<p>By the way, some southern state flags had the confederate flag design as part of its logo, which may be why some posters are talking about seeing “the confederate flag” on some government buildings. Georgia changed its flag in 2001, and again in 2003 (always the political bickering). But both the 2001 and 2003 flags did away with the confederate component.</p>
<p>Thanks, Hunt, you reminded me of something. My graduating class from Booker T. Washington H.S. in Norfolk was the first since desegregation started four years before to have an integrated prom. We were very proud of that fact in 1976.</p>
<p>Small step? You bet. But a step nonetheless. And it seemed a rather large one at the time.</p>
<p>Dross, I won’t argue with you any more. If everything good in the South is there because of Northerners and everything bad is unchanging in your eyes, no one is going to shake you out of your belief. Good luck to you as you navigate your precious North. I hope you can use your superior intellect and argumentative nature to effect some positive change in your little corner of the world. Bash away in good health.</p>
<p>poetsheart, good luck to you and yours in Hampton. I am going home in a few weeks and I can’t wait to be back, see that beautiful water, and eat some good BBQ and crab cakes.</p>
<p>Interesting to note that Black Enterprise Magazine Ranks the best cities in which to live for African Americans - and guess what, the vast majority are in the south-</p>
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[blackenterprise.com</a> - Top Cities For African Americans](<a href=“http://www.blackenterprise.com/cms/exclusivesopen.aspx?id=850]blackenterprise.com”>http://www.blackenterprise.com/cms/exclusivesopen.aspx?id=850)</p>
<p>Guess all those happy African Americans are deluding themselves.</p>
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<p>I think you should let the editors of the aforementioned publication in on your theory.</p>
<p>Oh, and BTW, I am a southerner, born and bred, but when all these atrocities that you harken back to occurred, my ancestors were trying to scratch out a living in a potato patch in Ireland. So, I can’t really “re-enact” my ancestors “leasurely” existence out on the “plantation”.</p>
<p>Yes, us southerners are all alike. Let’s throw the baby out with the bathwater. hahahahahahahaha</p>
<p>Here in the admittedly enlightened state of MA, my kids’ high school is 95% white. As are most of the high schools around us. In Boston, the public high schools are at least 80% minority. But technically Mass is not segregated… if Drosselmeir want to say the North is so much better than the South, then how does he explain Boston’s bussing riots of the 1970’s? </p>
<p>My dad grew up in SC, but worked most of his professional career in NJ. He had more than one black co-worker who told him they preferred living in the South. They said they said the prejudice in the South was visible - either someone was prejudiced and not afraid to show it, or they weren’t. But in the north they found prejudice still existed, it was just much more subtle. People would be nice to their face, but mutter behind their back - or worse. They found the north to be actually harder to deal with. </p>
<p>Still, I will admit that some Southerners need to get over the confederate flag. My parents find it embarrassing and wish it would be banished to a museum. I think teens (and rednecks) find it a way of rebelling - they flaunt it precisely because others don’t like it - sort of a middle-finger, “you can’t tell me what to do” attitude. I don’t think a lot of them really think about what it symbolizes. It’s a knee-jerk response to the looking-down-the-nose attitude they get from many Northerners. On a state level, its a way of saying to the federal government “You can’t tell us what to do in our own state.” I really think the stupid confederate flag would have died out years ago if “outsiders” didn’t push the issue. Instead it got turned into a symbol of self-determination, when it should have evolved into an a dusty old has-been.</p>
<p>Poetsheart, if you look at the HISD list of schools there are MANY named after prominent African Americans including notables like Martin Luther King, Barbara Jordan, and Booker T. Washington.</p>
<p>Interesting that one school that was formerly known as Bowie (after the famous fighter at the Alamo) is now named Rod Paige Elementary - so Texas heros are being usurped by African American politicians.</p>
<p>tiredofsnow - I’m from southern Virginia and spent a lot of time in the tidewater area and never had a really good crabcake until I came to Maryland. Same thing holds for soft shell crabs. I guess I haven’t been to the right places. I also grew up eating chess pies - lemon, coconut and chocolate. My daughter makes pecan pies for her friends and teachers here in Maryland - they are very popular. I never liked peanuts in “co-cola” although it was a popular thing to do. My mom still goes out for “chitluns” now and then and my brother loves brains and eggs. I, on the other hand, throw up a little in my mouth just typing those things. </p>
<p>My high school desegregated in the middle of the year. We went home for Christmas break completely separate and came back in January 60/40 black/white. The national guard was on alert but there was no incident. The neighboring county, on the other hand, chose to completely close their schools rather than desegregate. Children who could not afford the private school went without school for several years - that was a most disgraceful act and families still suffer from it.</p>
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<p>There is no hypocrisy here. When we speak, we are often forced to speak generally. Thinking people tend to read the posts for their meaning, and not get caught up in petty semantics in order to avoid the thrust of the point. When you claimed, for example that “Self loathers tend to put down everything and everyone associated with the background from which they are trying to distance themselves.”, you uttered a generalization. Well, surely not all “self-loathers” tend to do as you claim, but I was not so small-minded to get caught on this. Instead, I dealt directly with the point. When you claimed “And in the north the’ll bang on trashcan lids and stomp around an make a fortune!!”. Well surely not all will do this, but instead of being a mental twit, and avoiding the point, I simply read it, and understood your meaning. When you said of the North and South “There are bigots in both places, and there were slave owners in both places . But neither have slaves now.”, you spoke in generalizations, and in [an</a> inaccurate one at that](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/16/AR2006081601513.html]an”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/16/AR2006081601513.html). But I wasn’t so small minded as to get caught up on the inane semantics of the comment. I understood your meaning and actually agreed with it. I have said here repeatedly that when I speak of the South I do not speak of any particular individual. There are plenty of individuals in the south who are stellar people that I admire. Poetsheart is one of them, and it is clear to me that while she rejects part of my opinion, she is not so small-minded to constantly get caught up in semantics so that she might manufacture offense here as a weapon against my meaning. When I speak of the South, I speak of the insensitive culture that is established there, an aggregate behavior or lack thereof that permits grave injustices there against human nature every single day of every single year. Confederate leaders were very clear that they seceded and fought the Civil War for the right to enslave blacks. These men were hostile to the very thing that makes me human. Yet, were I to live in the South, I would be compelled by the culture to employ the sweat of my brow, even my very life force, to honor them publicly. It is dishonorable, and no superior culture would ever in a million years demand this of its citizens. I think this lack of reverence for human nature permeates the South and is responsible for its inferior culture.</p>
<p>Now that is my opinion. And it answers the question of this thread. I find nothing here that should offend any individual, though the opinion can be rejected, even hotly. But your use of semantics here to avoid the thrust of the issue is just asinine, and I will pay no further heed to it.</p>
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<p>Yes. The South began restricting black freedom from 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia. It was the very first instance of black slavery in what is now the United States. But this was no great issue, relatively speaking, because while the South at the time forced blacks into servitude, it also freed them after a period of time. Moreover, it allowed the black slaves to work with white indentured servants so that socially there was little difference between the two groups. Blacks became some of the wealthiest and greatest contributors to the early colonial effort. It is clear to me they had accepted the general culture and would have produced children who also shared it. But around 1640 everything changed. The South began race-based slavery, and it also adopted the brutal and perpetual slavery then extant in the Caribbean. In 1641 The North officially codified slavery into law, but in the South whites were taking the land even of freed blacks claiming that blacks could not own property because they were black. Also, in 1662 the South declared that not only was slavery legal, but even the children of a black slave would be a slave, thereby attaching slavery to the birth of black people. This began the true destruction of blacks in America.</p>
<p>In 1705 the South declared that blacks were property, which increased the demand for black slaves significantly. The Triangular Slave Trade grew to full force and it treated blacks with very little mercy. By the time the blacks arrived here, they were generally starved, whipped, and ready for the auction block. By 1710, blacks outnumbered whites in South Carolina. My ancestors were these very people. Indeed, my roots are South Carolinian. Once here, my folks could not marry by law, could not establish families that they controlled because property could not control itself. This was a disaster for black people, black men in particular, knowing that they were powerless to own even their own bodies. We are suffering from this today in America. While whites were storing up centuries of culture and education, blacks were denied it by law. We are paying for this today. The Ebonics that many of us speak now, and that harms our academic progress, was literally forced onto us by law. We were punished if we tried to speak otherwise. We are paying for this today. Yes. The attributes that most harm us were developed in the South, and deliberately.</p>
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<p>Well, firstly, this is not an example of circular reasoning. Circular reasoning exists in cases where the claim is used to support itself. That is not happening here. Secondly, this is not my view and never has been. You employ strawmen ad nauseum, ad infinitum.</p>
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<p>This red herring is easily dealt with when we consider that I never once claimed the North did not have racism or a racist past. I have admitted this repeatedly. Still, the North never attempted to codify racism explicitly into Constitutional Law, it never fought and died for the right to enslave people, and it does not force blacks to pay for honoring the people who fought to enslave them. In my view, the North is far more sensitive than the South to what makes humans human, and this reverence and celebration of humanity shows up in Northern culture to a far greater extent than it does in the South. That is why northern universities are so much better, northern museums, and northern culture in general. It is richer, I think, because the culture itself is more in touch with human dignity than is Southern culture. It has been for a very long time.</p>
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<p>Well fine. Don’t believe it. It is the Southern way after all. But any thinking person will understand that poetsheart was not declaring that ALL southerners are obsessed with reenactments, and thinking people will readily understand that she speaks to the great lengths that so many Southerners go through to honor people who are patently dishonorable. Poet, it is my view that the South works so hard to honor these people because it knows they are unworthy of honor and would otherwise receive none. It wishes to convince people of their praiseworthiness by the force of its own worship and devotion.</p>
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Well, I am sure the Klan has done far worse, using its own funds and property, and yet I have not even a single care about it. It is when public funds are used that I grow concerned – and for good reason. It is patently immoral, un-American, and very Southern.
Of course it is about me, and you also. It is about us all because the South’s behavior comments (poorly) on the value of what makes all of us the human creatures we are.
But if you are a Jew and were forced to pay taxes for Adolf Hitler Memorial High School and to send your kid there, you would likely be whistling an entirely different tune. The rank stupidity you display here is astounding. This is not about paying too much in taxes. It is about being forced to honor that which is directly opposed to your existence as a human being. You weary me with your nonsense and Southern denseness.
Of course one man’s protest is another’s whining. I am protesting right here and now, and have done it for ages in a variety of venues. Indeed, it is because of non-Southerners like me that the South has changed and will continue to change until the old South dies its well-deserved death.
It is a matter of simple reason, friend. If a government claimed black people are not human and are fit only to be slaves to whites, and if that government fought for the right to enslave blacks, and if I am black, then mere reason would naturally lead me not to wish to honor the memory of that government. Yet in the south I would be compelled to do just that. This is why I declare here that the South is inferior to the North. It most certainly is. No culture that values human freedom and expression could ever be so invincibly ignorant and insensitive to both.
You would not be speaking so stupidly were you forced to support Adolph Hitler Memorial High. You speak in the morally debauched and insensitive way of Southern culture generally. Truly, the moment a black person gets involved and tries to “change things”, the whines go up about his need to “move on already!” It is dishonorable all around.</p>
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But you are still able to understand your cultural and religious origins. Despite all that has happened, your identity was never taken away so that you are left with no clue of who you are. It makes all the difference in the world. Humans can endure anything, as long as they have each other. In all cases of Jewish persecution, Jews were left with their traditions, with their identity as a people. That was decidedly not the case with blacks, and it has destroyed us.</p>
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Not the people. The culture.</p>
<p>I now invoke Godwin’s law.</p>
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<p>There are very many racists in the North. That is, in part how I explain it. Also, that situation was fairly complex, with whites being forced by law to send their kids to schools far away, where otherwise they could just walk to school. Id be incensed about this myself.</p>
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<p>We see here that you never were arguing with me.</p>
<p>galoisien, still here? You wrote:</p>
<p>“I’m fascinated with the South from a linguistic perspective. The South keeps many linguistic features that both London English and General American have since lost. Historically, a large source of many linguistic distinctions in the South came from Scottish English (or even Scots itself, which broke off from Middle English) as well as Irish English. And the many portions of the South still keep many historic minimal pairs distinct.”</p>
<p>I’d encourage you to read “Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks: The Story of the Ocracoke Brogue” by Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes. The outer banks were so isolated for so long that many people thought their speech sounded like Elizabethan English.</p>
<p>While you’re in Charlottesville, maybe you will have the opportunity to make it down there. Sadly, our cultural homogenization is taking its toll, and the brogue is fading.</p>
<p>Thank goodness racism in the North has nothing to do with the culture…and that the situation in South lacks complexity.<br>
Let me just add that making your points in hundreds and hundreds of words doesn’t make them seem less nutty; to the contrary, in fact.</p>
<p>Hey, cartera45. I definitely concede crabcake superiority to Maryland having spent many summers on the Bay up there.</p>
<p>But if you know what dives to try in Tidewater, and they’re disappearing fast, you can find a delicious crabcake sandwich. Mostly crabmeat, not much filler, definitely no vegetables (like bell pepper).</p>
<p>I grew up in Norfolk, but my family is from coastal N.C., where there was a lot of unadulterated crabmeat back in the day. And the barbecue of which I speak is an eastern N.C. thing, too.</p>
<p>Hunt - I’m afraid your invocation of Godwin’s Law might be undermined by Quirk’s Exception. And I can’t invoke the Law, because I’m weary of cleaning these posts from my mailbox!</p>
<p>I prefer NC barbecue. Ocracoke is one of my favorite places on earth - used to camp there as often as possible - $2 a night got you a cold shower and pit toilets - and live music at the original Howard’s Pub. Those days are gone. Now I prefer the hotels by the water in town.</p>
<p>Not worth addressing the barrage of insults so delicately woven into today’s lecture. To name but a few:
not to mention trying to weave Korean sex slaves into the mix. Oh, and the “forced” ebonics and loss of identity. Not to mention the minimization of , in your terms, “loss of identity” of many other races and ethnic groups subject to 'ethnic cleansing". This is a total waste of time and energy. Tired of being talked down to.
Good point Hunt. His screenname is appropriate-- a hard nut to crack. His choice.</p>
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<p>Once again, you employ a strawman here, since I never said racism had “nothing” to do with the culture. I merely make a relative comparison between the cultures of the North and South, finding the North’s superior by far. I have not once claimed either is perfect. </p>
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<p>Obviously you never allowed yourself to understand the points in the first place, since you’ve consistently misrepresented them</p>
<p>Whenever you see a thread degenerate into arguments consisting of lengthy point-by-point dissections of opposing arguments, it’s probably outlived its usefulness.</p>