I dated a very stunningly attractive black woman for three years who was originally from Ghana. Visiting Alabama, or any of the southern states for that matter, was never very high on our destination list.

There's always LA - Lower Alabama!

We moved to NC from DE around 2005. Now I grew up marginally in the South in a racist family so it wasn't particularly surprising to me, but being about 15 years removed from that environment at the time I had largely forgotten about it.

The first neighbor that spoke to us gave us the low down on all the neighbors and ended it with a warning to watch out for the niggers that lived in the trailer park down the road. This was an old lady probably in her 60s or early 70s. I guess she just figured us being white and all, we were down with it.

Just the first of number of encounters with this lovely person. Having a garden and compost pile eventually drove her to call the cops* on us and when she learned there was nothing wrong with us having those things, she built a six foot privacy fence to separate our properties which was just fine by us.

*This is when we learned that she had been the county dispatch person up until she retired a few years prior.

I dislike the sweeping brush of generalization just as much as I dislike racism and bigotry.

I spent part of the 80's as a kid and teen growing up in Greenville, South Carolina. Its a beautiful place and I have many fond memories but by the end of high school I realized that it was not the place for me to live and raise a family. Case in point: Bob Jones College was near by, and in those days (and until 2000) there was an actual BJC rule that students could not date / marry people of other races. When entering campus in 1989 to write the SAT I had to pass a guard booth. The guards had what looked like automatic rifles slung across their chests. I asked him what it was for - he answered chuckling, "to keep the n****** out."
The south may finally be rising economically but some of the backward social attitudes are still catching up to the modern world.

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's

While the open racism happened it was pretty rare, what we found more odd was the religiosity. It was pretty standard fare to be asked upon meeting someone and having any sort of prolonged conversation with them, which church you went to? It happened all the time. Nothing offensive about it or anything but it was weird to have to explain things, eventually we'd usually just say we don't go to church and leave it at that, which worked most of the time.

A couple of my colleagues were Catholics and found it strange how they were often treated down there.

We've lived in Maine since 2009 and no one has ever asked us the church question.

Because Mainers are Godless heathens.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Yeah, in some circles there is an open hostility to any church/other Christian faith that isn't your own. One of my fond childhood memories is having my aunt tell me I'm going to Hell because I wasn't baptized the right way.

Supposedly Maine is the least religious state, not sure what that is based on but I hear it all the time.

But out of my 10 or so colleagues in the department who clearly are liberal leftists bent on the destruction of the American way given that I work at a University at least half attend "church" (although 2 are Jewish and 2 are lesbians, so they probably don't really count).

And I'd say about a quarter if not more of the local radio stations are religious.

I agree.

Growing up, our priests daughter was told by the minister's son of a different church that she wasn't welcome in heaven because of her religion.

No one should ever live in the south because it is racist. People should live in other parts of the country because racism doesn't exist there.

I have a friend who moved from Michigan to Georgia and has told me its "a lot different down here", referring to southern values. Not to say that there isn't racism, etc in northern states, because there certainly is, but you do get the impression that its a bit more prevalent in many parts (but not all parts) of the south. I've traveled in the deep south, but not ever lived there so can't really say. I understand that there are pockets of liberalism however.

No one should read my post and think that racism is the only issue keeping me from returning to the south. It is one of many.


Edit: I wish I had listed reasons other than racism in my original post... oh wait, I did... 😁

Some may think that me saying a 40% vote to maintain racial discrimination at a state level means we haven't reached an acceptable level of racial equality. Others may find that an acceptable level. I personally don't feel I'm painting with too broad a brush, but as I said, I am biased.

I haven't seen a recent county level census map, but in the mid 2000s there was not a county in the country other than in the south that had over a 25% African American population. I think that anyone who has lived only in 90% white areas has nothing to offer based on their experiences. It is entirely too easy and I think too engrained in us as humans to discriminate (rightfully or wrongly) to discriminate on appearance. I'll also say that Atl is one of the most diverse cities in the country

That's really incorrect. A whole lot of densely populated counties have over 25% African-American population (not to mention a large number of neighborhoods throughout the country).

No, it was correct. I still have the map.

Yes, you also mentioned political leanings and prevailing mentality -- what exactly do you mean by that?

I just get tired of this kind of crap. As a well educated, highly intelligent, wealthy person who lives in the south I get tired of people thinking we're a bunch of bumkins. It's a virtual guarantee that I'm smarter than you and richer than you, like 99%. And I'm socially pretty liberal, so we're not all racist Bible banger down here. There are racists everywhere. And people who have political leanings and prevailing mentalities that you don't like everywhere too. If you're happy somewhere else that's great. I fished in the Gulf today. It's warm here year-'round. I have friends coming to town this weekend and we're going to the beach and gonna catch some huge red snapper on my boat. And we're going to drink and have fun. And there's little traffic or crime and people are generally nice. This is a great place to live. If it's not for you that's fine, but you look ignorant striking an entire region of the country as uninhabitable for you because of what you recently read in a book coupled with your later realization that we are "backwards" down here. Your post, frankly, is insulting.

I've told this story before. I went to college with a black guy from Boston. He said that racism was far more pervasive in Boston than it was in Florida. He said that he experienced racism everyday in Boston.

Likewise, a lady from Philly told me that blacks were seldom given high level promotions at the navy base in Philly. They even had a hand signal that they used to denote that someone was black without having to say it out loud - which is what led to the conversation. She was talking about someone and used the hand signal, so I asked what it meant.

Pretty sure that elements from every race are racist - regardless of where they live.

Seems I've struck a nerve. We'll save the "smarter" "richer" comments to some other middle school penis measuring thread. But, you make my point for me by even bringing statements like that into the conversation. It would never occur to me (or the people I chose to surround myself with) to make some of the personal claims / statements concerning self worth you make (whether true or not). As a 45 year old retiree who focuses on coaching multiple sports teams for his daughter, being a room parent at her elementary school, and keeping my wife's house clean and meals prepared as she works full time and pursues her second doctorate, we probably measure success in life quite a bit differently. Fishing, boating, and drinking don't fall anywhere on my list of things to brag about or activities to look forward to. To each their own. For myself, I got all my major personal professional checks in the box during my 25 year career as a Marine infantryman and I'm still working on accomplishing all my personal athletic goals, in the spare time I have now after prioritizing my family's needs first. I'll start worrying about the family's financial state of affairs if my wife ever tells me to curtail the grocery spending or planning the family vaca's that we enjoy. We haven't gotten to that point yet...

As to my perceptions of life in the south, I can only comment on my opinions based on a life spent actually living in the states of Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Virginia. Actual residence / observation in these states make up approximately 38 years of my life. I can safely say that I didn't run into too many of 'our' liberal ilk during those 38 years. My personal encounters were much more of the bible-thumping, NRA / GOP adherent, "I'm better than you because I have a nicer boat to catch red snapper from" than you, type people. Now, everyone in our great nation is certainly entitled to their opinions, philosophy, and way of life. And I actually dig respectful and mature interplay / debate among those of differing view points. However, my wife and I just chose not to settle down in the middle of all that when we finally do decide to grow up (whenever that may be). We also feel pretty comfortable that our decision is right for us, given our actual, real life experiences (her's are similar but not the exact same as mine). I have a hard time making the equation of large swaths of "generally nice" people solve when you input 40% vote to continue racial discrimination. That 40% isn't the whole story, in my analysis, its just very revealing of what I believe lives beneath the pretty exterior that some people display.

And maybe I wasn't as clear as I should have been in my original post. My generally low opinion of the south isn't a "YOU people" opinion. Its an opinion of "why are WE this way". I may never move my family there, but this is a problem of WE not YOU. It is also not a new opinion based on a recent reading of a book. You missed the point of my OP. It only adds to my already existing opinion.

Quote:

No, it was correct. I still have the map.

No. Please look up Wayne/Baltimore City/Prince George's/Cuyahoga/Philadelphia/Bronx/Cook/Essex counties (2000 Census data). They are generally the most populous counties in their respective states. (see "Great Migration"). The percentage is anywhere from 27-45%. Admittedly, in the South some counties are 80% African-American. Here's a website:

http://censusviewer.com/county/MI/Wayne (Wayne County for example).


For a view of demographics by city, check here:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_large_African-American_populations#Select_cities_with_a_large_percentage_of_Black_or_African_American_people

Wayne County, Michigan is 40.5% Black
Lake County, IN is 25.9% Black
Essex County, NJ is 40.9% Black
Baltimore is an independent city, thus county level. It's 63% black.
Cook County, IL is a rounding error away at 24.8% black
Kings County, NY (aka Brooklyn) is 34.8% black
Bronx County, NY is 43.3% black

Respect.

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"Your Attitude Determines Your Altitude."