just saw a documentary on PBS about the muder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. it's left me so disgusted. i realize stuff like this probably happens or has happened in countries all over the world, all throughout history. but this has basically blown my mind. because i'm left thinking democracy is a horrible idea, because i'm sure there are still loads of folks, (i'm gonna make a baseless judgement here) especially in the South, who would say we need to revert to more "traditional values" like the ones that were in place back then (only 50 years ago). and those people's voices should not be counted towards the totality that is "America". those people's voices should not be counted towards anything. those people should be dropped into molten lava. i don't know shit about the Deep South except what i've heard or been told. but i trust one of my best friends when he tells me stuff about how things are in places like Mississippi or Georgia or Alabama. when he tells me i can't even imagine how it really is, how even he, a Southerner, is creeped out by rural, Deep-South folk. and after watching this documentary, and seething, i wish we could just split america into two separate countries, one with the progressive forward-thinking folks, and let the ass-backwards morons have their own country. i know this is stupid of me, and i know it would never be possible because there's too many valuable natural resources and corporations in that region. maybe too many genuinely good people, too. but i'm just so fucking angry right now. i'm a longtime pacifist, but i swear, right now if i could snap my fingers and vaporize every single person on the planet who thinks it's alright to even use the word "nigger" in a sincerely derisive fashion, i would do it in a heartbeat. so fucking angry right now. the fact that i'm sure there are still plenty of Americans (and of course people worldwide) who think like the folks who murdered this kid, it just makes me sick.

I confess that I am prone to this sort of anti-south regionalism, and I'm not proud of it. I think we need to remind ourselves of all the backwardness elsewhere in this nation before we pass judgment on the convenient scapegoat that is the deep south. I mean, here in Michigan, we've got the good old Michigan Militia, and about 50 miles down the road from me is the home of the former Grand Imperial Fucknob of the KKK. I think every state has its racist history, and every state has lingering backwardness as well.

Raging against racists: Fine.
Raging against the deep south as a whole: Tempting and convenient, but grossly unfair.

i know it's not cool. i hope that came across a little in my post. note i didn't say i wish all southerners could be dropped in a volcano. and i'm fully aware that Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio are all teeming with KKK fuckwads. Michigan even managed to not vote bush, which is great.

i didn't mean to suggest that fuckwads are only in the South, or that everyone in the South is a fuckwad.

but who still wants to fly the confederate flag? and who fought integration tooth and nail?

still not cool at all to say "it's THE SOUTH'S FAULT!" i hope i didn't come across as saying that, though i do feel it a little bit in an indefensible way. and i would never deny that Dr MLK Jr said that the race-based riots when he visited chicago were the worst he'd ever seen, worse than in the South.

Since those who posted ahead of me already took the more enlightened position and attempted to be a little less hostile towards our southern bretheren, I'm going to go ahead and argue the counterpoint.

Yes, there are backward people in every part of this country and the world. But in the south, that sort of backward, regressive mentality is dominant. That region is tied to this idea of "southern culture" as though a history of racism and outright stupidity are something to brag about and fight for. The one and only reason that legal segregation isn't still practiced there is because the civilized world forcibly stopped it. Ditto slavery, for that matter.

Anyone who wants to argue that there's nothing wrong with the mentality of a group of states which:

1. Are proud of their "heritage", those good ol' days when them nigger boys got put in their place
2. Consistently man the bottom 10 rankings in the nation for divorce, child/spousal abuse, literacy and educational attainment, etc etc
3. Are still arguing over creationism and evolution 100 years after the rest of the (non-retarded) world came to some sort of resolution on the matter
4. Voted, in 2004 (in Alabama, look it up) to retain the language permitting segregated schools in their state constitution
5. Maintain a virulently anti-Washington, anti-government brand of conservatism even though they are the welfare children of the Republic - the small number of states that receive significantly more money from the Federal government than they pay to it in taxes (and even with all the money we pour into that region, they're still an embarassment in terms of educational attainment and standard of living)


can step forward and plant a big kiss right on my ass.

Democracy is not a horrible idea, but neither is secession. I think this conflict in mentalities is reaching a breaking point in the United States. We have an entire region of the country - the one whose unity makes it determinative in our national elections - that wants to operate on simplistic "my christian beliefs are more important than yer fancy book learnin" terms, and the rest of the nation is growing mighty tired of having to drag them, kicking and screaming, towards progress.

Is everyone in the south retarded? No. Are there brilliant people who live in the south? Of course. But they're outnumbered. Badly. The south is like the sibling or cousin in your family who is a complete fuck-up, and you constantly have to argue with him in order to keep him or her from being a complete embarassment to the whole family. "Get a job. Put a shirt on. Stop beating your wife. Stop getting knocked up every 12 months."

If anyone's ever been in a situation like that, it gets exhausting after, oh, a few decades. And eventually you just disown a person like that and give up. I'm sure there are plenty of you who are nice, open minded folk and will take serious issue with this, but if you have any defense for the fact that in 2005 there are areas that still hold segregated high school dances, I'm dying to hear it. And I don't speak about secession in a fit of hysterical anger or anything like that, but I think the country is going to have to deal - in the relatively near future - with the fact that the nation's centers of population, business, education, industry, etc are having decisions (in Presidential elections and the balance of Congress) made for them by farmer Jethro and the hee-haw crowd who are still fighting the Civil War in their minds. The states that take from the rest of the nation (and provide nothing in return except headaches as we argue with them endlessly about their backward ways) cannot continue having a determinative role in national affairs.

ginandtacos.com wrote:Democracy is not a horrible idea, but neither is secession. I think this conflict in mentalities is reaching a breaking point in the United States. We have an entire region of the country - the one whose unity makes it determinative in our national elections - that wants to operate on simplistic "my christian beliefs are more important than yer fancy book learnin" terms, and the rest of the nation is growing mighty tired of having to drag them, kicking and screaming, towards progress.

The boundary lines for your "succession" aren't as neatly defined as you might think. You may have already seen this, but check it out again anyway.

If you're basing your read of southern cultural values off of election results, you're missing the bigger picture - our national elections are being determined by rural citizens *everywhere*, not just in the South.

Eh, on the regional level, or on the state level, I agree to some extent. The thing is - the South is made up of actual people, and I don't think it's fair to write those people off entirely. Nearly 10 million Deep Southerners voted for John Kerry - about 40% of the vote. Now, I agree with you that this isn't enough, and with our kind of system, it's just as effective as 0%. But it's still a lot better than the bleak picture you're painting. Maybe I'm just optimistic.

toomanyhelicopters REALLY mad wrote: i'm a longtime pacifist, but i swear, right now if i could snap my fingers and vaporize every single person on the planet who thinks it's alright to even use the word "nigger" in a sincerely derisive fashion, i would do it in a heartbeat.

good one. your the boss..... i mean best......whatever, dude.

please, please, please: don't make this about christians

it's a fallacy of composition at best; a complete error at worst.

i can't speak for any people of this mindset, nor do i write this to defend them. the mindset that would committ, approve of, or even passively accept the killing of emmett till is horrifying, and i can't even begin to contemplate it. same goes for segregation, or any of the aforementioned things. but these people are not christian by any sense of the word. there is nothing in the Bible that they could stand on for one moment to back up their mindset. i'm a christian, and this stuff horrifies me. maybe i'm just too young, or have been isolated enough from it, but it hard to even understand that america as a majority once approved of these types of behaviors. it doesn't seem real. but it is, and sadly so...

if they call themselves christians, then they will be judged by that as well. they are not christians; not even close.

jesse wrote:The boundary lines for your "succession" aren't as neatly defined as you might think.

No, it's "secession". Southern schools have failed you.

Linus Van Pelt wrote:Nearly 10 million Deep Southerners voted for John Kerry - about 40% of the vote.

That's completely misleading. I heard the same argument regarding the Alabama segregation amendment - "Oh, well, 50% of the people voted against it. That's good, right?"

Let's take the Alabama amendment as an example. The census estimated that in 2004, 28% of Alabama's population was black. Now, let's omit for a minute the fact that we can't prove whether or not black alabamans and white alabamans turned out in the same percentages. Let's assume they did. So if 60% of the white folks voted, ditto the black folks or any other group in the populations.

Now, making that assumption (which is a relatively fair one), that would make ~28% of the ballots cast by black voters. Now, we can assume with some certainty that the black folks in Alabama were not voting in favor of segregationist language being retained in their constitution. That means that in order for the statewide totals to come out 50/50 (the amendment failed to pass by just a few thousand votes), the balance of voters (whites, since Alabama has neglibible populations of other minorities) had to vote against the amendment at nearly an 80% clip.

So yes, 40% of the south voted for Kerry. But, given that 30% of the population in the south are black (http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www ... 03721.html), that means that the white folks are voting at an 80%-plus rate in favor of the Confederate-flag-waving, bible-thumping, good-old-days-of-segregation politics of southern conservatism.

It almost seems like you don't consider black southerners to be real southerners. You've demonstrated fairly effectively that about 80% of (voting) white Alabamans are backward racists. That still doesn't negate the fact that nearly 50% of (voting) Alabamans voted against this amendment.