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
Desertion was a problem with the confederate army throughout the war.
The article I found dealt with the period in question, but recounts loosely the dispersal, beginning in Galveston on May 21 with Gen. Kirby Smith's order to evacuate the city, of the Confederates.
Fehrenbach records that the Confederate troops were disposed to go home even before the news of Lee's surrender arrived. At Palmito Hill/Ranch, a week earlier, some Confederates told captive Union officers after the battle that they'd have surrendered themselves and their position at discretion, if the hotdogging political-hack officer leading the Union force hadn't marched out a black regiment in his van.
A couple of days after the battle, Union officers under flags of truce informed Rip Ford, the Confederate cavalry commander, of Lee's surrender in Virginia. After some considerable cussing and swearing, negotiations began for the surrender or disbanding of the Confederate force in Brownsville. Later, Ford escorted the Union officers to Matamoros to attend a French/Mexican imperial military review, knowing that the appearance of a mixed Union and Confederate party of officers would disconcert the French, for whom a composition of American differences would be bad news. Their turnout had the desired effect.
First I'm not aware of those sentiments in the 1860 Republican platform. I know that in political life, the other side demonizes their opponents' positions. But political polemics is not usually a rationale for rebellion/revolution/secession.
Secondly, if the Republican platform was so evil, why didn't the Southerners unite with Douglas to do everything possible to combat the mad tyrant Lincoln?
Fair enough. Booth was about three years too late, if he wanted to do something like that -- which, btw, was considered very un-American.
Even Fehrenbach opined that "Booth's bullet was more disastrous to Texas than Brutus' dagger had been for Rome."
MOST of the victims of the ehtnic cleansing of the southland were "persons of colour" (both slaves & freepersons), mixed-bloods (lincoln, the stone racist, called them "those muddy-colored wretches".), AmerIndians,Asians, Roman Catholics, Jews, Latinos & "the poorest of the poor whites".
Hardly ANY of the slave-OWNING "Planter Aristocracy" suffered anything but MONETARY losses (in fact, despite the images of GWTW, MANY got RICHER as a result of the war! furthermore, all too many planters collaborated with the invaders, after being promised by the yankee high command that THEIR slaves would remain in chains PERMANENTLY!).
free dixie,sw
it's a HOOT! and a B.U. TRADITION! (full disclosure here. my kid sister IS a Baylor Bear, class of 79, so i've seen the bear drink a "TON" of DP!)
free dixie,sw
the FACTS & documents of that period do NOT backup your opinion.
SORRY.
fwiw, i've spent over 25 years reading the original records & 99% of what is taught in the "gubmint sponsurd publick screwls" is UNtruthful, either by lack of knowledge or intentional design.
free dixie,sw
I don't know, but that quote of your's should do well. Bullshit always sells.
I also read your other post in which you quoted the May 5th declamation offered by the troops of Hardeman's formation to the Confederates east of the Mississippi, inviting them to make their way to Texas to make a last stand. That was a pretty late date for such a ringing declaration. The army fell apart only two weeks later.
Your statement in that post that Ford's Confederates at Brownsville already knew about Lee's surrender seems reasonable but is contradicted by Fehrenbach's eyewitness account of the conference between Rip Ford (whom your ancestor served under) and Union Gen. E. B. Brown, who informed Ford of Lee's surrender. Perhaps they knew in Galveston, but word hadn't yet filtered down the coast.
Which coast, by the way, is taking another sort of beating today, if you've been watching the weather reports.
Say, Watie, did you find that U-Boat in Galveston yet? Maybe you should ask Dr. Lubar where it is.
That's a laugh. You've been busted for lying here so many times your screen name should be Stand Pinocchio.
According to city-data.com, 17.9% of the residents of Oak Ridge have advanced degrees and 37.9% have bachelor degrees, not even close to enough to put the city on the Top 100 list. In Stanford, CA, which leads the list, 96.4% have bachelor degrees and 64.9% have advanced degrees.
Sorry, Mr. Cox. I'm sure Tennessee is still a good state, but this column is hardly impressive.
I also read your other post in which you quoted the May 5th declamation offered by the troops of Hardeman's formation to the Confederates east of the Mississippi, inviting them to make their way to Texas to make a last stand. That was a pretty late date for such a ringing declaration. The army fell apart only two weeks later.
Re the Galveston material, one wonders what people did for money or postage between June 1, when the local post office stopped accepting Confederate stamps and money, and June 19, when Gen. Granger showed up and promptly seized all the mails, and the post office itself. (Now, why would he do that?)
Your statement in that post that Ford's Confederates at Brownsville already knew about Lee's surrender seems reasonable but is contradicted by Fehrenbach's eyewitness account of the conference between Rip Ford (whom your ancestor served under) and Union Gen. E. B. Brown, who informed Ford of Lee's surrender. Perhaps they knew in Galveston, but word hadn't yet filtered down the coast.
Which coast, by the way, is taking another sort of beating today, if you've been watching the weather reports.
I've also seen somewhere the theory that Ford fought that last battle to make time to transfer some cotton or other goods into Mexico so that the Federal troops wouldn't seize them. This would have meant a lot of money to the owners of the cotton and other goods.
Southern school systems, judging by the spelling.
Desertion was a problem with the Union army throughout the war.
You're droning again, ideologue.
Still waiting for your answer above.
I'm pretty sure those are the tourists.
Lack of vision, I guess. Foolishness. A determination to have done with the North, before the North, swelling to unguessable dimensions with immigrant trolls, eventually bore down the South and crushed it despite anything Northern Democrats could do.
Possibly, the Southerners correctly read the political tea leaves, that the Republican and Abolitionist propaganda of sectional demonization had worked, and the North was now united as a politial monolith against the South. Under such circumstances, as Robert Rhett's circular appeal to the Southern States to join the secessionist movement and Robert Toombs's speech to the Georgia secession commission to the same end show, many Southerners felt that they could no longer save themselves from oppression by the North.
True. But if your tales be true then apparently the confederate problem rose to the level of whole armies deserting. I'm not aware of that happening in the Union army.
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