Dear The South, You Are Ridiculous, Love, Oliver
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This NY Times article is discussing how, supposedly, the south has changed with regard to race and how one local black pol was elected in a racist area. That’s nice and all but as this passage makes clear, the same old B.S. remains:
Once, when I visited Peek’s shop alone, Peek told me: ‘James is not like any black man that I know. He’s just different. He just don’t have that mentality, anybody owes him anything. He just gets out and works and helps people, earns what he gets. If James wasn’t black, you’d think he was white. That doesn’t sound right, but you know what I mean.’
Everybody in Cullman knows what he means, perhaps most especially the men who gather weekday mornings at a round table at the All Steak restaurant, where many of them spent much of this past year not getting over the fact of an African-American president. The group fortified themselves with daily doses of rue — ‘Thought I’d never see it’— dared one another to use ‘the N-word’ in front of a Yankee and shared memories of how Cullman used to be — ‘They were afraid to come to town.’ One day in September, a retired Alabama state trooper named Charlie Shafer leaned back from his eggs and asked, ‘Have you all ever stopped to consider how much better off the country would be if Obama’d been. . . . ’ Quick and fast came the replies:
‘White.’
‘Died in childbirth.’
Look, I guess there are two ideas about the south: one is to work down there for change, turning the tide of racism one household at a time. The other is to let them just stew in their own juices, and trying to do what can be done with the rest of rational, less prejudiced America to improve this country.
The civil rights movement began over half a century ago, and there are people like this still?
I’m in the second camp.
44 Responses to “Dear The South, You Are Ridiculous, Love, Oliver”
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There will ALWAYS be people like that, it’s just a matter of degree and percentage. If you looked hard enough, you’d probably find people like not living not that far away from you.
I think that if we let the south stew in its own juices, it’ll becoming a festering boil of pus that infects the entire country.
“The South?” Sorry, but I’ve been all over the world and lived all over this country, and I’ve seen pockets of deep racism everywhere I’ve gone. It’s particularly bad in the Western states. It’s just that the South has a longer history and more publicity on the subject.
I guess I prefer fresh thinking over trotting out the same old cliches and stereotypes.
Fred Hiatt will probably hire the guys from the All Steak restaurant to be columnists
It’s funny how “good whites” incessantly work non-stop to convince each other how not-racist white folks are, and then demonstrate the exact opposite.
Just goes to show you – if you get enough people in on the lie, the truth simply doesn’t matter. It’s good being the fox guarding the henhouse.
As I’ve noted here several times before, my hometown in Iowa is no different. Go the local bars on any given night, and it’s a constant stream of nigger this and faggot that. No coded phrases at all. Shoulda heard these jackasses after the IA Supreme Court overturned the law against same-sex marriage. No a word about the legal issues; just a bunch of dumbasses freakin out that the queers were gonna try to “turn” their boys gay. But I’m sure these guys are just an isolated outlier; and not at all representative of the average GOP supporter. When the Cheney administration was runnin the show, everything that crew did was okie-dokie with the good ol boys sittin there at the bar.
And trolls: Don’t even try the old “How do you know they were Republicans?” Wanna know how I know? The parking lots are full of Bush-Cheney ’04 bumper stickers and Rebel flag decals in the truck windows. I grew up with these guys. A few of them I still consider friends. Trust me, I know who they vote for and who they don’t. They make it a point to let me know. And this is in Iowa. Not Alabama or Misssissippi.
They will never change. They don’t have enough close contact with Blacks they respect, or any Blacks at all, to make enough exceptions, like they did with ‘James’, for their prejudges to collapse.
It’s a process of making enough one-on-one exceptions to the “rules” one’s been taught by their parents, the media, whomever. Self imposed segregation prohibits that from happening.
Thanks for lumping us all in one category. Everybody who lives in the south must be racist, they live in the south after all. You know what Oliver? Racism is everywhere. Go talk to the Indians out west, or Asians on the west coast. I am one of your biggest fans but you need to get over this stereotype. Seriously.
It’s painfully slow sometimes, but the tide is turning. The sons of these cretins are better than their fathers, and the grandsons will be better still. Within the next couple of decades the old south will be blue, or will drag the reds in the blue direction.
Yeah, but dude, South Carolina.
Dude, Wyoming.
Dude, California.
Dude, Pennsylvania.
Dude, Massafreakin’chusetts, where blacks dare not try to rent an apartment in the North End.
Oliver, you make yourself no better than right wingers when they steroetype people on the East and West coast.
You act as if whites in other places don’t use the n-word. And you forget a Southern city is the biggest to elect an openly gay mayor. It wasn’t Los Angeles and it was New York City. It was Houston, Texas. A city in the South.
I lived in the deep South (NW Florida) for two years. It’s not ALL like that. Mainly the older ones who were raised or were adults during the Civil Rights era. They hang on to their racism.
Their children and grandchildren are mostly NOT like that. And you have to remember, in the South, many whites grow up around and with blacks. In fact, I’ve seen more interracial couples down south than I ever did up north (even in the B’more/DC corridor).
Yes, I was ALWAYS wary around middle-aged to elderly whites. But people my age and younger were mostly fine.
I will say this. I live in suburban Illinois and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard people say the N-word in real life, and I’ve never heard anyone actually use it maliciously (as a slur). Maybe it’s just the circles I run in.
As for the people in the article, it’s not at all uncommon for racist people to like one or two black people, and to rationalize that in their own mind by thinking that they’re somehow different from all of the other blacks in the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people felt that way about Obama, at least before the right wing campaign to smear him as a radical socialist began in earnest.
I wonder, do you even recognize the similarity between the way you admit here to seeing these people, and the way you perceive that Republicans see numerous other groups of people?
Oliver, you may wish to remember that the majority of African Americans of the U.S. live in “the South”, so, it’s not exactly some place that they just visit versus elsewhere.
“The South” is not just its white conservative residents — “the South” is also its black, Latino, Asian etc residents as well.
People who consider the South to exclusively consist of its white, conservative residents have oddly granted ownership of a region to a group which in no way deserves such authority.
You want to here some good nig*er jokes? Move to Seattle, WA.
I just spent the summer at my nephew’s house in Mississippi, most of his friends are black.
My older relatives are racists but the younger ones aren’t.
Uh, yeah, last I looked, DC was still consider southern.
Sorry Oliver, but you make yourself look as if you really need to feel superior by trying to insinuate that racism is “better” (I assume that you aren’t completely delusional to suggest that it doesn’t exist everywhere) up North, than “down there”.
Some of us have actually, you know, visited around the country a bit and found other parts of the country , um, lacking. Palin is from Alaska for pete’s sake. Rodney King happened where again? The John Birch Society’s HQ is Wisconsin we learn from today’s NYT. Chicago is as segregated as any town “down there”, so I’m just wondering why honesty from some old geezer southerrners is seen as a sign of backwardness as opposed to the denial of others around the country?
This country has a problem, not just the South.
Btw, we don’t need you to come down and work or nothing. You stay right where you are and we’ll just suffer along. Thanks.
Sorry folks, but while there is racism everywhere in America, it isn’t concentrated elsewhere as it is in the south. Look at where the nuttiest notions about President Obama are articles of faith: it’s below the Mason-Dixon. It’s not a stereotype. The south needs to get its act together and join the rest of us in the 21st century.
People can make jokes about Iowa and corn all they like (as I have) but those folks voted for Obama in the caucuses, by almost 10% in the general election. Oh, and they okayed gay marriage. By comparison getting rid of sodomy laws was an actual argument point in the south.
Uh, yeah, last I looked, DC was still consider southern.
And yet, along with MD, doesn’t act “southern”.
Btw, we don’t need you to come down and work or nothing.
Yet, it took others coming down south to kick start the civil rights movement.
Again, I didn’t say racism was solved. What I did say was that the south has a special problem with it. Still.
The South is a convenient scapegoat for the country’s racism. As long as we can say “Look down there at those ignorant Southerners,” we don’t have too look too closely at the racism in our own backyard. I’ve lived all over this country, OW -sometimes it’s directed at the Mexicans, or the Indians, or the Asians, but it’s just as bad wherever you go. There is some element of truth in Rence’s comment that southern racists just tend to be more honest about it.
Did you even register El Cid’s quite accurate observation that the majority of African Americans live in the South? And it’s not just those who never “got out” – many blacks have returned to the South in recent decades, drawn by economic opportunity and a black southern culture in which they feel quite comfortable. When you write the South off, you are writing them off as well.
Stop acting like the South didn’t earn its reputation. I saw rebel flags and “The South Will Rise Again” bumper stickers everywhere I went.
Don’t dare try and say that the South is picked on.
Actually, Oliver, the IA Supreme Court struck down a state law that banned same-sex marriage. Not like there was a referendum or something. Regardless, the queers-are-icky Bible-thumpers and rednecks are freaked out about it.
“The South” is no more monolithic than “The North,” or “The Midwest” or “Appalachia.”
The South has a long way to go. But regarding a shithole town like Cullman as somehow more representative of the deep South than Birmingham or Jackson or Memphis (all of which have black mayors)–well there’s a word for it: nutpicking.
Alabama, like many south-eastern states, takes in far more Federal tax dollars than it produces in terms of income. Funny how the whites in those states are quick to accuse others of being lazy when the whites themselves are basically on the dole.
Yesterday (YESTERDAY!) I found two flyers for the American Nazi Party at the Glenmont Metro Station. Let’s not be too proud.
The South is a convenient scapegoat for the country’s racism.
Well to be very blunt, not many other regions tried to secede from the country.
it’s just as bad wherever you go
I’ve lived in several states as well, and this sadly just isn’t true.
I live in south Texas where whites are slightly in the minority. About 1% asian, 4 to 5 % black and 50%+ hispanic. We get along with each other better than anywhere I’ve ever heard of. But if you want to know my own feeling of the areas referred to as ‘The South’, check out http://www.fuckthesouth.com.
I think that “The South” is less a geographic location and more a state of mind. A disgusting state of mind.
‘James is not like any black man that I know. He’s just different. He just don’t have that mentality, anybody owes him anything.
I have had white people describe me to my face in this way and I make it a point to remove them from my life. I’m not rude but I decline all of their social invitations and I keep my interactions with them to a bare minimum. What black people feel we are owed are the same rights and opportunities enjoyed by generations of whites in this country. The fact that we had to die, suffer imprisonment and worse, march in the streets etc. to secure these rights ain’t no cause, in our opinion, to make us feel grateful, humble or satisfied.
I come from generations of black people, including slaves who toiled on the notorious Pierce Butler rice plantations, who always worked hard for a living. Whites in this country, not just in the south, seem to enjoy perpetuating this myth about black people’s alleged unwillingness to work hard for what they want. I hope James is not part of the small cabal within the Black Electorate who co-signs for this nonsense.
Very true. But a small percentage of each generation born into ignorant / hateful families will become more humane just from more exposure to more tolerant people. As for the geniuses quoted in the article — I can stereotype too — their views aren’t worth the price of the Walmart lawn chair they’re sitting on outside of their double wide.
And Kansas.
I grew up in the South but lived for over 30 years in Denver. I returned to Nashville a few years ago and have been suffering from culture shock ever since. Racism is alive and well in God’s country. Certainly there is racism everywhere but it’s all a matter of degrees.
Nowhere but in the South can a black person be looked at/through as if they don’t even exist or are as insignificant as an ant. Waiters put the food down with just a little more emphasis than necessary; store clerks take money and hand back change as if they’re afraid of getting leprosy. Or, “that Lester, he’s one lazy son of a bitch.” Lester has been working since sun-up in 110 degree weather. “I’m not prejudiced, but I just wish those women would do something about those stupid looking hats they wear.”
And yes, blacks are still called darkies, or worse, monkeys. Blacks are still stopped more often by the cops and the first to be suspected of a crime. In the big cities, there are parts of town they don’t drive through – not because of crime but because it’s a guarantee they will be stopped. And this less than subtle racism isn’t limited to older people. If I were black, I wouldn’t want to be going down a lone country road by myself after dark and get confronted with a truck-load of red-necks.
While things have improved, racism has merely been pushed under the surface since 1964. Like a cancer in remission, it has raised its ugly head once again in the name of “bringing our country back.”
Yes.
Malcolm X: “..Stop talking about the South. As long as you’re south of the Canadian border, you’re South.”
That still rings true. In America, anti-black racism is line cuisine. Every region has it’s own flavor, but one variety is no less ‘delicious’ than the other.
I have lived in North Mississippi all my life, so I feel I speak with some authority when I say that the greatest tragedy of the Civil War was that the North ever took us back. The Yankees should have just evacuated every slave (and every free person who wanted to go and was willing to swear allegiance to the U.S. government) to the Western territories and then built a wall thirty-feet tall across the Mason-Dixon line. Maybe a few decades of picking our own damn cotton might have instilled a little human decency in the Southern character. As it is, most Southerners are a bitter, insecure, and willfully ignorant people who mask their inner smallness behind a veneer of genteel politeness.
Yes, there is racism everywhere. But in every other region of the country President Obama has a 65% to 80% approval rating. In the former Confederate states, it is 25%, despite the fact that on most issues, Obama has conducted himself almost as a moderate Republican. Hell, here in Oxford, MS (the closest thing to a “liberal enclave” in the whole state), people are still gripped with outrage over the burning question of whether Ole Miss will bring back Colonel Reb, the former mascot which was quite obviously based on Robert E. Lee. How anyone could deny that there is something fundamentally broken in Southern culture is beyond me.
(mode = cynic) It’ll only change when there’s some other visible minority to hate (/mode)
(mode = kindly_realist) It’ll probably only change when there’s some other visible minority to hate (/mode)
Oliver is right–as in correct. I taught college in North Carolina in the 90s, and during an uncharacteristic snowfall I asked a black store employee, who was shoveling, if I could use the shovel to dig my car out when he finished. He said I’d have to ask the boss inside. When I did, the boss (white) said to him, “You didn’t tell him I might let him use the shovel, did you?” The employee said without flinching no, he didn’t. Making me a liar. This told me all I needed to know about continuing black subservience, whites controlling “reality,” and the New South being the Old South. The incident could’ve come out of a Faulkner novel.
If the 60′s couldn’t change the Old South, no reason the Obama Presidency could, either.
Indeed, I’ve heard much the same sentiments from my BIL in RI.
One of the reasons I moved south was help turn this town blue. At least purple.
Plus the weather is great.
South Carolina doesn’t count. They’re as batshit as Utah.
As it is, most Southerners are a bitter, insecure, and willfully ignorant people who mask their inner smallness behind a veneer of genteel politeness.
I’ve been in Eastern NC for about 4 months and I totally get that. They’ll smile in your face, but they’re lying.
As it is, most Southerners are a bitter, insecure, and willfully ignorant people who mask their inner smallness behind a veneer of genteel politeness.
And most people named Alan are complete fucking douchebaggy twats.
Ignorant generalizations are great fun, aren’t they!