I have lived in 10 states and 3 countries. All of the states except
Illinois are in what is considered to be the South. The most racist state
I have lived in was Illinois. I have traveled in most states and 67
countries. The most racist state I have traveled in is Maine. The most
racist country I have traveled in is Palestine.
There you go.
Tina
On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 6:21 PM, Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Moose IX wrote:
> > A matter of perspective ...
> > A lot of places look strange to me from this perfectly normal place. :-)
> > Benevolent Dictator Moose
>
> "Normal" is where you grew up. I've lived in four different states,
> and find that the "normal" is abnormal in all four states. I grew up
> in a racially mixed area with heavy black and hispanic populations. At
> least a third of my graduating class was non-white. Did we have
> problems? Sure, but not anything compared to a few years earlier when
> we had the race riots. Schools did a huge clamp down on it and the
> churches did their part too. We got things sorted out because we HAD
> to get them sorted out. Neighboring communities were not so fortunate,
> though. It all depends on the leadership and resolve of a community.
> In recent years, the leadership has changed and so many of the gains
> we made in the '70s and '80s have been reversed.
>
> Living in Quincy, Illinois, was a bit different. I felt like there was
> a bit of a truce, but it never was a resolved conflict. We bought a
> house in the "wrong" part of town and was ostricized by other white
> people who grew up in that town. Those who were move-ins, like us,
> could care less and had no issue with it. Our neighbors were great and
> we got along with them perfectly well. We stayed in close contact with
> one couple for many many years after we moved.
>
> I think Iowa is a bit odd in that most people just don't care. While
> there are the meth-heads that are racists, for the most part people
> around here just want to be respected and will treat others with
> respect. Yes, every place has issues, but they are not the big issues.
> We've got other issues we deal with. Like figuring out which
> presidential candidates are worthless slimeblobs.
>
> A friend of mine at work has been bothered about moving his family
> here from a major eastern city because of the lack of an
> African-American population. They love it here and are treated very
> well, but there are so few other African-Americans that they feel out
> of place. I can understand.
>
> Honestly, of all the places I've been, and that includes extensive
> business travel in Canada and most of Europe, I find that racism is
> alive and well absolutely everywhere. It's just that the bigotry is
> towards some other group of people. No country is immune. Even
> Amsterdam, of all places, has issues. Go figure.
>
> As to the confederate flag. There are several factors in play which
> makes the USA extremely unique. The presence of the flag today is a
> result of a decision made by Abraham Lincoln. The idea was
> restoration, not domination. The idea was to reunite the country, not
> put people who fought on the wrong side of the war into prison. While
> some of that happened, there was one particular flaw to the thinking
> in that for you to have "reunification" you would have had to have had
> a "unified" country to start with. The evidence is that from the very
> founding of the country, the USA was never really "unified". It never
> was. The roots of sectionalism started a hundred years before the war
> for independence from England.
>
> To this day, you have tin types with Robert E Lee's photo on it
> proudly displayed in households throughout the south. You've got all
> sorts of artifacts from that time period. It's not just flags. This
> was determined to be acceptable by our nation's leadership in order to
> heal the country, not create a nation of winners and losers. The
> success in this program was set back a few times and it took two world
> wars, Korea and Vietnam before we really became one country.
>
> At some point, there was an attempted change in the historical
> narrative. Instead of a war over slavery, it was a war against
> federalism. While an argument could be made that this would have been
> a "holy war", it wasn't what it was officially about. To downplay the
> role of slavery in the decision to break away from the Union is to
> ignore the facts. It is absolutely true that many people fought
> because this other narrative, but the documents and constitution of
> the Confederate States were about slavery. Even Abraham Lincoln
> acknowledged both story lines and that helped influence his viewpoint
> on reunification. It also influenced how he chose to fight the war.
>
> My vehicle happens to have been made in South Carolina by a company
> that made airplanes and engines for the Nazi war machine, (BMW). Is it
> possible that the BMW or Mercedes insignia is just as racist as the
> confederate flag? No. It isn't. One is a "brand", but the other is a
> "symbol". The two are worlds apart. Now, if BMW had a Swastika as
> their logo, then yes, it would be as abhorant.
>
> What is the symbol for? What does it REALLY mean? It means you
> "identify with". As a Christian, the cross is one of my symbols. I
> identify with it and what it stands for. It isn't a decoration. It is
> a statement.
>
> The beauty of the USA is that we have freedoms here that most people
> in most countries don't understand and can't even fathom. Arguments
> can be made about the gun violence, etc., but historically, the USA
> has always been more than a bit rough. Substance abuse is rampant from
> the very beginning--to the point where the King of England even tried
> to cut off our supply of rum to get the colonies to sober up. That
> didn't work--we switched to hard cider and fought a war with him.
>
> These freedoms include the ability to display whatever you want and
> say whatever you want. That doesn't always mean that there aren't
> consequences for those statements, but at least we do have the freedom
> to be idiots. If an individual wants to display the confederate flag,
> I say go for it! It's a great symbol because it instantly tells me
> what type of person he/she is and I can go on with life. But for it to
> be hung on the statehouse and other government buildings? Eeeeeww, not
> so much. Why? because we have representative governments. This means
> that the government actually represents us. To have this symbol as
> part of the official portrayal of the government means that it is an
> official portrayal of ME. That's what is wrong here. This isn't about
> whether or not an NFL football team should change their name, it's
> about official representation and identification.
>
> That's where we also run into another unique aspect of the USA. Each
> state is able to choose their own flag and since this particular
> symbol has never been outlawed by the federal government, it is up to
> the state to make it right. Given cultural issues, and a long long
> history, telling somebody that they MUST do something will usually
> cause them to trench in and resist change even though they know that
> they should change.
>
> AG
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