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
And the south lost almost 270,000 during the rebellion. And then quit. So talk about 'dead having died in vain'.
'[T]he State of Connecticut is a free sovereign and independent State; that the United States are a confederacy of States; that we are a confederated and not a consolidated Republic.'
And, 'Resolved, That this Assembly highly approve of the conduct of his Excellency the Governor ... his letter addressed to the Secretary for the Department of War, containing his refusal ... as an example to persons, who may hold places of distinguished trust, in this free and independent republic.'
Connecticut legislature, 1809.
Again, giving the contempt for constitutions prevalent in the confederacy, Texas may very well have considered herself to be at war on her own. But I think I can safely say that the rest of us are not losing any sleep worrying about the Texas hordes launching a summer offensive.
Except that they can't form their own form of government other than a republican one, coin money, deal with foreign countries, change the status of their state, control foreign trade, take any actions other than those allowed by the Constitution, or pass certain kinds of laws. But other than that they can pretty much do what they want. </sarcasm>
Recommend you read Elaine Scarry on the Second Amendment and the distribution of the warmaking power, and the People's consent.
Kirby Smith made a speech published by the Galveston Tri-Weekly news on May 30, 1865 (I have paraphrased)
"..I intended to struggle on to the last with an army united in purpose, firm in resolve, and battling for the right, I believed that God would yet give us the victory. I reached here to find the Texas troops DISBANDED, and hastening to their homes.....I am left a commander without an army, a General WITHOUT TROOPS. You have made your choice......"
Three days later, on June 2, Smith surrendered the Department of Trans-Mississippi.
SOURCE: To the Tyrants Never Yield, Kevin Young, Wordware Publishing, 1992
NO...simply left., Their officers disbanded them in most cases.
</sarcasm>
You will now regale us with your "People in Chains" theory of government, yes? Please, go ahead.
Not from our point of view.
You might better worry about the Mexican hordes.....but that's another thread.
Only I think we Texans, when y'all finally get around to trying to handle the Hordes, ought to sit on our hands and let y'all pay the price of your neglect and folly all by yourselves.
'T]he causes and reasons which have produced this conflict between the general and state government should be made known, not only that the state may be justified to her sister states, who are equally interested in the preservation of the state rights ...
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, &c. That, as a member of the Federal Union, the Legislature of Pennsylvania acknowledges the supremacy, and will cheerfully submit to the authority of the general government, as far as that authority is delegated by the constitution of the United States. ...
Resolved, That, should the independence of the states, as secured by the constitution, be destroyed, the liberties of the people in so extensive a country cannot long survive. To suffer the United States' courts to decide on STATE RIGHTS will, from a bias in favor of power, necessarily destroy the FEDERAL PART of our Government.'
3 Apr 1809.
What did the federal government do in 1860 to destroy the independence of the states?
Someone told be that the definition of a Texan is a Mexican on his way to Oklahoma, but that's another thread.
Only I think we Texans, when y'all finally get around to trying to handle the Hordes, ought to sit on our hands and let y'all pay the price of your neglect and folly all by yourselves.
You're to busy making us suffer by sending Texans like Bush and Bush and Johnson to the White House. If we apologize for beating you will you take them back? Please?
In 1861 it waged war on a state to force it to remain in the union.
Resolutions of the House of Representatives of Pennsylvania - 1810
Pennsylvania again, 3 Feb 1810.
Union KIAs were about 110,000 while about 200,000 died from from non-combat causes, mostly disease of some sort, which was the sad lot of soldiers in the 19th century.
No one knows with any accuracy how many rebels died in combat since the Confederates didn't keep very good records. Most estimates say somewhere between 90,000 and 100,000 KIAs. The numbers of those lost to non-combat causes is even less well understood.
Almost the entire industry and commerce of the United States have been diverted into new and unaccustomed channels. The most active and enterprising people in the world, in the midst of their varied occupations, suddenly find all the accustomed channels of businees blocked up and the stream of their production flowing back upon them in a disastrous flood, and stagnating in their workshops and storehouses. They are compelled to find new issues for their enterprise and to make a complete change in their habits and works. It is not merely in the cessation of all intercourse between the two vast sections, North and South, that this mighty transormation has taken place; but an equal alteration has been suddenly effected in the character of the business and the nature of the occupations which the poeple have heretofore pursued in the loyal states of the Union. Great branches of business, employing millions of capital, have been utterly annihilated or indefinitely suspended. Vast amounts of capital have been sunk and utterly lost in the deep gulf of separation which temporarily divides the States; or if they are ever to be recovered, it will be only after the storm shall have completely subsided, when some portions of the wrecks, which have been scattered in the fearful commotion, may be thrown safely on the shores of reunion. It was anticipated, especially by the rebels themselves, that these incaluable losses, these tremendous shocks and sudden changes, would utterly overwhelm the North with ruin and tear here to pieces with faction and disorder.
"How the War affects Americans", Continental Monthly, Boston, MA: J. R. Gilmore, Vol. 3, Iss. 4 (April 1863), pp. 412-413.
had lincoln, the TYRANT, had a brain (he was ONLY interested in $$$$$$ & POWER) he would have let the south go IN PEACE.
UNfortunately for about a MILLION DEAD, he wasn't that smart.
secession is ONE of the powers "reserved to the states or the people" in the BOR. but then, you know that.
free dixie,sw
Just the Royal Government without the King, and the Federalist businessmen from New York would supply all the royalty......educated at Harvard and Columbia.
The other thing they like to do is to invent concepts of a "mystical Union" that allows them to "rise above" the People and boss them around like cattle.
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