiased people in both the north and south think alike about race relations. Irrational and bigoted people in both the north and south also think similarly. Unfortunately, bigotry is more dominantly imbedded in the southern culture.

Generally I would agree but do you remember the reaction in Boston when busing as a thing?

The bigotry was response to a threat. Slavery was an evil institution but an institution none the less.
Imagine being part of the South and having half the population go from zero-rights servants to supposedly equals all at once. This didn't happen in the North. Of course slavery had to end. Resentment and hatred trace back that far, I think.

2

Your last paragraph sums it up

5

I used to think that with time we'd see a reasoned approach to ending the majority of racism, until I spoke with a friend of mine from Alabama several months ago and she told me that slavery never existed. She said that the word didn't mean then what it means now, that black people weren't mistreated, that the arrangement was for the education of black people because education was expensive and black people had nowhere else to go, and that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. I provided articles of secession citing slavery as a primary reason, as well as laws that made educating black people (even if free) illegal with harsh penalties. She wouldn't accept it. When there's that degree of cognitive dissonance among white people in the south, I don't know how we can ever find common ground in regard to race relations.

The whole alternative facts issue worries me because that is the ultimate division or schism, when people can't agree on a what's real and what's not.

I just dope slapped my forehead for you.

1

Not currently, I would say.

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