Posted on 07/14/2005 6:10:21 AM PDT by robowombat
Bias against Southerners misses the mark By RICHARD COX Published July 11, 2005
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Does prejudice exist in Pasco County, an area with a very diverse population and seemingly very progressive?
I am certain that African-Americans, Hispanics and people from other countries, the poor and homeless, as well as members of certain religious faiths, experience treatment different from the mainstream populace. However, I am a member of a minority who has experienced attitudes and reactions from many individuals who assume that I am intellectually and socially challenged.
A very large percentage of the population of New Port Richey in particular is from the Northeast. I personally like the outspokenness, mince-no-words attitude, the ability to criticize as well as accept criticism without being offended, that seems to represent the culture in which Northerners grew up.
My family members seem to have the disadvantage of being born and living most of our lives in the South, in our case, Tennessee. I grew up in Knoxville, a city that many people seem to associate only with the fanatical behavior of our college football fans, and my wife is from a small city near Chattanooga.
There still seems to be a stereotype that some people associate with Tennesseans. When those individuals heard the distinct accent of my wife, my stepdaughter, and myself, it seemed to conjure up that redneck image one might associate with the humor of Jeff Foxworthy and other Southern comedians. That image is of a culture of ignorant hillbillies (certainly due to inbreeding!), barefoot, living in a shack with no indoor plumbing (but certainly an outhouse in back), having a dog living under the front porch, and owning an overgrown lawn populated with broken-down, dilapidated automobiles. And, yes, we all chew tobacco and sit on the front porch swing playing the banjo. Everyone also flies a Confederate flag and reminisces about the War Between the States.
I first noticed this attitude when my stepdaughter, an honor student, came home from middle school several days in tears because several other students harassed her daily, calling her an ignorant redneck and hillbilly among other derogatory terms. My wife and I have experienced the sudden change in facial expressions from many when they hear our accent. They seem to associate our accent with ignorance, and speak in simpler terms so that we can understand what they are saying. Telephone conversations often produce the same reaction.
I beg to differ. Tennessee is the home of several major universities, four major metropolitan areas with all the drug and gang problems associated with other large cities, and the most visited national park in the United States. Oak Ridge, in the Knoxville area, probably has as high a percentage of residents with doctorate degrees as any city in the United States. Tennessee has a musical heritage equal to none, and it is not exclusively country or bluegrass genres. Many nationally prominent politicians are from my home state, including three former presidents.
Tennessee has produced many famous musicians, actors, scientists and other intellectual and talented natives.
Well, to set the story straight, rural areas of most states have their own populace and dwellings that approach this stereotype.
My wife and I grew up in your average suburban neighborhoods, we both graduated from major universities and had successful professional careers, and, to risk seeming boastful, are probably as intelligent and knowledgeable, if not more so, than the average American. Believe it or not, East Tennessee, the section of the state we are from, fervently supported the Union during the Civil War.
I have noticed in the Pasco Times notices of meetings for various groups from areas of the Northeast and from other countries. Perhaps Southerners in our area should form a similar group. With apologies to an African-American group with a similar title, we could call our group the NAASF, the National Association for the Advancement of Southern Folks, Pasco County Branch. I hope there are enough local Southern residents available to attract to our organization.
--Richard Cox, a retired middle school science teacher and department head, lives in New Port Richey
don't you wish that i was wrong!
as i've said MANY TIMES on this forum, every time my Jewish business partner & i go north on business, some CRETIN makes "cutesy comments" about her being "a Yid" or LOUDLY tells "jew jokes".
also ask "trueblackman" how HE is accepted in the north. he'll be glad to tell you where the WORST & MOST hate-FILLED RACISTS are. (HINT: he won't say ANYPLACE in dixie!)
free dixie,sw
Nope, just another LIE! Based on statistics compiled by the Tuskegee Institute (the home of your oft-cited Prof. Blackerby), between 1882 and 1968, there were 3029 blacks lynched in the former-Confederate states. The number of blacks lynched in the New York draft riots is somewhere between 11 at the low end, and 100 at the high end. Of course, if you've got some credible source other than your usual sputtering about some reference book only you have access to (like the imaginary "Yachts Against Subs"), that shows more than 3000 blacks lynched in three days, show it. Come on, prove you haven't been caught in another lie. Just how long is your nose these days, Stand Pinocchio?
Simple . . . . come back to Knoxville.
I miss the days when progressive meant you supported business, reducing taxes and assimilation into the great american melting pot.
Not this modern quota manure.
And I am sure they don't like failed pornographer lawyers. So I guess you are even - but that's no reason for you to trash treads to get your jollies.
Either a lie or a total distortion. As usual.
also ask "trueblackman" how HE is accepted in the north. he'll be glad to tell you where the WORST & MOST hate-FILLED RACISTS are. (HINT: he won't say ANYPLACE in dixie!)
He's welcome to his opinion, I suppose.
Failed pornographer lawyer? I think you have me confused with someone else.
Unless it was someone else with the name "Modernman" who was telling of how he was sorry he didn't go into the pronography business with his college buddies.
Nope. That was me. But that still doesn't make me a "failed pornography lawyer" since I've never failed in the pornography business (since I never went into that business).
I'm no neoconfederate as my people are mountain people who fought for the Republicans in the War between Democrats and Republicans. That said I saw more blatant racism in the North in Two years living there than I saw in 30 living in the South.
dixie's FINAL VICTORY!" (?)
Today your screaming & ranting has reached far beyond the the matter-of-course, berserk, buffoonery everyone has annoyingly become accustomed to, however, alarming signs are being displayed heading you right to the nearest loony bin.
OK - I'll use wanne-be pornographer lawyer - since you regretted you never went into the pornography business with your peers. I suppose that's more honorable in your book. But it helps to remember the type of person you are when you slur people because they don't think the same way as you (which is what it all boils down to). Just keep voting GOP and leave the rest to the core of the party, and you'll be okay.
Yes, Boston's restaurants and hotels discriminate against Jews. LOL. This is like some other cretin who'd never set foot in Massachusetts complaining about how the Cape and Islands are lily-white and you won't find any black people within 50 miles of Hyannis. LOL. Y'all sure have a lot of guilt to work off to make up such whoppers as that.
The sad part is that every northerner on threads like this IS willing to concede there is racism in the north, and it's often unexamined. There's plenty of informal residential segregation which follows in the schools because of white flight.
Yet instead of reaching for compromise, people go way off the deep end and start saying the south has never been racist, the north is always racist, the north has segregated restaurants and beaches and hotels and all sorts of other things which are blatantly illegal, more blacks were lynched in three days in NYC than in 90 years of post-Civil War Dixie, et cetera, et cetera. Ludicrous. Positively ludicrous. If you and Trueblackman would like to try out your experiment in Boston, I think you'd find your biggest problem would be footing the bill for all the fine dinners you would enjoy. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, stand watie, and assume you'd dress and comport yourself for the occasion.
I'm trying to figure out how you'd do that. If it was a normal typewriter, you'd have to pull off every letter from it's swing arm and grind off the upper case letter, then put it back. If it was a Selectric, I suppose it would be easier, since you could just pull the ball off and grind off all the caps. Of course, the easiest thing, if that was really your goal, would be to just pull the cap-shift key. But that solution probably eluded Watie and he was forced to call in a maintenance guy.
Still not accurate. "Wannabe" assumes I tried to get into the porn business but was never able to figure out how to do so. I've never even attempted to get into that business.
But it helps to remember the type of person you are when you slur people because they don't think the same way as you (which is what it all boils down to).
What an interesting argument. How does the fact that I briefly considered going into an internet adult business when I was young and didn't know any better have anything to do with the current discussion?
Just keep voting GOP and leave the rest to the core of the party, and you'll be okay.
Brain-damaged neo-Confederates are hardly the core of the GOP.
Since capital and lower case letters were on the same typewriter arm, or in the case of the IBM selectic a single ball, I have this mental image of stand waite hovering over a maintenance man's shoulder as he files and scrapers the capital letters away.
It's not nice talk about someone with including them in the ping
Setting: Expensive Boston restaurant.
Enter, stage right, stand watie, wearing a pair of cut-off jean shorts and a Confederate flag t-shirt.
Hostess: Sir, we require a jacket and tie for all of our patrons.
SW: DaMnyanKee! you ARE DIScriMinaTinG aGaiNst ME bEcaUse i'm a SOUTHRON, InDian, WHITE CHRISTian. i BET youR aNcestORs KiLLed over 9,000 of mY faMIly in Lincoln's elMirA "dEaTh CamP."
I'll just have to learn to live with your disapproval, I guess.
I would expect no more from you!!
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