Just a simple argument against crapping on the "South".

We (what I perceive as a norm here at DU and in the general population) seem to always call the Pacific Northwest super liberal in terms of tolerance as compared to a perceived ugly monolith called "the South"; I however don't buy in to that theory; at least not when it counts in terms of race/sex/homophobic illegal violence. In other softer gentler ways perhaps. But...

Fun Fact - Portland is almost always heads above Charlotte in Hate Crimes as reported by the FBI. Crazy eh? In 2009 Portland had a hefty 35 incidents and Charlotte, NC (bigger by almost 200k and 35% African American while Portland is like 4% (at best) African American) had 9.

Huh? Oh and almost half (15) of the Portland incidents were attacks/incidents against gays. More than all of the Charlotte reports.

I've lived in all over this country and in other countries. There are shitheads and decent folks in all. North Carolina compared to places I've lived before, while having its own share of A-holes, is pretty damned decent.

Plus Chapel Hill (the oldest Public University in the USA) is still called "Commie Hill" by Reich-wingers. Asheville is a lefty, hippy, free-spirit mecca (although somewhat gentrified in the 90s and 00s). All of the major metro areas voted Obama (and all are mostly disappointed now but alas)...

My point is maybe best exemplified by the movie "Norma Rae": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079638/

It's easy (in varying degrees) to bitch about "the man" in super liberal areas. It takes a real physically aware toughness and guts, and a certain amount of insane feistiness, to do it in "the South". And there are a TON of those feisty types here.

I'm not trying to put down Oregon (I hope Oregon destroys Auburn in the BCS Championship!!!!) because I love many of its physical and historic heritages. My god the movie Reds ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reds_(film) )was centered on Portland Communists. Yes I appreciate that as I am am a fairly well known Socialist.

What I don't like are the broad brush strokes (in many threads which I will not call out here) that seeks the separation/alienation of all those not in the liberal "Valhalla's" which - aren't as pristinely perfect an "liberal" as advertised.

But the fact remains that we should all be in this together and not apart. It's like calling all black people the "N-word" and calling all "white people" either "crackers" or poor white people "trailer trash". I hate these dividing and demeaning terms.

All of these separating and dividing tactics of the working classes and so-called middle classes is ignorant and well "dividing".

Stop dividing please.

I think the "South" gets their bad reputation based on the politicians they elect.

In terms of elections I think the entire country is full of shit and at a loss when it comes down to which plutocrat/lackey one wants to represent their ideas.

Just saying

Just saying.

I've lived around Georgia since 1973. The state that elected Jimmy is not as different from the state that elected Shrub as you might think. A better look shows this state is purple, not red. There's only a few counties and/or cities where the religious, racist, homophobes really have their claws into local governments. While an awful lot of candidates chose to put an R in their name here, there are an awful lot of those who would be RINO's in Washington. Locally they just picked a side for the money.

When we moved here the D's were big. Then the governor decided to push through a state flag change without consulting the electorate. After that, the D's were sent to the desert. They'll make a come back at some point here in Georgia. There are just too many poor towns in Georgia that are resentful of the big money hogs in Atlanta and in DC and know they are getting screwed so somebody else can live high.

Not so much "liberal" or "progressive". regardless of the tag.

At least not where the poor and working class are concerned.

What good are they to the people? Their accomplishments are meager, their treacheries deadly, their 'gatekeeping' monumental.

Those stats are entirely dependent upon self reporting, first by the victim and then by the police department. I have lived in NC for six years now and your general point is well taken, but I do think that a gay hate crime victim in Portland is vastly more likely to report said crime as a hate crime than one in Charolette would be.

Seriously I don't buy the awareness/charging argument on this. Popular culture and the internet and everything else have made people aware. The South for all of its faults has been under a microscope regarding police and enforcement for decades. Under the assumption that people were cowed.

Does that equal at 4x hate rate?

and I could easily see one of the cuts being whomever's job it was to report this stuff to the FBI. I also do think that being willing to self report is a factor. As a gay teacher who is out, I still have to wonder if I would report a crime that was getting investigated in a way that I found acceptable as a hate crime. It is one thing to be out at work and quite another to be out in the press at large. I surely wouldn't do so as a closeted teacher.

Thus it vanished.

My short reply is this. Cuts so far have hit the schools and libraries (my wife is a librarian and the jobs are not there) and not the police and courts. I do not see recent budget cuts impacting 2009 and 2008 data due to budget cuts.

The last simple point is that awareness of fair housing and civil rights is bigger in NC thatn I think any state in the country. Assaults do get reported. The lawyers are there. The advocates are there.

has FAR more to do with classification and reporting by local authorities than any actual lack of hate crimes in Dixie. It's quite common to brush that sort of thing under the rug.

edit: The poster above beat me to it. Damn my slow typing.

Consider the fact that there are 37 hate groups in Tennessee and 37 in Georgia, per the SPLC. Now consider the land mass of these 2 states.

Next consider the sizes of Delaware with their (4) groups, Rhode Island with their (3), New Jersey with their (44), Maryland with their (13), D.C. with their (9) and Massachusetts with their (16). That amounts to 86 hate groups in Northern states that would collectively cover the same land mass area as either Georgia or Tennessee...

I think the only thing being brushed under the rug is that Northerners don't like to admit they are worse than the South when it comes to racism and hate crimes...

Land mass, my ass.

Got anything intelligent to add?

Police in the northeast and pacific coast are aggressive and consistent in labeling hate crimes as hate crimes. I don't know how southern police account for such crimes, but given a lot of republican politicians come from southern police, I would say that hate crime reporting by that group is lax, at best.

moved to FL from the northern states. However, many democrats ARE native Floridians. I don't see why people keep beating on the South.

They couldn't live in those places they grew up. I guess their kids and friends abandoned them, so the vote changes to alone and lonely losers.

Or you are admitting that Charlotte should be "spared" in the rush to condemn? The MSA v. the region?

Or that Portland is an anomaly? As in a fairly white place that has its fair, more than fair share, of violent assholes? Which geography are you claiming?

On another vein - Portland is considered a very liberal/progressive place, yes? Charlotte is considered the base of NASCAR. Not consider a particular liberal entity outside of Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Yet Charlotte for all of its faults isn't nearly at the ugly high level of hate crimes that Portland is. go figure.

"Why do Southerners get so worked up about where they're from? You know what people from the north think of the south? We don't!"

from northerners about southerners.

I just live here. I'm a Westerner/Midwesterner/Rocky-Mountainer by being raised in Kansas and California and Colorado.

Ok...I'll admit....I've been in NC now long enough to call myself, and start to think of myself, a North Carolinian. I doubt however that most people here would accept that outside of my lovely spouse and her family.

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is democraticunderground.com.

That has been the case for as long as I have been here.

down here. Ever. Just on DU.

of looking down on The Great Unwashed.

(I call such sad people fauxgressives.)

In the popular imagination, few people are more unwashed than Southerners, so we are a favorite target.

It's really weird, isn't it, coming here and learning that the people you live and work with are actually obsessed with refighting the Civil War. They never mention it to you, but somehow they have gotten the message to people posting on a message board from thousands of miles away.

you say, "Stop dividing please". That does not jive with making a jab about disappointment in Obama. I mean, the comment didn't even fit in with the rest of what you were saying.

IMHO, today was a good day. We just could have done without the snark; save it for that rainy day.

Just sayin'.

Massachusetts, with all the Dem party infrastructure, got rolled by that pretty idiot, Brown.

NJ elected Jabba the Hutt(R) governor.

California had Ahnold, although they are recently trying to make amends.

Maine, WTF is up with your Senators?

Indiana, what the hell is your problem? Didn't the KKK run your whole state not all that many years ago.?

Southern States? Yeah, we suck pretty bad. But there are pockets of resistance everywhere.

No one is doing great. No one is worthless.

works out of Montgomery Alabama. They do remarkable work in calling out racist hate groups. I'm a Chicagoan transplanted to a small town in Alabama. There are some truly scarey people living here, but I've found that the few liberals I come across are very liberal -- kind of like the old Southern liberals, many of whom populated FDR's cabinet and more than a few Supreme Court seats. It's bizarre really.

Whenever they want to rejoin America instead of trying to take it over & conquer it, I'll be happy to welcome them.

I live in the South and the Civil War is discussed far more often on Democratic Underground than at any time with my friends, neighbors and co-workers.

Seriously, trust me when I say that Southerner rarely discuss or concern ourselves with the Civil War. Hell, half the people who sport the battle flag of Northern Virginia don't even think about the Civil War. They're either racist or are fans of country music or "The Dukes of Hazzard."

It just seems that way, because the unreformed Johnny Rebs have the biggest, loudest mouths. They are a minority, however.

are usually more liberal in any region. It is the rural counties that skew elections and give regions their bad reps.

N. Carolina doesn't have as much as a bad rep because of its cities-- which have also received many transplants in the last 35 years from the Rust belt cities. Now South Carolina.... well, what can I say? Sorry?

Sorry but I just moved from Fort Mill...1 mile south of Charlotte and I am from Maryland.
Charlotte is the third Largest banking center in the United States. It has the Highest Per capita income in NC.
It also has one of the largest police forces if not the largest..in the state.
This is NOT your typical Southern Town.

Comparing it to the stereotypical Southern towns and their crime stats or in comparison to Portland is a straw man.

Now if you want to discuss the local mentality North vs South or NW vs South or SW then you might be able to mount a defense but it would still not hold up.

After 20 years in the Carolina's I can tell you the hate and racial undertones, the jokes and the EXCLUSION are much more prevalent there than in the Washington Metro area or for that matter Oregon.

They may have made their mark in other states, but there's no liberal like a Southern Liberal.

Yes, "stop dividing" please.

The first three people I put on it were unrelenting bashers of the state I live in, and of the South in general.

The mods have stepped up and will 86 posts like that if you just alert on them.

Other than that, your post is pretty much spot on.

As for wikipedia they have three contesting claims based on charters, private to public matriculation, actual gradations and openings. I'm not sure why the CoC is not there but I know it's a decent old school and know a graduate from there that loved it.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_public_university_in_the_United_States

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The state of North Carolina chartered the University of North Carolina in 1789, and construction on the campus began in 1793 near the center of the state. The university was the first public university in the country to admit students when it opened in 1795. Graduating its first class in 1798, UNC was the only public institution to confer degrees in the 18th century.<2>

University of Georgia

Located in Athens, Georgia, the University of Georgia received its charter from the state in 1785, making the University of Georgia the first state-chartered university in the United States. UGA brands itself as the "birthplace of the American system of higher education." However, the university did not select a site for the university or accept its first students until 1801.<1>


The College of William & Mary

Now a public university, The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia was founded by royal charter in 1693, making it one of the oldest colleges, public or private, in the United States. The college severed formal ties with England after the colonies declared independence, but remained private until financial troubles forced its closure after the Civil War. It re-opened in 1888, but continued financial troubles forced it to accept funding from the Commonwealth of Virginia beginning in 1906. It has been public ever since.<3>

Being from Charleston (but away from Charleston since 1982) this is what we were always told. I did look at Wikipedia and saw your information. I did see CofC mentioned somewhere, saying that it is the oldest "municipal" college in the US, the oldest south of Virginia and the 13th oldest in the US overall.
Still, pretty cool about the age of the US colleges & universities.

Otherwise... GREAT post!

(And I'm an SEC girl)

I love SEC football and basketball. I just hate modern southern politics and how conservative southerners look down on people from states that largely support their southern state economies with northern and pacific coast federal tax dollars.

First, I grew up in PA, lived in West Texas for a few year, DC area for a few years, and have lived in NC now for the last 20 years.)

The South's reputation struggles for a number of reasons.

1)Starting with the civil war. As some have mentioned, there are plenty of folks in the South who think the Confederates won. They celebrate it.

2)Segregation. It was far more pronounced in the South.

3)The switch of southern political leaders from Democrat to Republican after Civil rights passed.

4)In the majority of the Presidential elections since the civil rights movement, the "South" has been consistently "red". A few states turn blue from time to time (as NC did in 2008), but the South tends to be mostly red. And that image of a "red south" leads to a perception that "the south" is one place.

5)Most Senators from the south are still Republican. And since most of them are asshats, they don't do much to change the perception that the South is a monolithic entity.

I agree NC is great. Much better than lots of places. West Texas was bad. On the race and bigotry dimension, I tend to have found that the most blatant racism happens in the rural areas. Maybe because its easy to get away with it when their aren't lots of people around.

In a sad event in Wake county NC, the school board has reversed decades of integrated schools by pushing for a "neighborhood schooling model" which will, in effect, reinstate segregated schools.

Very nice and concise.
Fanned

the ridiculous broad-brushing on DU, but I remind myself that some of these people are just worn out and cranky from shoveling snow and scraping windshields and such.

:P

myself and my ancestors have been in this area since before the Revolutionary War. I used to get POed about the stereotyping of the South, but I just can't get that upset about it anymore. The fact is a LOT of the stereotyping is true. There's still a lot of racism, ignorance (not stupidity, but WILLFUL ignorance), and a HUGE reactionary element that's empowered here. I cannot and will not deny it. I've traveled all over and I don't think that other sections of the country are AS bad as my region.

That said, I think that people have to be REALLY careful stereotyping ALL Southerners as racist, ignorant, reactionary rednecks. As you said in your OP, there are a LOT of VERY left leaning people who live in the South. And they're not all young. Many of the economic populists are WAY old. They remember the good things FDR did for the region. We're all just outnumbered by the idiots. And as always, there are MANY "Blue dots" in seas of Republican Red. Every major city (Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, Memphis, etc.) and every University town is pretty darn left thinking.

HOwever the way to change this region (and it will be a LOOOOONG process) is through economic populism, NOT through a lecture. Don't whine about NASCAR, gun laws, and cultural issues. No matter how strongly felt, complaining about these issues will NOT change any minds. But if you talk about economis disparity, you can make headway because this area is STILL VERY poor comparitively speaking.

Quite frankly as a radical socialist, talking about the economic divide and the capitalist destruction of MOST of us is the way to frame the issue EVERYWHERE.

Do you agree/disagree with my premise about changing minds with economic arguments down here, rather than cultural ones? What's been your experience TBF?

I'm in Texas and I think it's really pretty similar around the midwest as well (where I'm originally from) - so many are religious and they've bought into the "god and family are republican" propaganda.

EVERYWHERE, not just in one particular section of the country. Haves stealing from the Have Nots IS the ultimate issue. The rest of it, no matter which side of the issue you're on, is just window dressing. If I can convince Bubba to support socialist POSITIONS on economic issues even if we dont' call them socialistic, then he can wave his Confederate battle flag till the proverbial cows come home and I won't give a tinker's damn about it.

I would also argue (and DO argue) that God is NOT a Republican OR a capitalist. There's nothing is religious literature of ANY type that shows a capitalist mindset, but MUCH that shows a socialistic attitude.

Eastern Washington and most of Idaho are pretty racist, and a deep shade of red. Fortunately, they vote for the repukes out in Spokanistan, where nobody lives, and we vote for progressives Dems in Pierce and King Counties, where everybody lives. So that helps.

The South does have a grand tradition of progressivism in many areas. I'll grant you that. But do you think you can get your regional compatriots to stop flying that f*****g flag, and talking about "heritage"?

Ask them, for me, if they're so patriotic, and love America so much, why do they fly the flag of an enemy nation that seized Federal property and fired on Federal troops?

The flag, etc. The things to talk about is why rich people keep stealing all the money and keeping it all for themselves.

By voting for republicans blindly.

THAT is the message to hammer on, not the cultural ones. If you can change minds on the economic issues (hard enough to do I admit), then the social/cultural issues will come around. Those cultural issues are what the capitalists use to divide and divert us from NOTICING the rich people robbing us blind.

in Oregon. Go anywhere east of the Cascades, and they are the majority.

I know. I live here, east of the Cascades.

Just as there are some really great left-of-center people in Florida, in the South, where ever the left is a minority.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

:kick:

For those who got what I was getting at with the OP, thank you. For those that may have not concurred thank you too. It has not been ugly which was actually expected. I love when my low expectations are soared over. I like like being proved wrong on some things.

It has been civil which was my utmost and most important goal.

Thank you all!

Maybe this has helped us all be a little more sensitive to other situations. And that not every place is perfect and all others should be shoved off the carrier landing strip.

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if the South would quit "crapping" on the rest of us by sending the likes of Jim Demint, Saxby Chamblis, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham to the national stage.

and, I know there are many "losers" on the North side as well, such as Christie from NJ and Boehner from Ohio (but in Ohio's defense, Boehner's district ought to be called "Northern Kentucky").

It just seems that the "south" sends a much more toxic and concentrated brand of filth into our body politics.

Want people to stop "crapping" on the South, then START ELECTING SOME SANE PEOPLE TO PUBLIC OFFICE. Maybe it would be nice if a "moderate" Democrat could carry a state like Georgia or Mississippi every once in awhile. Until then, I see nothing but a block of red throughout the "former" Confederate states.

Don't "blanking" send Rand Paul to the Senate in a "landslide", and then tell us about how "progressive" and "open-minded" the Southern people are.

Rand Paul???? Are you "blanking" serious??