Posted on 05/07/2003 3:09:16 PM PDT by AveMaria
Did you watch Bill O'reilly yesterday, spewing hateful invective against Georgia's Republican Governor, Sonny Perdue? Perdue was being denounced for failing to speak out against a decision by a group of white students in a small Georgia town, to hold a private racially segregated prom. Would the Governor of New York be similarly be called upon to issue a condemnation, if a group of white kids in Manhattan, were to hold a private whites-only party, on their own time, with their own money, without the endorsement of their school?
I consider myself a somewhat unusual defender of the South from the all too common anti-Southern stereotypes. I was born and raised in an ethnic Catholic neighborhood in Philadelphia, and so I know where Bill O'reilly is coming from. I am very strongly anti-racist in my world view, and I have worked for decades to promote racial reconciliation for decades in Philadelphia. During the 1960s, when I was in high school, I watched the TV images of Civil Rights marchers being attacked by Bull Connor, white Southern police, and white civilians, and I once thought that all white Southerners were monsters and evil like Nazis. Many people in my neighborhood felt the same way.
Sure, some people in my neighborhood, and some of my relatives, held views that were strongly anti-black, and did not want blacks in their urban ethnic neighborhhoods. But they comforted themselves, in believing that their own prejudices were mild, and not as evil and genocidal as those of the white Southern "rednecks", "crackers", and "hicks". You see, we viewed white Southerners as evil, racist, barbaric, and uncivilized Anglo savages. We felt ourselves morally superior to "intolerant" and "bigoted" Southerners, and we were sure that, if it were not for the federal government, the Southern "rednecks", "hicks", and "crackers" would enslave or slaughter all their blacks. We wished that someday would arrive, in the distant future, when "intolerant" and "backward" white Southerners would become as "tolerant" and "compassionate", as we Yankees were.
But in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I lived in Charlotte, North Carolina; Birmingham, Alabama; and Atlanta, Georgia. It was the first time I ever had extensive day-to-day interaction with Southerners. I was amazed at how well blacks and whites got along in Southern cities and rural towns. I could not believe it. Race-relations in the South were much better, than in my native Philadelphia, the supposed "city of brotherly love". In one instance, all the negative stereotypes I once had about white Southerners were shattered. Southerners taught me more about compassion, civility, and generosity, than I ever learnt in my old neighborhood where I was raised.
I am not trying to minimize the very real racism that many blacks still endure in the South. But the Southern suburban neighborhoods I lived in, had much more racial diversity than many surburbs in Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York, that I am familiar with.
Yes, Jim Crow laws were wrong, evil, and satanic. It was true in the 1960s, that the North was more racially enlightened than the old Jim Crow South that treated blacks as second class citizens. But today, I can say without hesitation, that the South is more racially tolerant than the North. Racial attitudes in many white ethnic neighborhoods in the North (especially in Philadelphia and Chicago) have not advanced much beyond where they were in the 1960s. But the South has changed considerably, and for the better, and many regions of the South are way ahead of the North on racial equality.
What Bill O'reilly was trying to do yesterday, was to perpetuate the old stereotype of Southerners as being frozen in 1950s Jim Crowism. O'reilly himself has been recently under attack from African-Americans, for having made a racially insensitive comment about youths stealing hubcaps. And O'reilly selectively targetted black hiphop artistes, like Ludacris, for boycotts, while overlooking equally degenerate white performers like the Osbornes. Like the anti-black bigots in my old ethnic Catholic neighbohood, he is trying to show the media elites of New York that he has anti-racist credentials, by scapegoating Georgia's governor and white Southerners over a private prom held by some Georgian high school students, which the governor had no control over.
On the issue of racial prejudice and racial hatred in America, many Yankee elites have chosen to use white Southerners, in the same manner that Bill Clinton used Sista Soulja in 1992. Many northerners in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and elsewhere, prefer to avoid addressing the serious racial problems in their own neighborhoods, but like to prove their own moral superiority on racial issues by scapegoating white Southerners.
Bill O'reilly should address the very serious racial problems in New York, and his own personal prejudices, before he chooses to harrass Governor Sonny Perdue for private high school events over which he had no control. For starters, many ethnic urban neighborhoods in New York City refuse to allow blacks to live there, in violation of equal housing laws. And many apartment blocks in Manhattan openly discriminate on the basis of race. Why doesn't O'reilly call upon Governor George Pataki to denounce such anti-minority racism? The issue in question is a public policy issue (violation of the fair housing laws), not a private high school prom that is not covered by Civil Rights laws.
But if Al Sharpton was a black Southerner, who was fighting the racism of Southern "rednecks", "hicks", and "crackers", he would be lionized by the media elites of the Eastern establishment as a hero, and he would be their ideal presidential candidate.
The only form of anti-black racism that angers the Eastern establishment, is that perpetrated by white Southerners. That is why fashionable Northern elites and their foundations, love to pour tens of millions of dollars into the coffers of the race-hustling huckster, Morris Dees of the SPLC, because he confirms their elitist prejudices of white Southerners being backward neanderthals on race.
He knows everything there is to know about Southerners of course, since he regularly changes planes in Atlanta. Oh -- and he saw "Gone With the Wind."
They only appear nice. They are backstabbing SOBs, for the most part. If you weren't born there, white and do your drinking in secret, you don't belong. They still use the 'N' word and don't hesitate to say "boy" or "colored". I'm not talking about white trash. I'm talking about wealthy businessmen.
Have you ever heard of someone living in New York that wants to retire there? No, they all want to go south. North Carolina to Florida, over to the coastal sections of the gulph states, all the way to texas.
That is where they go late in life and all the sudden they develop manners, charity, perspective, and a love of neighborhood gatherings that didn't start over a phone call to 911.
Please, let's change hate to annoyance and it has nothing to do with the Cival War.
Bill O'Reilly sometimes makes good points on TV. But he has a painfully superficial side, and this is hardly the first time he has shown it.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
A good part of the problem is that this comment can be fit into a sentence using either "northerner" or "Southernor".
That said: The northern bias against the south is far more broad, more deep, and generally nastier.
(And, for Duckman, it just might have to do with noo yawkers' well proven ability to irritate english speakers.)
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