circusboy wrote:I've lived in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, New York, Missouri, and California. I've spent significant time in Georgia, Florida and Massachusetts as well. Taken person-by-person, you'll find all kinds in all places. However, I have experienced a cultural tolerance for racism in the South and Midwest that I have not witnessed in the West nor Northeast. Confederate flags--and don't deny what they symbolize--seem much more acceptable to display in those places.
The worst displays of racism I have ever seen have been in the Northeast, by far.
What you perceive as cultural tolerance for racisim might be described differently by someone with another point of view. It might be that there is so much cultural mixing of the races in the South (where minority populations are larger and more integrated), that southerners have a more mature understanding of the true cultural differences between racial and ethnic groups. In the north, however, there is much less cultural mixing. I've never seen segregation in the South like I've seen in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, DC, Baltimore, and Boston, where I've done enough work to be able to make personal observations. But the intelligentsia in those cities give eloquent lip service to the symbolism of integration, and they are part of the power elite who controls a lot of the public conversation in the U.S. In the South, there is less of this pretense, and frankly the races are much closer by my observation.
I've seen Klan activities in the south, but relatively few skinheads and neo-Nazis compared to other parts of the country. How you perceive the difference depends on your gut-level reaction to, say, Klan visibility versus neo-Nazi visibility.
And I think many people purposely give meaning to the appearance of the Confederate battle flag that corresponds to their particular point of view. For southerners, it is a means of establishing their own identity separate from northerners, who they generally distrust. It's a "thumb in your eye", not to black people (and certainly not to black individuals) but rather to what they see as the northeastern power elite who are not sensitive to their needs or perspective. Certainly, some do it just to annoy the black community, but then they don't have the corner on
that market. Mostly, they do it to annoy the power elite whom they mistrust.
For a black person to automatically assume that someone waving the Confederate flag is specifically anti-black is no different than a white person automatically assuming that a person wearing a Malcolm X T-shirt is specifically anti-white. I once read a T-shirt on the son of a colleague that said "Whatever it takes" under a silhouette of Malcolm X. How is that not to be interpreted as a challenge by any white person? Yet such displays usually attract no comment.
Of course, the boy wearing the shirt had nothing against me or any of his other white acquaintances and friends. At the worst, he was making a statement against what he perceived as the white power elite. Mostly, though, I think he was expressing himself culturally, which is a fancy way of saying that in his circle of close friends a shirt like that is cool. He probably perceives grimaces from white people who read his shirt as racial prejudice, but I don't think that's quite fair for him to do so. That's what I meant by my statement that when a person perceives a racial component to their relationships, it may be real, but it may be real because people are reacting to the person's projection of his own perceptions and issues. Both are possible, so when we perceive prejudice, we have to be quite analytical and honest with ourselves to interpret things properly.
There is certainly far more genuine politeness between the races in the south than in most parts of the north, by my direct observation. And if I was black, I'd far rather live in Dallas or Atlanta than in Boston or Philadelphia, particularly if I'm in a middle class situation like the families of most college kids.
But I'm not sure Arkansas is the best example of the South in any case. People treat the South as being monolithic, and that is, of course, just as false as treating the black community as being monolithic.
Rick "calling it like he sees it" Denney
We've exchanged a pixel or two at TubaEuph back in the day.
