"If southerners are so nice and friendly, why are there so many southern posts on this thread bashing northerners for no other reason than we talk funny?"
It's not because you talk funny. It's experience with Northerners who come south intent on making the South into the North, mostly. If you can't like where you are for what it is, why would you move there? Far too often, damnYankees get where they wanna go then try to turn it into where they came from.
And as for the rest of your comments, who assesses the city crime and the educational institutions? The damnYankee bureaucrats. If the South's educational institutions' have a bad reputation, and reputation is part of those numbers--it is, btw--then the bias simply perpetuates itself. And as to city crime, such comparison is almost always about offenses known to the police. If Kitty Genovese didn't teach you that nobody reports a thing to NYC's cops, I'm wasting my time posting to you.
The Kitty Genovese case took place nearly fourty years ago at a time when most southern states still required black people to ride in the back of the bus and drink from seperate water fountains. Obviously, a lot can change in 40 years, including the crime rates in various cities and the way people respond to crime. Based upon the most recent FBI statistics, you have a much greater chance of becoming the victim of a violent crime in Dallas/Fort Worth, Mobile, New Orleans, Jacksonville, Houston, Memphis, Miami, Atlanta, Norfolk, Richmond, Birmingham, Jackson, Phoenix, Charlotte, and just about any other city in the "friendly" south, than you do in "mean" cities like New York and Boston.
And while Southerners do indeed come off as extremely friendly, in my experience, the friendliness is often cosmetic. For example, I can recall in the not so distant past attending a mixed-race business meeting in Columbia, South Carolina. The local boys were real nice to the me and the black guy, almost to the point of making us feel uncomfortable. But after the black guy left to catch a flight back to New York, one of the good 'ol boys, who must of forgot that I was a Yankee, said right in front of me and five of his southern colleagues, "I really like Thomas. He's not a bad for a n....r." As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he knew he had made a mistake, but rather than keeping his mouth shut, he and his buddies started in with that smooth talking southern crap, basically telling me that "its no big deal," "everyone uses the N word down here, even they do," and in Byrd like fashion, "it ain't a racist thing or anything 'cause everyone knows there are white n.....s and colored n.....s"
Funny. That's this Yankee's complaint about "townies/flatlanders/cityfolk, etc" who move out here and want to bring the city with them. I don't need, nor want Ann Arbor to expand 20 miles North.
Crime stats are what they are. Nobody is engaging in some conspiracy to make Atlanta's crime numbers look bad.
According to these statistics, the ten lowest-crime metro areas in the US are all in the Northeast or California. Of the ten metro areas with the highest crime rates, 6 are in the South and none are in the Northeast.
Some educational stats are purely objective- SAT numbers for incoming Freshmen. Others, such as reputation, are based on surveys of academics all over the country, including the South. Other than a few places like Duke or U of Virginia, the best American schools are in the Northeast, California and the Midwest.
And as to city crime, such comparison is almost always about offenses known to the police.
What's your point? If people tend to generally underreport crimes, what makes you think that Southerners are any less likely to do the same thing? In any event, crimes like murder don't really get underreported. Compare NYC to Atlanta or New Orleans and get back to us.
If Kitty Genovese didn't teach you that nobody reports a thing to NYC's cops, I'm wasting my time posting to you.
You obviously have no conception what NYC is like these days. If crime is as bad as you say it is, why are yuppies of all races moving to Harlem these days?