[lbo-talk] Wish I Was In Dixie (Re: The North's burden ofenlightening the South (was Re: The "NAFTA Superhighway" Urban Myth)

Marta Russell ap888 at lafn.org
Mon Nov 19 21:31:16 PST 2007


I'm from the South. When I moved to LA some 30 years ago I was astounded at what a segregated city it is. It still is.

I would hear the most racist remarks from white people here who were afraid to walk on the same side of the street as a black person, well usually black males. I had never experienced that in my 26 years of living in the deep South. I think bigotry can be expanded to having geographical bias. Kind of thou know not of what of one speaks. I get sick of hearing about the same old southern stereotypes.

Once in West Hollywood with a few white boys a writer friend of mine explained that his co-writer had a fear of black people and so we could not go into any establishment where there were blacks. He said the guy would actually start to sweat over it. Irrational bigotry. And this guy could be considered in a minority group by some. I nearly fell out laughing except that it was tragic.

Marta

On Nov 19, 2007, at 10:29 AM, Robert Wrubel wrote:


>
> --- Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote (emendations
> added):
>
> "(we)should consider whether (our) indiscriminate
> attack on the south is not just a way of coming to
> terms (or rather avoiding coming to terms)with the
> racism of the north"
>
> It's called scapegoating -- projecting one's own bad
> acts and thoughts on other people.
>
> BobW
>>
>>
>> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>>>
>>> And Southern black people aren't Southern? Unlike
>>> Carl, who, in a metaphysically weird manner
>> creates a
>>> Southern culture that has no black contribution,
>> the
>>> blacks who lived down south longer than most
>> whites
>>> were just aliens "reacting" to white southern
>> culture,
>>
>> Southern "white" culture would have been
>> fundamentally 'focused' as it
>> were by the "black problem." This perception seems
>> to be the informing
>> drive of the works of Faulkner. Some (white) writer,
>> I forget who, told
>> of his grandmother in her old age having nightmares
>> that the blacks were
>> coming to punish her for her racist misdeeds.
>> (That's not phrased the
>> way the writer phrased it, but the memory was dim
>> and I had forgotten it
>> completely until I typed the first two sentences of
>> this paragraph.
>>
>> And in this sense "Southern White" culture is
>> American White Culture,
>> for that culture is unintelligible abstracted from
>> the "peculiar
>> institution," which has remained equally peculiar to
>> the present in its
>> post-emancipation forms.
>>
>> Carl should consider whether his indiscriminate
>> attack on the south is
>> not just a way of coming to terms (or rather
>> avoiding coming to terms)
>> with the racism of the north, of his family, and of
>> his culture.
>>
>> Carrol
>>
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