10 ms·
It's remarkable to me how folks who would never, ever be seen to say anything rude about other races (or who would only do so very obliquely) will quite loudly
by zeveb 11y ago
It's remarkable to me how folks who would never, ever be seen to say anything rude about other races (or who would only do so very obliquely) will quite loudly smirk about how much they hate Southerners, how stupid they think Southerners are &c.
It's all just class. One can be just as intelligent with a Southern accent as one can be stupid with another.
- kyleblarson 11y agoIf one hasn't visited the South and relies on current events and news to derive an opinion on the area it's hard to blame them for thinking the southern states are in a race to the intellectual bottom.
- NoGravitas 11y agoI've lived my whole life in the South and think the southern states are in a race to the intellectual bottom -- though only the legislators are actually running in the race. A majority of the rest of us are just cheering them on.
- rgrieselhuber 11y agoThat's because there is often a social (status signaling) benefit to disparaging Southerners in many parts of the US. Particularly in coastal, urban areas.
- jff 11y agoDon't forget "flyover states", to be uttered in the same tone of disgust as "southerner"!
- 100k 11y agoI got a bit of that when I moved to SF. It's harder to pin Midwesterners down by accent, though (city folks, anyway).
- cableshaft 11y agoHey everyone, I found one! He said folk, without saying "indie" before and "music" after! Dead giveaway!
- caseysoftware 11y agoPart of that is because Chicago is considered the baseline "accent" for many news broadcasters, radio personalities, etc. As a result, most Americans have heard that accent their entire life and therefore don't really interpret it as all that different. I've found that it's the keywords that indicate where people are from within the Midwest: Is it soda or pop? Is it car-mel or care-uh-mel? (I do linguistic stuff in my day job.)
- Retra 11y agoEven that can differ between rural and urban. I've lived in the midwest for most of my life, and apparently there's all sorts of "terms midwesterners use" that I've only rarely heard anyone say, and most often only to point out that they don't say it.
- coldtea 11y agoThis depends though. Did you live "all over the midwest" or in a specific state? The very same things people pointed they don't say, could be prevalent in a nearby state.
- jpulec 11y agoBeing from Wisconsin, I always get called out for how I pronounce "bag" and "bagel".
- mbcrower 11y agoFrom Minnesota. I get the same.
- ArkyBeagle 11y agoIs it Chicago? I used to hear it was Johnny Carson's Nebraska flat accent. To my ear, the Chicago accent is represented but exaggerated in the "Bill Swerski's Superfans" sketches from SNL in the 1990s - "Da bearssss". And it's "cur-muhl". :)
- rgrieselhuber 11y agoYup, same deal. The city dwellers always despise the rural folk they depend on.
- Terr_ 11y agoI'd say that cuts both ways, as a latte-sipping godless liberal etc.
- protomyth 11y agoYeah, but we don't control the media. There is not a national news station showing what's important to the middle states.
- coldtea 11y agoThere is a big one, called FOX.
- protomyth 11y agoThat would be the stereotypical wrong answer.
- catawbasam 11y agoummm... not really. Fox News Network, LLC 1211 Avenue Of The Americas New York, NY 10036
- coldtea 11y agoThat's its location. The question was whether there's a network "showing what's important to the middle states". (Which I interpret as "important related to their views on laws, life, politics, ethics, etc", not as "related to regional news").
- amttc 11y agoThe people who Fox News caters to the most are suburbanites. Most people way out here are lukewarm on Fox News. They're just... different. They agree with some things that I imagine would be popular in big coastal cities, but disagree with other things that might surprise you, so.
- hoorayimhelping 11y agoWhen I moved to New York City after living in Florida and North Carolina, I was really surprised at the blatant bigotry here. I've had people respected in this industry for their open mindedness look at me without irony and ask me if it's really as bad as everyone "down there" calling everyone else ... (looks around nervously) ... the N-word. Todd Barry has a great bit on this (language might be offensive to some) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfNnM2aYsWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfNnM2aYsWo
- stcredzero 11y agoWhen I moved to New York City after living in Florida and North Carolina, I was really surprised at the blatant bigotry here. There is a lot of bigotry in the Bay Area and online. Considering what we know about the mental shortcuts people use to process complex social information, evidence/science minded people should expect there to be bigotry as an unfortunate phenomenon to be aware of. Instead, it has received the imprimatur of "sin." It's a thorny problem. Talk about bigotry in the "wrong" way, and you ironically open yourself up to yet more bigotry involving projections about your internal mental state.
- placeybordeaux 11y agoMove to Seattle from Atlanta and quickly got sick of people up here talking about how racist it must be in Atlanta.
- xoqem 11y agoThis particular point has always been a bit funny to me. I mean, sure, there are super racist areas in the south. I grew up and lived in mostly rural Alabama for the first 20+ years of my life, and there were some rural areas that were just as terrible as people imagine (cross burnings, open Klan meetings, etc, though that was starting to die down in the last 10 years or so I lived there). That said, a lot of cities in the south are 30% - 50% black (sometimes more), and people who live in those cities, generally speaking, coexist and interact with many black and white people on a continual basis. It'd be kind of hard to do that and be super racists to the level people imagine the south to be.
- Roboprog 11y agoOn the other hand, look at how (politically) "those people" behave in aggregate. It might only be a majority of 51%, but clearly there is a sizable portion of people in the (traditionally somewhat sparsely populated) south / center of the country that have quite different values than the the people living along the crowded coasts. Not saying one group is smarter/dumber, just that the difference in values makes it hard to come to an agreement, which can make the "other" side seem stupid / "full of shit" / nuts.
- fnovd 11y agoNot everyone southerner has "southern" values. The south also has urban areas where people lean more to the left than their rural counterparts. There are just fewer of them. They (unfairly) get stuck with the same stereotypes.
- coldtea 11y agoThat's the idea of generalizations. They don't need to be 100% fair, just statistically useful. I'd wish people would get that, and only complain when a generalization is statistically wrong (e.g. doesn't really hold for the majority of the people it lumps along), instead of everytime they find a counter-example...
- hueving 11y agoSimpsons paradox though. There are more conservative people in California than there are in Georgia (e.g. more people in California voted for Mitt Romney than people in Georgia). Slicing people up into states to make nice sound bite statistics is useless and leads to stupid stereotypes.
- coldtea 11y agoWell, that more people in California "voted for Mitt Romney than people in Georgia" might not tell the whole story. Are the people in California traditionalist, religious, backwards, or even racist, etc, as the people in Georgia? They might not be, regardless of who they chose to vote for -- which takes into account many factors and policies. That said, California is also traditionally regarded as conservative (at least by us in Europe) -- it's places like Massachusetts or Vermont that we'd count as progressive. Especially since California is regarded as hardcore pro-money/big-business, which is large part of being a "conservative" here.
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoExactly. As a southerner, I have an accent, but I also don't answer important questions fast. IOW, I pause a beat to collect my thoughts. People tend to think this too is a sign of "stupid". Really, it's just I don't like to be wrong. I'd rather be slow up front and be right, than fast up front and be wrong. However, our development culture tends to think everything needs to happen as fast as possible (the whole twitter in a weekend meme).
- protomyth 11y ago> IOW, I pause a beat to collect my thoughts. People tend to think this too is a sign of "stupid". A lot of tribes in the US have members that exhibit this same behavior. A respectful pause to consider a response and a slow cadence should be a sign they have considered their words, but instead is portrayed as stupid. It made going to DC and dealing with bureaucrats in the 90's a pain in the butt.
- hkmurakami 11y ago>IOW, I pause a beat to collect my thoughts. People tend to think this too is a sign of "stupid". Really, it's just I don't like to be wrong. I'd rather be slow up front and be right, than fast up front and be wrong. I'm really glad to hear that I'm not alone with this struggle. Still don't have a good answer for it though. :(
- alatkins 11y agoJust give it a bit longer... :-P
- leoc 11y agoIf it's any consolation, I wish I could pick up that behaviour. Might have saved me a fair bit of unpleasantness.
- CuriouslyC 11y agoJust a useful trick, you can have the best of both worlds if you respond with "well, it depends", play up a dramatic pause, and follow with "on one hand..." and finish with a counter-point. It seems to result in a less argumentative response when people disagree as well.
- ArkyBeagle 11y agoMeh. Be loud and proud about it. I bet half of those people left the South and are fronting about it.