Are White Southerners Oversensitive?

[California Girl]

I'm seen it stated in several thread that Blacks are oversensitive to race or criticism. Is the same true of White Southerners?

Lost the Civil War, were economically backward compared to the North for nearly a century. Instituted Jim Crow laws to make themselves feel superior again by bullying people lower on the totem pole than themselves. Had those laws pulled away from them in the mid-part of the 20th century. Saw and are still seeing a gradual dwindling of the power structure they had established. Get really up in arms about Yankees moving into their towns and buying land. Get really up in arms and sensitive when the official line of Southern oppression and victimhood due to losing the Civil War and slavery, and Jim Crow are ridiculed. As a defense, if anyone makes criticisms likes to call those critics racists or other types of ad hominem insults. Or they say that all those evil from the past are just "heritage."

Tell me, does anyone else see a slight parallel? A double standard?
And just so we're clear, I'm not saying that all Southerners are like this, or that all Southerners are racist. I would argue that the majority of White Southerners do carry some of these sentiments to a certain degree.

Ozmar, the southern white guys I know are not racists and never have been. Southern attitudes about race are totally different from northern ones. In a big northern city, poor blacks live in public housing apparently deliberately designed to be the Seventh Circle of Hell. But in the south, blacks live next door to whites, they are neighbors, and they are inextricably woven into the fabric of the community.

It may be different in a big southern city...I never lived in Atlanta or New Orleans, etc. But as you say, much of the south is rural or small towns. It is different, trying to whip people up to hate Miss Mable, the next door neighbor lady they've known all their lives who makes the best butterscotch cookies in town, yanno?

The south has its shame, for sure. Jim Crow and the KKK, for starters, but any northerner who thinks "his people" were less vicious is dishonest or simply does not know his history. Where do you think the only race riots ever to occur in the US took place?

The South also has something to be pretty proud of..... the death of the KKK for instance.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

I never said that the abolitionists weren't racist. That's irrelevent. Even if they were racist, they were fighting to end slavery. The Confederates were racist and fighting to keep slavery. I wonder which is the worse evil.

I also live in the South, and in geneal towns are very divided by race, with a black part of town, a richer white part of town, and sometimes a small hispanic part of town.

Wait, are you claiming all whites in the South are rich? Or richer then all minorities? Provide evidence.

 

[Madeline]

I lived in the deep south in 50's and 60's. I'm sure the prejudice and racism that I learned as child exist in me today just as it did then. You just can't escape from what you were taught as a child. It's all there. It's just hidden away. The best you can do is realize that you are a racist and try to deal with it. I envy the young in South today who weren't taught to hate before they were taught to read.

We all have bad thoughts, Flopper. We all have prejudicies and biases and most were formed in childhood. The 1950's and 1960's in New York were no doubt different than down south, but only in the way racism was acted out...not in the degree of racism that existed.

All any of us can do is try to ignore those thoughts and do what we think is right.

 

[R.C. Christian]

I have personally never lived anywhere I felt I was a target for someone's rage because of my race. I was in Detroit in the late 1970's, when it's murder rate was at its zenith. The common wisdom was "don't cross 8 Mile Road" if you are white. But I worked in a bar inside there and never had a problem. You need to use your radar in any big city....it has nothing to do with race.

Yes, race never had anything to do with the massive demographic shift and white flight from Detroit, no, not at all. Absolutely nothing at all to do with the race riots, or any of that either.

 

[Madeline]

I have personally never lived anywhere I felt I was a target for someone's rage because of my race. I was in Detroit in the late 1970's, when it's murder rate was at its zenith. The common wisdom was "don't cross 8 Mile Road" if you are white. But I worked in a bar inside there and never had a problem. You need to use your radar in any big city....it has nothing to do with race.

Yes, race never had anything to do with the massive demographic shift and white flight from Detroit, no, not at all. Absolutely nothing at all to do with the race riots, or any of that either.

Did I say that? Of course race "caused" white flight. Busing has been a death knell for almost every major city up north. The race riots had different triggers but they were all associated with race...WTF R.C.? They aren't called "gender riots" now, are they? State the obvious, why donca.

Are you scared I am sugarcoating something? Spit it out.

 

[fyrenza]

Oh...

To NOT see the class distinctions in the USA is to be blinded by the light that you THINK can save you, my sweet.

We've been divided for DECADES, and it's only NOW becoming obvious to the general population.

Do you read?

I never cared for REAL shit, myself ~ FICTION ruled my reading life,

but it's something that we MUST needs to come to grips with:

LIFE AND FICTION imitate each other.

IF someone can THINK of it?

They HAVE thought of it,

AND

it CAN be used against us, The Public.

I hunkered down, you know? I read a TON of stuff, and thought about ALL of it, and how it actually COULD be.

How we COULD be manipulated, 'cuz we're ALL sheep.

I woke up, though,

and will NOT allow my mind to be used in that manner.

I could but can't say a lot about any of this. Where I came from, MY time? It wasn't like this and every time I post, I put myself at risk...

 

[Two Thumbs]

Well since a quick insult to any white or conservative person the dares to disagree with liberals is called a racist inbred redneck.

They have a point.

The left treats anyone from the south as if they were lesser beings, just look at the racist shit "Mr. Clean" posted. But he will never get called on it b/c it's ok to say racist crap to white people and it's even better if they are southern.

Ah, but it's okay to say all black people are oversensitive to criticism, and oversensitive to the issue of race? And it's not racist of a white person to make that claim as a generalization about black people. But, when white southerners are given the same criticism, and they then get overly sensitive and defensive, it's all brushed aside?

Tell me which statement is more fucked up:

Black people should get over it and move on. Slavery ended almost 150 years ago.

White Southerners should get over it and move on. Their rebellion and attempted sesession was crushed almost 150 years ago.

Neither one is fucked up.

The fact that blacks are allowed to be racist. Have race based colleges, race based scholarships, Mags, and TV channels, tells me the world needs to get over it and level the playing the playing feild.

Stop heeping hate on southeners, and they will stop hating you back.

I know stopping hate is a novel idea. Try it sometime.

 

[Toro]

I don't think the South is any more or less racist than anywhere else in America.

But what do I know?

There has been a black migration back to the South over the past generation.

 

[Dante]

Are White Southerners Oversensitive?

...

White Southerners have lots to be sensitive about, starting with the highly successful GOP Southern strategy that the former Chairman apologized for while he was Chairman. The Chairman had to apologize (what a decent thing to do) to Black America for inexcusable behavior on the part of GOP starting with Nixon and Reagan.

 

[Flopper]

Are White Southerners Oversensitive?

...

White Southerners have lots to be sensitive about, starting with the highly successful GOP Southern strategy that the former Chairman apologized for while he was Chairman. The Chairman had to apologize (what a decent thing to do) to Black America for inexcusable behavior on the part of GOP starting with Nixon and Reagan.

There was a time when the GOP was really the party of Lincoln that stood up against southern democrats and their Jim Crow laws. But that all ended with intergeneration in the South and the civil rights movement. With the passing of the civil rights bill, white southern democrats flocked to the GOP. Not that they had any love for the party, but they had no choice because the northern democrats had deserted them. They brought to the GOP their strong Christian beliefs, racial prejudices, states rights, and an undying hatred for a big federal government that had crushed the South. You can still see those values in the GOP today.

 

[uscitizen]

The south did lose about 80% of their best young men and their genetics in the civil war.

 

[Ringel05]

The south did lose about 80% of their best young men and their genetics in the civil war.

 

[Kalam]

I don't think the South is any more or less racist than anywhere else in America.

Most of the South is more racist.

 

[Ozmar]

The south did lose about 80% of their best young men and their genetics in the civil war.

But we got Coca Cola as a result.

 

[Charles_Main]

One fallacy about the Civil war was that the Abolitionists were not Racist.

All of them?

Hooray for broad brushes.

Sorry insert the word Most

 

[Madeline]

I don't think the South is any more or less racist than anywhere else in America.

Most of the South is more racist.

I find this to be untrue, Kalam. In any event, southern racism seems less evil to me than northern, as of today.

 

[RadiomanATL]

I don't think the South is any more or less racist than anywhere else in America.

Most of the South is more racist.

I guess you don't travel too much down in these parts then.

 

[Kalam]

I don't think the South is any more or less racist than anywhere else in America.

Most of the South is more racist.

I find this to be untrue, Kalam. In any event, southern racism seems less evil to me than northern, as of today.

I don't know how pernicious it is, but there's certainly more of it.

 

[Kalam]

I don't think the South is any more or less racist than anywhere else in America.

Most of the South is more racist.

I guess you don't travel too much down in these parts then.

I was born and raised here. I've never lived outside of the South for any significant period of time.

 

[RadiomanATL]

Most of the South is more racist.

I guess you don't travel too much down in these parts then.

I was born and raised here. I've never lived outside of the South for any significant period of time.

Then the premise still holds then, you have nothing to compare it too. No baseline.

Racism is everywhere, but I find it less in the south actually.