6 ms·

What things are happening in the Midwest that you consider overt racism?

by Veelox 9y ago

maxerickson 9y ago
Uh, people privately making derogatory remarks based on race? Lots of times. Maybe I have poor taste in casual acquaintances or something.
- tn_ 9y ago
  Yep.. I've lived on both coasts as well as Chicago and it's much easier from my personal experience to run into people making idiotic racist remarks in the midwest. Now granted, there are racist people everywhere but the frequency was much higher.
evanlivingston 9y ago
confederate flags are another example.
- Balgair 9y ago
  So stupid considering they were Union. I just don't understand it.
  - johnward 9y ago
    I spend most of my time in Ohio and WV. Ohio might as well be in Canada and WV split from Virginia to join the union. Still confederate flags flying in both states. It's not about "heritage" at that point.
  - smogcutter 9y ago
    The midwest was simultaneously the home of some of the finest soldiers in the Union army (the Iron Brigade and others), and a hotbed of the "copperhead" movement of pro-slavery, secessionist northerners.
  - southphillyman 9y ago
    I went camping in French Creek PA , about 40 miles west of Philadelphia. Tons of confederate flags in that area. I guess it was about "history" for those folks too :/
Balgair 9y ago
Southern Indiana comes to mind. Here is the SPLC's interactive map of 'hate groups' in operation. Though the density seems, to my eyes, correlate strongly with population, there are still a fair few assholes out here. https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map
- creaghpatr 9y ago
  The SPLC is not a credible organization for mapping 'hate groups'
  - Balgair 9y ago
    Why?
    - stcredzero 9y ago
      Because there are people in the SLPC who are abusing the reputation of the organization as a political weapon. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an ex-muslim who wants to reform the society she came from and Majid Nawaz is a muslim reformer. Labeling what they are doing and saying as "hate speech" is intellectual dishonesty.
      - Balgair 9y ago
        No offense, but I'm going to believe the SPLC in general all the same. They have a pretty good track record over the decades. Yeah, if they screwed up 2 things, that's not good and they should fix it. But, a 99.9% 'correct' rate is pretty damn good all the same. You should email them and tell them though, I'm sure they would want to correct anything they are wrong about. Smearing people incorrectly is something I imagine they would want to make right. https://www.splcenter.org/contact-us https://www.splcenter.org/contact-us
        stcredzero 9y ago
        They have a pretty good track record over the decades. They seemed to have taken a "hockey stick" turn in the past several years. Yeah, if they screwed up 2 things, that's not good and they should fix it. There's more than just those two things. You should email them and tell them though, I'm sure they would want to correct anything they are wrong about. There's already a lawsuit. Smearing people incorrectly is something I imagine they would want to make right. I've had pretty much the same thought, but my conclusion is that their definition of "right" has become essentially tribal, and that they feel justified in using their reputation as a partisan weapon, because in their minds, their ends justify those means.
logfromblammo 9y ago
Once, when visiting my father's extended family in Missouri, an older man killed the dinner conversation stone dead by suggesting that the police should have just killed that ------ Rodney King. That remains the most racist thing I have ever personally witnessed. My spouse's family in Wisconsin is more racist than my family in Indiana, disguising it somewhat by talking about "the chodnies" (derived from the Polish czarny). And my sister-in-law's husband puts the most obnoxious crap out on Facebook and Twitter. It isn't exactly "we're glad that black kid is dead", but rather "we support the police; hero hero, protect and serve, rah rah rah!" which is implicitly the same thing, when the cops seem to hardly ever kill any white people while they're out gunning down members of the community and their dogs. There's a reason why Wisconsin instituted citizen review boards. "We investigated ourselves and cleared ourselves of all wrongdoing" works great for the cops when everyone on the local force is racist, but not so much for minorities. The hand that Black Lives Matter claps against is racism in police forces, and racism-by-proxy by refusing to hold the cops accountable for it. It isn't always orthodox color-based racism, either. It's more like identity-based tribalism. The different "black" cliques didn't always get along at my high school. For instance, one calls the other "stuck-up boujie", and the other responds "thugs and chickenheads". They would definitely use that unmentionable slur on each other. The Jews would often hang out together because they already knew each other from Saturday School, and anti-Semitism is still a thing in the Midwest. I'd occasionally hear about fights that started with racial slurs, but never actually saw one. One of my friends got called "chink" sometimes. What I saw from where I sat was hostile enough, and I suspect it was probably worse in the places I was not. Mainly, you hang out in your own groups, and avoid those that don't like you. That keeps your group somewhat homogenous, which may coincidentally make it look like your group is racist. And that might be true, but a lot of it is surrounding yourself with people who think and act like you, and not just people that look like you. In my groups, racism was not part of the group identity, and the racism that occurred elsewhere was simply ignored whenever possible. All that mattered was that it didn't happen among ourselves. If it happened to one of us elsewhere, that was awful and pitiable, but the best we could do was to not add to it. It's a sort of head-in-the-sand approach, which works for a lot of social problems in the Midwest. If you pretend it isn't happening, it's only a problem for the people it's happening to.
germinalphrase 9y ago
A few weeks ago I was in a rural Minnesota bar watching the Packers only to hear some guy start making jokes about black female anatomy and picking cotton. He got some laughs and kept rolling from there. Jokes about menstruation/tampons/cotton picking fall pretty squarely in my "overt racism" bucket.
- EADGBE 9y ago
  Something tells me the sexist part of the joke was going to come out regardless of the racist part of it.
boomboomsubban 9y ago
The Midwest still has residential schools, using a token weekly class to claim it's not perpetuating the cultural genocide. Sadly, it's often better than the alternative, living through a brutal winter with a wood stove and no running water.
- EADGBE 9y ago
  Yeah, HVAC and plumbing are just some fancy contraptions only the city folk get to have.
  - boomboomsubban 9y ago
    Rural areas have them, its reservations that often don't. That's why I bring it up about racism in the Midwest.

What things are happening in the Midwest that you consider overt racism?

by Veelox 9y ago

What things are happening in the Midwest that you consider overt racism?

Uh, people privately making derogatory remarks based on race? Lots of times. Maybe I have poor taste in casual acquaintances or something.

tn_ 9y ago
Yep.. I've lived on both coasts as well as Chicago and it's much easier from my personal experience to run into people making idiotic racist remarks in the midwest. Now granted, there are racist people everywhere but the frequency was much higher.

evanlivingston 9y ago

confederate flags are another example.

Balgair 9y ago
So stupid considering they were Union. I just don't understand it.
- johnward 9y ago
  I spend most of my time in Ohio and WV. Ohio might as well be in Canada and WV split from Virginia to join the union. Still confederate flags flying in both states. It's not about "heritage" at that point.
- smogcutter 9y ago
  The midwest was simultaneously the home of some of the finest soldiers in the Union army (the Iron Brigade and others), and a hotbed of the "copperhead" movement of pro-slavery, secessionist northerners.
- southphillyman 9y ago
  I went camping in French Creek PA , about 40 miles west of Philadelphia. Tons of confederate flags in that area. I guess it was about "history" for those folks too :/

Balgair 9y ago

Southern Indiana comes to mind. Here is the SPLC's interactive map of 'hate groups' in operation. Though the density seems, to my eyes, correlate strongly with population, there are still a fair few assholes out here. https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map

creaghpatr 9y ago
The SPLC is not a credible organization for mapping 'hate groups'
- Balgair 9y ago
  Why?
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    Because there are people in the SLPC who are abusing the reputation of the organization as a political weapon. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an ex-muslim who wants to reform the society she came from and Majid Nawaz is a muslim reformer. Labeling what they are doing and saying as "hate speech" is intellectual dishonesty.
    - Balgair 9y ago
      No offense, but I'm going to believe the SPLC in general all the same. They have a pretty good track record over the decades. Yeah, if they screwed up 2 things, that's not good and they should fix it. But, a 99.9% 'correct' rate is pretty damn good all the same. You should email them and tell them though, I'm sure they would want to correct anything they are wrong about. Smearing people incorrectly is something I imagine they would want to make right. https://www.splcenter.org/contact-us https://www.splcenter.org/contact-us
      - stcredzero 9y ago
        They have a pretty good track record over the decades. They seemed to have taken a "hockey stick" turn in the past several years. Yeah, if they screwed up 2 things, that's not good and they should fix it. There's more than just those two things. You should email them and tell them though, I'm sure they would want to correct anything they are wrong about. There's already a lawsuit. Smearing people incorrectly is something I imagine they would want to make right. I've had pretty much the same thought, but my conclusion is that their definition of "right" has become essentially tribal, and that they feel justified in using their reputation as a partisan weapon, because in their minds, their ends justify those means.

logfromblammo 9y ago

Once, when visiting my father's extended family in Missouri, an older man killed the dinner conversation stone dead by suggesting that the police should have just killed that ------ Rodney King. That remains the most racist thing I have ever personally witnessed. My spouse's family in Wisconsin is more racist than my family in Indiana, disguising it somewhat by talking about "the chodnies" (derived from the Polish czarny). And my sister-in-law's husband puts the most obnoxious crap out on Facebook and Twitter. It isn't exactly "we're glad that black kid is dead", but rather "we support the police; hero hero, protect and serve, rah rah rah!" which is implicitly the same thing, when the cops seem to hardly ever kill any white people while they're out gunning down members of the community and their dogs. There's a reason why Wisconsin instituted citizen review boards. "We investigated ourselves and cleared ourselves of all wrongdoing" works great for the cops when everyone on the local force is racist, but not so much for minorities. The hand that Black Lives Matter claps against is racism in police forces, and racism-by-proxy by refusing to hold the cops accountable for it. It isn't always orthodox color-based racism, either. It's more like identity-based tribalism. The different "black" cliques didn't always get along at my high school. For instance, one calls the other "stuck-up boujie", and the other responds "thugs and chickenheads". They would definitely use that unmentionable slur on each other. The Jews would often hang out together because they already knew each other from Saturday School, and anti-Semitism is still a thing in the Midwest. I'd occasionally hear about fights that started with racial slurs, but never actually saw one. One of my friends got called "chink" sometimes. What I saw from where I sat was hostile enough, and I suspect it was probably worse in the places I was not. Mainly, you hang out in your own groups, and avoid those that don't like you. That keeps your group somewhat homogenous, which may coincidentally make it look like your group is racist. And that might be true, but a lot of it is surrounding yourself with people who think and act like you, and not just people that look like you. In my groups, racism was not part of the group identity, and the racism that occurred elsewhere was simply ignored whenever possible. All that mattered was that it didn't happen among ourselves. If it happened to one of us elsewhere, that was awful and pitiable, but the best we could do was to not add to it. It's a sort of head-in-the-sand approach, which works for a lot of social problems in the Midwest. If you pretend it isn't happening, it's only a problem for the people it's happening to.

germinalphrase 9y ago

A few weeks ago I was in a rural Minnesota bar watching the Packers only to hear some guy start making jokes about black female anatomy and picking cotton. He got some laughs and kept rolling from there. Jokes about menstruation/tampons/cotton picking fall pretty squarely in my "overt racism" bucket.

EADGBE 9y ago
Something tells me the sexist part of the joke was going to come out regardless of the racist part of it.

boomboomsubban 9y ago

The Midwest still has residential schools, using a token weekly class to claim it's not perpetuating the cultural genocide. Sadly, it's often better than the alternative, living through a brutal winter with a wood stove and no running water.

EADGBE 9y ago
Yeah, HVAC and plumbing are just some fancy contraptions only the city folk get to have.
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  Rural areas have them, its reservations that often don't. That's why I bring it up about racism in the Midwest.