Anyone from the Deep South? I am gobsmacked at this story

[welliemum]

here

Is is really like this?

Can you really have a tree in a school playground that is "traditionally reserved for white students"?

I am absolutely chilled to the bone.

I'm just a sceptic on the media I guess. I think they blow things out of proportion for a good story. I have lived in Houston, and visited the Deep South. I have known people from the deep South. I'm not saying I never ran across a racist, because I did. But, this story seems very extreme so I question it's accuracy.

If it is true, it is of course shocking and something should be done about it.

This story does sound blown out of proportion. The media loves to make people from the South look backwards

I'm from FL...some Americans think it's the 'Deep South'..well geographically it is in the US. Ha! Seriously, the 'Deep South' mentality is a state of mind that exists in the UK, the US and probably most every place in the world...there are racists everywhere and just because you're from Alabama, Louisiana or Mississippi doesn't mean you are automatically racist.

I totally agree with PPB and xpatinscotland. In fact, I've heard lots of racist comments since I moved to the UK...more often than I've ever heard in the US, and I've never lived anywhere before where there are hardly any minorities. However, this DOES NOT mean that I think folks in the UK are racist...not at all. Almost everybody I've met has been lovely and I'm really thankful to have this wonderful opportunity to live abroad again..this time it's better because you all still speak English...well close enough..joking here.

Welliemum. How do you KNOW the entire town of Jena is racist. When did you go there and ask them? How many times did you go to the US, and where did you visit? What part of LA did you visit? I plan to visit NZ one day, and you know what? I won't think the entire country hates people from the American South just because of your comment.

To answer your question...I think this is a 'one-off freak town' I'm not saying there aren't other such towns either, but this is not the norm.

The media comment about the barber is just media hype to get the UK thinking the US is stupid. Tell me...If you're white and reading this, how many of you have ever had a black hairdresser? Well I have, and I could care less. Maybe the barber is racist and maybe he isn't. Maybe he just doesn't know how to cut black hair. My MIL is a hairdresser and has never done black hair because she doesn't know how too and hasn't taken the trainig, but she is not racist and one of her best friends is from Jamaica.

(Example of media hype to get the US to think the British are stupid is the Madeline story...Warning: some will be offended, and I am not saying I agree at all with this, but Americans wonder why the parents just left their child alone in the hotel room, and most Americans who even know about this question why the parents haven't been arrested for child neglect and why their other children aren't in state care..Sorry...this is mostly on blogs but most people think it's crazy that the parents have not been arrested. This is a major cultural difference and the US just doesn't leave children that young alone...first of all because Americans would not go somewhere where their children were not allowed to dine with them. Now Americans that have guns in the house is also a cultural difference and I'm sure I agree 100% with the English...it's stupid to have guns around, and then when a kid accidently gets shot or worse...don't get me started..I can't ever understand why they had a gun in the first place. )

LoveAngel, I'm sorry you had a horrible experience in the US, and I want you to know that not all Americans are that way. However, I disagree with the segragation comment as I think the UK is much more segragated than the US. There are almost no minorities outside of London and the other larger cities in England, but there are minorities to be found in most places in the US..well maybe not North or South Dakota or Montana...but I've never been there so don't know.

You are right, I am from Florida also and I am shocked at how minorities here are segregated. I live in Northern Ireland and you hardly ever see anyone from an ethnic background and I have heard more racist comments here than I ever did at home and my father is a klan member ( I am not by the way, I don't even speak to him he is a vile human being)

I know nothing whatsoever about the town of Jena except what I read in the article. That's precisely why I posted to say "is it really like this"? and why the OP heading asked for people who are actually from the area.

I have spent a fair amount of time in the US and have a pretty good idea about how different bits of the country regard one another. IME there are both false stereotypes and true cultural differences between regions.

Incidentally, I've lived in many places around the world and have found racism in all of them, but I've only come across one other place that had separate areas in the playground for for white and black students: apartheid South Africa.

The article is chilling to me for that reason alone - not to mention the nooses.

Racism is never going to be be eliminated while the only answer to a description of racism in one place is to say how another place is just as/even more racist. It's a non-argument I'm afraid.

The guardian did a story about this on the weekend. It's a sad story. There are some pockets of real idiocy in every country, aren't there?

The Guardian did inadvertantly make me PMSL, though. They asked the white barber if he'd ever cut a Black person's hair. He said no, and sounded flustered, saying Black hair is different etc. I'm sure I could get the same answer if I asked any of the traditional white barbers in my neighbourhood.

It sounds like something out of a John Grisham novel. I am always quite shocked by these stories, that such things should go on in this day and age. I know it is just a small town with small-minded attitudes, but it is still so wrong.

It's not merely (merely!) the racism of ordinary people though, it's the racism of the school board and the district attorney. FFS, I thought the days when black kids were charged with murder for daring to look at a white person the wrong way were long gone.

I'm glad to hear (from expatinengland) that it's a one-off, not the norm.

I think the small town thing is interesting - they do have this ability to develop into "pockets of idiocy" to borrow NQC's phrase.

Presumably the town is segregated in a historic way? ie, black and white people have always lived separate lives in the history of the town and there's been no push to change the status quo?

Segregation is a tricky thing I think - it's easier for people to believe stuff about a different ethnic group if they aren't mixing and socialising with them.

The South African Apartheid government had a slogan of "separate but equal" which was absolutely cold-bloodedly calculated to keep people of different races from socialising so that they would never get to know each other and would fear each other.

People do tend to segregate, everywhere. I live in a mixed (Bengali, English and some Black) neighbourhood, but when I see groups of kids out and about, they're generally only one ethnicity. Same thing in Toronto, same thing in Montreal.

I did an American Studies course a couple of years ago which was absolutely fascinating.

We spent alot of time looking at the overt racism which existed up until the 60s/70s when black people had to sit at the back of the bus and so on and segregation existed.

Obviously, that has stopped in the vast majority of the states, however, I was shocked to read about how racism does inherently exist in America to some extent (although have to say, that it almost certainly does all over the world in different ways and to different degrees). The statistics in America are shocking regarding black families who, for various reasons, have less access to good education, are far more likely to be in single parent families, and who make up the majority of those earn the least. I think that the reasons behind this are complex and books have been written discussing exactly why the most powerful country in the world, which purports to be one of equal opportunity for all, actually isn't.

However, in saying that, I would imagine that it is probably the case in this country too (?) where, only recently, it was reported that the vast majority of children excluded from UK schools are black. I have to say that my knowledge in this area is fairly limited, but would be glad if anyone could educate me further!

Very true, NQC, and it's not surprising really - you will tend to hang out with people from a similar background because it's nice not to have to explain yourself all the time.

But what's described in the article seems more than that: people of different races living in different neighbourhoods, attending different churches, even going to different places to get a haircut.

And yet it's very likely that most if not all of them are US citizens of many generations' standing and English mother tongue speakers - far more similar to each other than 1st and 2nd generation immigrants from different continents would be.

Anyway, just speculating.

I would imagine that almost all of them are very native to the area.

The haircut thing is totally normal. Black people don't go to white hairdressers. White people don't go to Black hairdressers (ok, I do, but I like patterns shaved into my head ). Pick any local white hairdresser, and ok, yeah, Asian and white people may both use it, but Black people won't. It's not a racist thing, it's about Black hair being very different from white or Asian hair.

I'd agree, though, that these people are all no doubt all from the same area, for generations. And the groups are more related to each other than they realise, too.

I am now wondering if my defense of Deep South culture was perhaps naive, after reading this.

That was 42 years ago though

The food in San Fran was amazing when I was there

There was a story not so long ago in the US about a town in southern Georgia where for the first time the senior prom would not be segregated. So to say that this story is a one off would probably be a bit naive.

I can guarentee you that this is very rare. I would say that claiming that a whole place is a certain way because you have read two newsstories a bit naive

This type of racism is dyed-in-the-wool, cradle to grave indoctrination. It's very simplistic to sit in middle-England in 2007 and emote about how shocked we are, but that's our upbringing ... and in pockets of the deep south (and all over the globe), that's their upbringing.

Neo-Nazism still exists, for instance, in Germany. It exists, generally, in pockets where poverty is as it's most extreme ... eastern Germany in particular. When asked about their hatred of the Jews, the racists merely shrug. When asked if they actually know what a Jew is, they can't answer. They can't answer, because they've no idea.

We can be as shocked as we like about racism in all its forms, but without understanding both sides of the problem, we'll never get any further than a 'shocked' emoticon.

You have to admit that even one example of a school having segregated proms up until this year is unacceptable, full stop. "Very Rare" isn't good enough. By the way, many of the states in the deep south are among the strongest growing economies in the US, so the poverty explanation doesn't apply here. We're not in the midst of Reconstruction.

My feeling is that the sort of relativist thinking that Desiderata describes can be very dangerous when it comes to things like this.

I agree of course that very rare isn't good enough

Anti-semitism is rife, everywhere I think.

I grew up in Toronto (Canadian racists' official slogan: 'I'm not racist but ...'). My father worked with people who believed the Blood Libel. Thinking about it, I think they believed it of Catholics, rather than Jews, but still. They believed the Blood Libel. I mean, come on.

Expatinengland - sorry but that's a huge assumption re the 'There are almost no minorities outside of London and the other larger cities in England' - I don't live in a city and there are a lot of minorities living in this area as there are in other smaller areas its just they might not present themselves in the same way they do in cities.