ChocoSocko Roundtable: The Deep South

[Sly]

... not that there's anything wrong with that.

[Ripper]

Well, yeah, but its still Missouri. I would think you would want to be associated with something.

[Jingus]

Missouri seceeded into the Confederacy in 1861. ONE OF US, ONE OF US.

[Sly]

Noooooooo...

[Broward83]

I haven't voted yet, but I'm voting awesome.

 

The hatred for the South is borderline assinine. Most of the points you made were about things that happened well over a hundred years ago and to even act like there wasn't any racism in the North during that time is retarded. The blacks that made it up North weren't fucking welcomed with open arms, a snifter of Brandy and a soft bed with warm food.

 

I will agree that Texas does have people beat as far as the football crazies go. Its a bit scary to go to a visiting town to film the game and notice that the entire populace is packed into the stands.

 

Food? Yes.. its greasy. Yes, the moment you even look at it your heart begins to lock up and beg you to look the other way. Fact is, its great tasting as all hell and actually fills you up. Its something that brings us all together either one day of the week or month.

 

The influence we've had on music and literature is enormous.

 

Like Ripper pointed out, we're also a pretty easy going people.

 

...Florida. Not deep south however.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

I hated Mississippi and at least thought everywhere else was alright, and I've been to every one of the lower 48.

[Black Lushus]

Broward, you've never met a rabid Husker fan...they are the absolute worst.

[AnnieEclectic]

I always considered missouri and nebraska as part of the midwest. For me the south stops at Texas as all my Texan friends are very clear about it...

 

"Where in the South are you from?"

 

"I'm not from the South."

 

"But..."

 

"I'm from Texas."

 

"Isn't that the South?"

 

"No. I'm from Texas."

 

I try not to lump Texas with the South, but sometimes I slip up (I think I even did in this thread no less)

 

And I wouldn't call my beef with the South "Hatred". It's more like "Not understanding why anyone would want to be there". But then my opinions of a good life are different than others. To me, the weather makes the South an auto-lose, and it's not all tornadoes or anything. Just on heat. I find 60 degrees F way the hell too hot.

 

 

[PILLS! PILLS! PILLS!]

I just sort have an irrational phobia of southern accents and drawls. The people just sound like they are a few evolutionary paces behind. Like they don't know the difference between right and wrong. That's dangerous.

 

Oh, and the weather in the Midwest sucks a lot of cock. Not in a good way, either. I hate it.

[King Kamala]

Biggest redneck I've ever met (and I've met a lot) was from Maine.

 

Now wait, I have a lot of junk in my front yard and I may be married to my cousin but surely I'm not the biggest you've ever met...

 

All kidding aside, the man does not joke. We do have a ton of rednecks. Not so much in the Portland metropolitan area (there are some though) but once you get 45 minutes or so outside of the city, you've hit the Deep South of the Far North.

 

And if you look hard enough, there are rednecks everywhere in this country. I bet there's even some in NYC. How the hell else would The Allman Brothers be able to sell out 15 nights at The Beacon Theater every Spring?

[AboveAverage484]

I've always considered northern Florida and eastern Texas as part of the South. Same goes for some (mostly southern) parts of Missouri and Kentucky, because the further north you go in the former, the more "Midwesterny" it feels.

 

I'm with Ripper on the south ruling for many of the same reasons he listed. A lot of kids in metropolitan or urban areas pretty much go to school with kids of the same race and income. My county seat and hometown has 25,000, which is by no small, but the county only had six high schools, and mine encompassed the entire western portion of the county. We had rich kids, poor kids, rednecks, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians all mixed together, which probably went a long way in developing good relations between different types of people among us kids. We never had any major race related problems and everybody pretty much tolerated everybody else, since we'd all known each other since middle school.

 

That brings up another interesting note about my high school: Every kid who went to West Iredell middle school, went to West Iredell High School, and there were four elementary schools in the middle school district. This meant that there was 25% chance that you'd known a kid since kindergarten in high school and a 100% chance that you've known them since sixth grade. This meant that kids weren't just thrown in with other types of kids in high school whom they weren't familiar with, leading to better harmony between students in high school.

 

Sometimes it's good to live in bum-F nowhere.

[nl5xsk1]

And if you look hard enough, there are rednecks everywhere in this country. I bet there's even some in NYC. How the hell else would The Allman Brothers be able to sell out 15 nights at The Beacon Theater every Spring?

Stoners =/= rednecks.

[Guest Vitamin X]

East and northern Texas. You could probably split the state in two in terms of the feel in those places- El Paso, San Antonio, and Austin are decidedly more progressive areas and not as "Texas culture" as Dallas and Houston. Hell, I even like Austin.

 

Agent, you've said you've been to all lower 48? What did you think of Oregon?

 

I've been to a good amount of states myself, but at least most of them I've extensively traveled so I'm familiar with all parts of the state. The only ones this doesn't apply for are Alabama (only went through Mobile), Mississippi (went through on I-10, including Biloxi and drove up to Kiln for the hell of it), and Virginia, where I only traveled around the northern part, and Washington, where I only saw the eastern part of the state. I've seen everything Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida has to offer though, for the most part.

[Broward83]

Broward, you've never met a rabid Husker fan...they are the absolute worst.

 

I see your Husker fan Lushus, and I raise you with an Aggie fan.

 

(When the Livestock Show and Rodeo was in town, I wore my Texas button down shirt. Nearly every step I took, I was glared at by Aggie fans or alum looking for a way to try and kick my ass..)

[Guest blame that goot.]

Anyone who cares deeply about college sports is odious, irrespective of allegiance.

[Jingus]

The hatred for the South is borderline assinine.

When it's lazy repetition of the same stereotypes, oh yeah. Like pretty much any time that Family Guy takes a random potshot at the South. It just comes off as being the whining of some hippie douchebag who's never even been there.

 

For me the south stops at Texas as all my Texan friends are very clear about it...

My geographic experience is limited, but from many of the people I've met here, lots of Texans seem to still think they're the sovereign nation of the Lone Star Republic.

 

I find 60 degrees F way the hell too hot.

Is it PC for me to refer to Annie with the word "freak" on this one?

 

Broward, you've never met a rabid Husker fan...they are the absolute worst.

 

I see your Husker fan Lushus, and I raise you with an Aggie fan.

You have to see the high school stadiums here in TX to believe it. An utterly appalling amount of time, money, and effort is spent on football here.

 

Anyone who cares deeply about college any sports is odious, irrespective of allegiance.

Fixed that for ya.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Yessir, the Texans are on the point with their football craziness. I remember going through some really small town in West Texas in late February a few years ago, and the whole town was just absolutely dead except for these HUGE banners that hung over the main streets proclaiming the awesomeness of the local high school's Eagles football team (I think that's what it was). I didn't see the high school or its stadium, but I stopped in at the gas station there and it seemed like that was the only place to really hang out around town, and everyone there seemed to use it as a meeting place.

[Big Ol' Smitty]

Laughable to think that bigotry happens more in the south than in the northern states.

 

I present three conflicting pieces of evidence:

 

1.

 

2. PBS Map of Lynchings

 

(click on "lynchings & riots" then place your cursor over "lynchings" and scroll it over various northern & southern states--notice the numbers in the "black" column)

 

3.

The maroon states are the ones won by George Wallace.

[Jingus]

Have any evidence which isn't forty years old?

[Hawkius Maximus]

The funniest part of this thread was the first post, and then people coming to defend the south~! Like a call to arms to protect it's honor.

[Big Ol' Smitty]

Look I'm not arguing that there aren't racial problems and tensions in the North, too. But I think it's silly to pretend that the South has magically become a fount of racial harmony after the Civil Rights Act was signed.

 

But you want more recent evidence? Okay:

 

-The success of politicians who opposed busing

-The success of politicians who trumpeted "states' rights" (oh wait, Southern voters were all just committed constitutional lawyers, right?)

-The success of Nixon's & subsequent politicians' Southern Strategy

-The fact that Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond kept getting electing to the Senate, despite never disavowing their segregationist views

-Cross burnings

-Things like this:

 

Last September, a Kentucky family originally from El Salvador found a wooden cross burning on their front lawn just weeks after they moved in. Earlier last year, a Latino teenager in Houston was brutally beaten and sodomized while one attacker screamed "White Power!" The victim barely survived, and one attacker was sentenced to life in prison.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/06/...in2440306.shtml

-The recent resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, primarily in the South

 

http://www.adl.org/PresRele/Extremism_72/4973_72.htm

 

note: I'm from the South

[The Niggardly King]

In the deep south... THEY LYNCH NEGROES!

 

The Great Debaters had that line and they beat the Harvard debate team, so I'm going with The Great Debaters here

[Big Ol' Smitty]

Also, the association of many Southern politicians and public officials, including the governor of Mississippi, with the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (no, I'm not calling it racist just because it's conservative--the Anti-Defamation League and SPLC both list it as a hate group).

[Jingus]

Yeah, racism exists in the south. And? You seem to be making the case that it's still a lot worse in the south than anywhere else, and I have yet to see any sort of proof about that. Especially since the racial situation gets better, not worse, over time with every passing generation.

[Nighthawk]

Yeah, you're talking out of your ass, Jingus.

[Jingus]

About what, exactly?

 

Here's how it sounds to me: "Hey dude! You know that place where you were born, raised, and lived your whole life? Well it SUCKS! It's all stupid, and so is everybody from there! You hate them darkies, don't ya! You fuckin' bigot! Your great-great-grandfather lived in an era where whites owned blacks, although it's statistically unlikely that your own greatgreatgrandpa actually did so! You suck!"

 

The bottom line is that I've heard far, far more statements and jokes about Southerners being racist than I've heard actual examples of Southerners being racist. And YES, I know the racism sure as hell is out there. I worked in independent Southern professional wrestling for five years, and there aren't many more redneckier social groups to be found, so I consider myself an expert on it. From the blatant ones ("My grandaddy was in the Klan... sure do wish I'd lived back then") to the ones who think they know what racist is, but that they're not it (if I had a dollar for every time I've heard the "there's a difference between regular black people and niggers" theory, well, I could have a nice meal at TGI Fridays), to the white people who would claim til their dying day that they're not racist and they hate racism and would never use slurs and all that... until they eventually tell you some story from their youth about when segregation happened, and it'll make the Negroes sound like they're some kind of jungle thugs. I've met all kinds. Point is, I know racism pretty well, but the majority of white Southerners aren't like that. Most of them simply have more important problems to worry about and don't give a shit about someone's skin color.

 

Another thing that really grinds my gears: in popular media, it's perfectly okay to portray this entire section of the country as a wasteland of barefoot moonshine-swillin' Jethroes who don't speak that thar English too good. Southerners are just about the only subculture in America whom it's perfectly acceptable and PC to mock and perpetuate cruel, grossly inaccurate stereotypes about. And as a Southerner myself, that naturally pisses me off. So a bunch of old dead guys did some bad shit. That's no reason to attack me and my generation for it.

[Jingus]

Yeah, but at least anytime someone makes a joke aboot lumberjacks, you know it's just that, a joke. Lots of otherwise seemingly intelligent and well-adjusted people really believe that the entire South is just one big bible-thumping cousin-fucking Klan.

[Guest cobainwasmurdered]

If the only jokes about Canada involved Lumberjacks then yes it wouldn't bother any of us.

[EVIL~! alkeiper]

Yeah, but at least anytime someone makes a joke aboot lumberjacks, you know it's just that, a joke. Lots of otherwise seemingly intelligent and well-adjusted people really believe that the entire South is just one big bible-thumping cousin-fucking Klan.

I'm guilty of that at times. It's a bad habit, and you're absolutely right.

[The Niggardly King]

who gives a fuck about what some yankees who never going to venture in your neck of the woods think?