Okay, White 'Murrica....

[Davka]

Just imagine the feeling when you -are- "one of them" - but simultaneously...not a racist. Oh, the amount of jokes they have prepared for that situation. That little tidbit ought to give a moment of pause for the stereotype, but it doesn't. These fuckers have generational canned jokes for dealing with other rednecks who aren't racist - that means they've been dealing with that for awhile.......

(I think it's hilarious that you assume racism to be statistically more present on the basis of 4x4's or "redneckedness"....what do they call chocolate sprinkles in Boston...do you think? Isn't it possible that reporting and self acceptance is actually what you're experiencing? I've never found a bigot to be out of place based on his bigotry -anywhere- in the US.)

You're right - I should be saying that Southerners are more likely to be openly racist.

Years ago, when I was a kid hitchhiking around the country, I landed in New Orleans for a month or so. I ended up hanging & busking with a guitar-player who happened to be black. Talking about back-stories one day, he told me he had lived in California for a few years. I asked why he would leave CA for the in-your-face racist South (this would have been 1978-79).

His reply? "I know where I stand here. If someone doesn't like black folks, he'll call me a nigger to my face. In California, he'll smile to my face while thinking 'nigger,' and turn around and stab me in the back."

idk how accurate that assessment was, but it made me think.

[The Grand Nudger]

to my face.

Well, it's one thing to be a bigot, imo, and another entirely to be a poorly closeted bigot. I think they're both assholes...but at least one of them is an honest asshole.

[Davka]

And you think I lack this perspective ... why?

Because you're a white guy complaining about how hard it is to be racially stereotyped?

Three things:

Do you assume all white guys from Texas are bigots?

I observe that there is a higher instance of open bigotry among white guys from Texas than there is among the population at large.

[quote='Davka' pid='852876' dateline='1421868611']But it also means that his assumption was not "just because you're white." It was because you were white and supporting a perceived injustice. In other words, the assumptions are coming not only from your skin color, but from "white + X."

Wrong. He said that I was for letting the other guy go first only because I shared the same race.

Which means he was assuming you were bigoted because you were white plus supporting a perceived injustice.

Let's not pretend that stereotypes exist in a vacuum. Speaking in a Southern accent increases the statistical likelihood that you are racist.

I don't speak with a Southern accent.

You sure are one for assumptions, aren't you?

I didn't say you did. I was listing a number of traits which go with certain stereotypes. I didn't assume that any of those traits applied to you.

According to the FBI, the three leading states for hate crimes are California, New York, and Michigan.

I don't think hate crime statistics tell us anything about how racist an area is. The highest percentage of White Supremacists is in Idaho, but they didn't even make the list.

I realize that Southerners - especially those who are anything but racist good ol' boys - resent these stereotypes, just as any other group resents negative stereotypes. Thing is, no matter which group you belong to, you're gonna carry some baggage. Kinda sucks, but there it is.

So why is complaining about that -- expressing that resentment -- wrong?

It's not wrong, it's just kind of silly. Reminds me of an old joke: "I had no shoes, and I was sad - until I saw a woman who had no credit-card."

One of the things i find most people never realize is this: no matter what you wear or how you look, you are in costume.
Choose your costume with care.

Would you speak more clearly here?

People will judge you by your appearance. By choosing your appearance carefully, you can - to some extent - control how people judge you.

"Appearance" is more than clothing, too. House, car, neighborhood - they all factor in.

[The Grand Nudger]

The highest percentage of White Supremacists is in Idaho, but they didn't even make the list.

-lack of opportunity.

[Davka]

The highest percentage of White Supremacists is in Idaho, but they didn't even make the list.

-lack of opportunity.

Exactly.

I would expect the highest hate-crime areas to be places where the racists feel they are "losing the battle.' Mississippi is perhaps the most fucked-up racist state in the union (although Florida is a close runner-up), but there aren't a whole lot of race crimes there. I'm guessing this is because blacks in Mississippi "know their place."

[The Grand Nudger]

Still making assumptions. Try this, the highest stats would be in the places that combine the highest opportunity with the highest level of violent racism. Misssissippi -is- "their place".......you've been, right? Try to tell ignorant fuckers in the deep south that blacks are a minority and they might (in a quasi justifiable way) snicker at you. (it;s 59/37...but remember, not all "whites" consider all of the other "whites" to be "whites").

(Florida is an amusing case, it pretty much toes the average....but it's very -old- and very much -Not Southern-. The crackers don't live on the coast - by and large, they live in the interior, you might find that impoverished minorities can't afford beachfront property either(like the old racists from New York) but they can afford a clapboard cracker house - just like the crackers.)

There's really no simple and fast rule to any of this shit...and it gets pretty complicated pretty quick.

[Davka]

Unfortunately, it would take a serious in-depth study to determine which areas are most and least likely to be racist. You'd need to survey people all over the country, cities and rural areas alike, and you'd have to disguise the survey as something else. Maybe a study on poverty, or migration patterns, or some such.

Then you'd need to have a bunch of useless questions on the survey, along with a few slipped in like "if your daughter fell in love with {member of group X}, would that bother you?"

It's tough to get people to tell the truth about bigotry. It's hard enough to tell ourselves the truth, let alone some cracker mex-loving Ivy-league pollster.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think that a study on poverty would be incredibly insightful, regarding racism. Poverty has been a component of racism no matter what color the recipients have been. I've often mused on the notion that poverty itself helps to establish racism (and then racism feeds back into poverty, like a sick little mobius strip), as it's easier to demean and exploit the disenfranchised. Can't take the hand of money out of big sugar (and I mean big sugar big sugar, back when it was the oil of it's day in the 1700's, the first multinational) and slavery, or the coal industry and miners strikes that replaced it just a short while later. They targeted different groups (and sometimes the same groups) but in both cases for the same reasons.....the cynic in me thinks that the color of each groups skin was only incidental and that their position on the economic totem pole had as much or more to do with both. There were black slavers, and the boogeymen were glorified semi-white (irish/scot/italian) servants themselves trying to grasp the rungs of the social ladder in whatever meager way was offered to them. Similar effect later, vis a vis rednecks, New Englanders - and the people who beat rednecks for the New Englanders.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The fact that I don't share your perspective, Davka, doesn't mean that I don't have any; it means that mine differs from yours likely because of our different experiences.

I guess you missed the post I made earlier wherein I said I know goddamn well that minorities have it more difficult by far than I do, as well. Nowhere in this thread, or anywhere else, have I said or implied otherwise. Have you taken that into account, assessing my perspective?

I'll get to the rest of your post in a while, I'm on my phone and it isn't conducive to multiquotes and detailed replies, my apologies.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Which means he was assuming you were bigoted because you were white plus supporting a perceived injustice.

No, he said nothing about a "perceived injustice". And I wonder what's more unjust, having to wait a couple of minutes to pump one's gas because another car was in front of yours, or having your character slurred because of your ethnicity?

I don't think hate crime statistics tell us anything about how racist an area is. The highest percentage of White Supremacists is in Idaho, but they didn't even make the list.

And that's a fair point. But I think it's also fair to regard that information as one metric on the intensity of the bigotry at hand. And it certainly points out that bigotry is not a regional affair in America.

People will judge you by your appearance. By choosing your appearance carefully, you can - to some extent - control how people judge you.

"Appearance" is more than clothing, too. House, car, neighborhood - they all factor in.

Well, judging someone as probably racist because he drives a pickup truck and wears cowboy boots doesn't seem to make much more sense than judging someone as probably criminal because he drives a dropped 67 Impala and cops a sag with his jeans, now does it?

Me, I judge someone racist when they express racist opinions, just as I judge someone criminal when I know they have committed a crime. Your mileage may vary.