Racist protest at Ole Miss

[ucbalumnus]

Originally Posted by andy09

Point being, The confederate flag doesn't stand for racism as much as it stands for states' rights,

But which state's right was the one that the states that formed the CSA felt was important enough for them to secede?

[ucbalumnus]

Originally Posted by cardoza

From anger in both myself and what I have observed in others, when someone is angry with someone they tend to turn everything about that person bad. Its like when Chris Rock explained how when you hate someone, everything they do ****es you off "look at him, eating a f***ing salad like he own the place". Personally, and I may be very wrong, I believe that the racial comments were just simply made because they were things identifiable to Obama, and not attacks against black people.

However, anger against someone doing something (e.g. promoting politics that are different from what the angry person favors) can morph into anger against someone being something (e.g. one's race or ethnicity).

[cardoza]

@ucb:
I somewhat understand what you are saying. Pretty much becoming angry with anything associated with that person? But then is that not centralized to those characteristics in that singular person and thus just simply attacks on him and not the race as a whole? Or does the aim of that anger spread to others with the same characteristics as the original target?

[mini]

State's rights my foot! Pure mythology. The Civil War started because Lincoln, while refusing to intervene in states' rights in the South, also refused to intervene against states' in the North by enforcing the Dred Scott decision. The NORTH was defending states' rights; the South seceded because of the failure of federal intervention.

[Shrinkrap]

" This is why I toss all college/university mail that comes from southern schools. I realize that racism exists here in the north as well but the thought of sending my daughter to a southern school scares the crap outta me!"

I get it, but we actually looked for schools in the south. Sure, there might be more overt racism there, but there are also lots of black people! Having raised my kids in a N.Cal suburb was .....not well rounded.

If you have never been in the majority before, I think it is a transformative experience. Even though I grew up in a black microcosm of New York, DC, and especialy Nigeria was different.

[ucbalumnus]

Originally Posted by cardoza

Or does the aim of that anger spread to others with the same characteristics as the original target?

Yes. Especially if the "doing" and "being" characteristics happen to be superficially coincident (e.g. most black voters favor the the Democratic Party over the Republican Party, and some on these forums have commented that white voters who favor the Democratic Party are not very common in some areas).

Another example: a small group of terrorists commits a terrorist attack. Hatred against their ethnic group (Arab) increases afterward.

[ucbalumnus]

Originally Posted by Shrinkrap

If you have never been in the majority before, I think it is a transformative experience.

Hmmm, what about the other way around (i.e. going from majority to minority)?

Then again, it does appear that many people are uncomfortable with that idea.

[Shrinkrap]

I think that must be quite the experience as well. My husband moved here from Jamaica.

[cobrat]

Originally Posted by Ucbalumnus

Which countries?

In countries where mere display of a foreign flag is a crime, it must be inconvenient for the organizers of the Olympic games whenever a visitor wins a medal.

Up until Mainland China started to develop closer relations with the KMT party in the ROC(Taiwan) to counter Taiwanese Independence Activists, the display of the ROC's flag was completely forbidden in Mainland China except for historical films/museums where it was usually displayed in a highly negative context. Even with some slight openness there's still a practical ban and the PRC tends to blow its top if the ROC flag is displayed in any international venues...including the Olympics.

Up until democratization in the late '80s, displaying the PRC's flag was also forbidden as they were regarded as an illegitimate regime they were technically at war with. Even nowadays with full democratization...displaying the PRC's flag is liable to make its exhibiter not only a social pariah, but also face possible scrutiny by law enforcement and possibly security forces due to national security concerns.

The display of North Korea's flag in South Korea was completely forbidden during most of its history because they're still technically the wartime enemy. Even after democratization, there's still a few national security laws on the books which imposes legal sanctions and allows closer scrutiny by law enforcement for those who display North Korea's flag. North Korea still maintains a practical ban on any displays of South Korea's flag as they regard them as a "puppet regime of US capitalists".

Sri Lanka also bans display of the Tamil Tigers' flag as they have been regarded as terrorists threatening their national security. Considering the level of carnage involved in their war against the latter ended not that long ago, I wouldn't be surprised of that ban is still in effect.

Many other countries facing secession movements or internal rebellions in South America, Asia, and Africa have also banned displays of flags of those movements/rebellions.

[ucbalumnus]

Yes, but those are specific enemies' flags, not display of any foreign country's flag in general, as implied in post #18.

[Sticker]

It's always entertaining to hear accusations of racism directed at those of us in the south by those in the north. I especially enjoy the lectures from those northerners who live in states with a black population of less than 10%. We here in the south are a true melting pot. My particular state enjoys a black population of over 30%. We live together, attend school together, and work together in a much more integrated fashion than many of our northern critics. As with any group of people living in close proximity, there will be incidents, not always racial in nature. The south is a wonderful place to raise a family regardless of one's race. While many are understandably offended by the confederate flag, many are also offended by casual, ignorant accusations of blanket, rampant racism based simply on a person or school's geographic location.

[sally305]

^Well said, Sticker. I agree with this. Racism in the north or midwest doesn't announce itself with a Confederate flag, but it is present nonetheless.

Someone asked why something like the Ole Miss incident happened now instead of after Obama's election the first time. I think, judging by what I see and hear, that the people who oppose him in part because of his race were (reluctantly) willing to accept the "experiment" of a black man in the White House for one term, but they have been fighting hard to make sure the experiment didn't continue. The rise in hate groups and racist attitudes as demonstrated by various surveys offers some evidence of this. Look at all the people crying about "taking their country back" and "our forefathers are rolling in their graves" and "Obama doesn't understand America" and so on. They can't handle that our country is changing and that they no longer hold an advantage simply because of the color of their skin. Guess they'd better get used to it.

[Marsian]

Sticker -- I agree. I live in a fairly rural part of NC. My school (in the 1960s, right after integration) was around 40% black, 60% white. Integration in our area went smoothly. Although students hadn't gone to school together before that, they had lived beside each other and worked together on farms doing the same jobs (yep, there were lots of poor white folks too). I grew up with both black and white friends who came to my home and spent weekends with us. On the other hand, my co-worker who grew up in an area of NY that had a very small black population was constantly stared at, shunned, and told she didn't belong at her college -- because she was black, they said, she must have been a token.

Now, my children go to a NC public high school in a fairly rural area. Among their classmates, I can count several interracial couples and a number of same-sex couples. There is an active Gay-Straight Alliance and some (although not all) of its students are publicly out. (This is, by the way, in a fairly "red" county.) I am well aware of the goings-on at our school and have never heard of ANY incidents that were racial or homophobic in nature. Many of the churches in our area are racially diverse. Within two hours' driving distance of my house are at least 10-15 churches (probably more) with sizable memberships that perform same-sex union ceremonies.

Is every single location in the South like this? No, but that's true for the whole country. If I judged an entire region by the offensive acts of some of that region's people, I would have a lot of reasons to think that every part of the United States is a terrible place to live. I would think that the Northeast must be a horrible place because peaceful Muslims who wanted to build a community center in NYC were met by vehement opposition. The Midwest must be terrible because of racist incidents on the campus of Michigan State and bad race relations in Detroit. The West must be a racist region because the Aryan Nation has its headquarters in Idaho. (Granted, these are only a few examples; each region has had many more problems.)

Sheesh. Racism is abhorrent, whether the people espousing those beliefs are carrying Confederate flags, American flags, or rainbow flags.

I live in the South. I am just as Southern as anyone else in this part of the country, with family that goes back to the 1700s. I sound very Southern. If one of our children walked in our house today and brought home a girlfriend/boyfriend of a "different" race or the same gender, it would not bother us at all. We would just do the Southern momma/daddy thing -- give the person a hug and ask, "Now, do we know any of your family?"

[Hunt]

My postings were simply to disprove the notion that the south is one big racist H***hole. It's not that much more racist than the north nowadays, and The only reason the Ole Miss protest was on the front page of the news, as opposed to Hampton-Sydney or any other university(and I'm sure something similar happened at a decent amount of universities), was because it follows social stereotypes which grab audiences, and provide good reader fodder.

I'm sorry, but it's not a coincidence that these incidents happened at these two schools. They both have long traditions that are attractive to conservative white students, especially white males, and especially middle-class white males who like to think of themselves as good ole boys. Fortunately, neither school is really typical of Southern colleges, and the reaction at both schools shows that even most students at those very schools don't think this way.

[Bay]

Did anyone notice that in the photo and the video of the incident, there were Black students present? I'm not sure if that is significant, but it might indicate that those particular students did not feel threatened by what was going on at the time. I also re-watched the video, and apparently a reporter asked a student what was being said, and he said he was fairly certain it was "F*** Obama, or something like that." While certainly disrespectful, I don't think those words qualify as "racist." I didn't see (or couldn't, due to the poor quality of the video) any violence or rioting. It looked like students gathering and milling around. I'm not saying there weren't racist and violent things said and done, but I'm fairly skeptical of media stories like this that can easily be sensationalized, and do not provide anything concrete in the way of evidence supporting their portrayal of the events.