dagblog - Comments for "Even Homer nods"

Just to be accurate, I didn't

Flavius — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 02:00:29 +0000

In reply to Flavius:Your citing of the

Just to be accurate, I didn't selectively cite from your charts because I haven't read them. (Normally I would have but I've spent the last three days going door to door). I was quoting from memory supplemented by google.

I will now read them but not reply because this blog has reached its sell-by date.

When the subject comes up again as it will, I'll have had the benefit of your charts

I agree. While some of the

brewmn — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:20:16 +0000

In reply to i've been trying to stay out

I agree. While some of the opposition to Obama is expressed in racist terms, I feel reasonably certain that the people running around with posters of Obama as a pimp would be running around with pictures of Hillary Clinton holding a pair of castration scissors if she had been elected president.

At least they haven't accused Obama of having someone killed.

Yet.

Flavius:Your citing of the

wws — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:04:15 +0000

In reply to Nationwide 41% of white male

Flavius:

Your citing of the most extreme statistic in one map of three I provdied is really not a reasonable response to the points I raised.

There is more to consider in building a fair picture of the south today, than one voting pattern in one election two years ago .... particularly when you refuse to see similar voting conservative patterns in other states across the country during that same election, a trend that is increasing at least twofold this year.

1) As elections go, take a good look at Nate Silver's current predictions for house seats. Funny thing; in South Carolina, the highly-esteemed black candidate, Jim Clyburn is expected to sweep the election, his margins in the 91% range. Look at Silver's maps for house races in other southern districts in SC and in other southern states. The picture, Flavius, is not so polarized today as it once was, although it's true that Senate seats still seem to have a Republican lock on them.

Is the South the only region of the country where that is true? No. It is important that you look at the number predictions in other ultra conservative regions of the country. How about the rifle ranges of Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, etc?? How can you ignore those vasts states that in square mileage, population and political bent match and/or exceed in bigotry/hate the attitudes in the South?

2) The Southern Poverty Law Center map I included takes a national look at hate groups. See where they are concentrated -- are they all in the South? Far from it. Are most of them in the South? No. For example, Texas, frankly, cannot be considered part of the true South; it has far more in common, culturally, with Arizona, Montana and Wyoming than it does with Virginia, the Carolinas, etc..

In short, What constructive purpose does it serve to demonize one part of the country while willfully ignoring what bigotry and hate is growing and spreading like wildfire elsewhere, almost everywhere else?

Nationwide 41% of white male

Flavius — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 02:15:53 +0000

In reply to I've fought this

Nationwide 41% of white male voters voted for Obama in 2008.

In Mississippi and Alabama , 12%.

I've fought this

wws — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 22:32:35 +0000

In reply to Even Homer nods

I've fought this southerner-as-evil-incarnate stereotype for almost three years on the boards, and I am weary.

Why can't good people see that: a) times change; b) people change; and, c) the subject being examined and evaluated changes? Not a rhetorical question, btw.

The attitudes good Democrats have towards southerners just might be one reason why, in a pinch, many vacillate between their own principles and party loyalty affiliation as it is affected by denigration.

In this context, I'm glad that my parents, my aunt and uncle and all of their friends are dead ... for it would grieve them to think they had stood for principle, dared their neighbors to criticize their liberal views, only to be scorned and excoriated by people from off who are too willing to accept outdated stereotypes when the current numbers do not support these outdated views.

I've posted link after link: tables, pie charts and maps that delineate the true picture of current prejudice as defined by INTOLERANCE. Not least of which are these:

http://www.nraila.org/maps/rtc.jpg

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/.a/6a00d83451b4ba69e20120a6a2c734970c-pi

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map

But that data-based update has fallen on blind eyes and deaf ears. Why? Because: a) there are still the braying asshats of the south who draw fire, even when their day is done, or almost done; and, b) it is comforting for people from off to cling to these stereotypes, because it is easier to cite past transgressions -- 40-50 years ago --than it is to examine change we actually can believe in -- because it is documented, vis a vis shifting attitudes in the South -- when an accepted, if falacious "truth" is at hand.

Personally? I'm done with this topic. I live in the South. Breath southern air. Know the villains and the heros personally in more than one state. And I am tired, mightily tired, of being an easy target... in the sense of decoy ... for the fire that is, today, actually earned elsewhere. '

Study the maps I have provided -- visual aids for visual learners that offer proof that, yes, the South is, overall, still conservative (and frightened) but.....

the South's voting patterns -- in presidential elections, in its incidence of hate crimes, in its affiliation with the NRA, in its Nate Silver-indicated voting patterns in 2010 -- are, ta da, NO DIFFERENT than the patterns in Montana, the Dakotas, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Missouri, and even Pennsylvania and NEW JERSEY....

It's time to give up this easy demonization of the South. Instead, consider the country as a whole. Really. And see where the affiliation for state's right, Second Amendment obsession, "small government" et al are actually located.

IS the South part of this picture? Yes. But if you were to be more careful, looking at population figures versus geographic areas, you just might have to alter your opinions.

Or not. If the South serves your whipping post, whipping boy need.

1) that the 2008 white male voting pattern was the same in -- gasp -- Utah, the Dakotas, Nebraska et al as it

I'm old enough to have moved

Flavius — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 21:39:20 +0000

In reply to Over the last year at the

I'm old enough to have moved to the back of the bus when the one black in my OCS class was ordered to do that once the bus left Fort Sill.

The white southern males who made up most of the class weren't slime. Just that they surely would have been included in the 83% who felt that McCain/Palin were better entitled to run the country than Obama/Biden.

There were plenty of non racist arguments for that position. But not enough to persuade 83% of the country elsewhere.

Over the last year at the

we are stardust — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 21:29:02 +0000

In reply to Even Homer nods

Over the last year at the Café, it had become quite a sport on some blogs to rant against ‘Southern white bigots and racists’. One of the most popular diarists often led things off. A few of us would notice, and try to speak some sense to the issue, and the efforts proved pretty quixotic and divisive. The rebuttals were so stupid I can’t even remember how they went.

The many rants against the Tea Partiers have struck me the same: attempts to create monoliths that simply aren’t true; after all, it’s easy and fun even if the thinking is a bit lazy and not very helpful. Hate's easy.

Here’s one thing I think lies at the bottom of both: it feels good to feel superior. We can show how much smarter, more liberal, more moral, etc. than the bigots, the Chrisitanists, anti-evolutionists, gay-haters, Jew haters, whatever.

We can all tell stories about Southern racism; it really doesn’t prove the ‘Southerners are racist (slime) point. Flavius quotes the number that Obama got 17% of the Southern, white male vote. If we were honest, we’d have to allow for unaffiliated voters (they’re the ones you need to look at in this race differential, IMO) voting for McCain who loved a military man, who thought Obama was too green, voted with their loins because they thought Palin was hot, or a host of other issues.

There is a theory, and I should remember what the process is called, that early learning is stored in memory packets that are very hard to unlearn. For instance, if we learned in school that the Civil War was about Lincoln freeing the slaves, it’s harder to accept other information later. Many of us have been involved in those raging discussions on the boards, and I for one have been dismayed at the failure of so many to accept even verified factual history to the contrary. Wanting to even discuss the possibility that the South should have been allowed to secede is loaded beyond my imaginings, for both white and black commenters. Crazy, but it seems like we can sure be wedded to our beliefs.

I’m glad that some Dagbloggers have weighed in to object to this bigotry; there are quite a number of Southerners here. And yes, I mean Southern-born-and-bred; others who migrated to other parts of the US or world later. I can imagine, and have heard some of them say, that it was hard living in a culture that often embodied bigotry against blacks and other people of color or ethnicity. Some may still carry some vestige of that toxicity, and need to fight it when it comes up; I don’t know.

But I know they shouldn’t have to keep paying for that flawed stereotype forever, and they would want us to remember how many parents taught their children better than that, and worked for equality and justice for all.

But I do understand why he

trkingmomoe — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 20:40:08 +0000

In reply to But it doesn't hardly need to

But I do understand why he said a patently false absolutist comment.

But it doesn't hardly need to

SleepinJeezus — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 20:14:00 +0000

In reply to Like C, I arrived in Florida

But it doesn't hardly need to be stated (Does it?) that YOU lived in North Florida, too! It would therefore be patently false to say that "All whites in North Florida are/were racist," no? I think that is the point raised in rebuke of c's absolutist comment.

Like C, I arrived in Florida

trkingmomoe — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 20:08:44 +0000

In reply to Even Homer nods

Like C, I arrived in Florida 30 years ago. I did land in Batty Crazy Land in North Florida and went into culture shock. My boss took me aside and told me I could not share a ride with a AA male co-worker back and forth to work because it would hurt my promotions and job security. I was made fun of and never left to forget that I said to some other co-workers "would they like some pop from the pop machine." I could go on and on about my experiences learning how to adjust. One election day I had to work over, so the company I worked for decided to let any of us that wanted to go vote to clock out and clock in to do that. I found out that out of all the women working there, that only 3 of us was regestered to vote. Later is was explained to me that many of them did not want to vote because they didn't want to be on a jury just in case the trial involved an AA. I handled it with grace in public but my brain would call them every nasty word I know,

Things have gotten better because it has become less acceptable to openly behave like that as a group. Many women moved on past some of the cultural ideas in the 15 years I lived in North Florida. But it is still there and will take a couple of more generations for it to be history. I live in SW Florida now and I have a quilting freind that is the local leader in the Tea Bag Party. Quilting is Monday night and boy, will she be feeling her Cherreo's with all the coverage that they are going to win big.