6 ms·

Sure seems to me like any time the technocrat/commentariat/coastal crowd point out the various problems with the American South, it's always with this patronizi

• hotpotamus 4y ago
  I had a co-worker whose neighbor died recently not all that much after his 40th birthday from some combination of smoking, occupational exposure to construction debris/chemicals, and long covid. He was on the list for a lung transplant for a bit, but no one seemed to believe that gave him any chance, and it did not. Perhaps if he had not smoked, worn proper PPE when needed, and gotten a covid vaccine, he would be alive today. It seems that his downwardly mobile southern culture failed him quite completely, but I do agree that if you had told him that, you'd probably be thought of as a patronizing.
  • 23B1 4y ago
    When everyone sh*ts on your culture 24/7/365 for decades and decades, it gets pretty hard to separate the condescension from the genuinely good advice.
    • lokar 4y ago
      Consider what are the predominant themes were in white southern culture 60 years ago. They never really let go of it.
      • 23B1 4y ago
        I guess they’re getting what they deserve then, eh?
        • lokar 4y ago
          Certainly not. I think they have cynically manipulated by politicians taking advantage of some amount of real cultural disapproval. They cultivate the grievances and push them even more extremes.
          • lapcat 4y ago
            Politicians are just people. They're not space aliens like Kang and Kodos. Politicians are citizens and came from the same place as everyone else. They're just as much a product of the local culture as everyone else in their locality.
            • lokar 4y ago
              Sure. Politics is a group dynamic. And in this case it has a clear tendency towards an extreme that is self harming. But almost none of the individuals are driving towards that intentionally.
              • lapcat 4y ago
                > But almost none of the individuals are driving towards that intentionally. I disagree with that.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • hotpotamus 4y ago
      Indeed, when their own TV network calls them "dumb, cousin-fucking terrorists"[0], you'd think they'd have a hard time trusting them, but it doesn't seem that way. Still, I'd think don't smoke and take your vaccines would be relatively uncontroversial basic public health information these days, but I guess not. [0]https://twitter.com/Eric_Alterman/status/1634971075334508544 https://twitter.com/Eric_Alterman/status/1634971075334508544
      • 23B1 4y ago
        “Their own TV network” I don’t know many Louisianans working at FOX NEWS HQ in NYC…
        • hotpotamus 4y ago
          Yes, they'd never be allowed to work there for reasons mentioned in my previous comment. However, you may find that they view it as their side in opposition to the mainstream media. But of course you know that and are simply playing a game of your own (and I suppose I'm indulging in it a bit myself).
• ethanbond 4y ago
  What’s the other explanation? I presume it’s not the enormous amount of asymmetric financial assistance that pours into the south every single year from the “patronizing” coastal elites? The South ties its wagon to the wrong horse year in and year out. No one forces them to do that. Fixating on the patronizing tone is exactly the type of error that gets these outcomes.
  • 23B1 4y ago
    QED
    • ethanbond 4y ago
      Is your claim that the patronizing tone is the source of or a possible solution to the South’s problems? Or is this a, “because the coasts are patronizing, we don’t need to discuss these issues.” Seems like the latter to me but I’d be interested to hear if it’s the former.
      • 23B1 4y ago
        “You made your bed, now lay in it” is neither constructive nor effective in changing minds.
        • ethanbond 4y ago
          No one is saying that. This would be a good retort if anyone was proposing that the South actually lay in its own bed. I have never heard any proposal from the patronizing coastal elites to cut off funding for Southern welfare states.
          • 23B1 4y ago
            “The South ties its wagon to the wrong horse year in and year out. No one forces them to do that.” . . .
        • lapcat 4y ago
• scottLobster 4y ago
  Having half my extended family in the rural South, they don't often do much to offset that impression. There are nice ones and mean ones, but none of them really have their lives together and there's obvious stuff they could be doing, like cutting sugar consumption in half (so many diabetics). One of my uncles died of complications from willfully unmanaged diabetes. His foot was literally rotting off one toe at a time, he was in direct pain and he still pounded can after can of Mountain Dew and ignored anyone who tried to advise him otherwise, including his own wife and son. My nicer uncle is half-functional due to neck injuries he sustained in a car crash, but he just pushes through things and doesn't look after his health, and just makes things worse for himself despite his good intentions. That seems to be the identity of the modern south, various flavors of denial and defiance. Those who defy the stereotype tend to leave, or cluster in/around the better developed urban areas. I've met a lot of awesome people who immigrated from the south, but not many living there outside of a major metro.
  • 23B1 4y ago
    Thank you for illustrating my point. Yeesh.
    • scottLobster 4y ago
      How so? Is it patronizing to say the Bears had the worst record in the NFL last season? The proof is in the pudding. My experiences are just anecdotal evidence that supports the objective stats. Respect is earned, and sometimes, when lots of people tell you you're wrong, it's useful to have the humility to consider they might be right.
    • opportune 4y ago
      I am from the South and I concur with that poster, I’m not sure why takes like these are invalid due to having left. If a place has a lot of problems, you would expect people to leave it and then freely tell other people about the problems after getting more exposure to the world outside of it. The South has educational problems, lack of opportunities, a lot of poverty, health problems, and different cultural values when compared with the rest of the country. This is a fact, it’s not a “yikes” to state this. It’s not entirely willful, but it’s also not a completely unavoidable state of affairs either. A lot of it is cultural - when you’re in that environment, it’s normal to you. But at the same time, the people making up the culture as a whole are not helpless individuals incapable of understanding things like diabetes or obesity
• perth 4y ago
  The biggest problem with the American south: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-south-a-bad-name/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-so...
• okaram 4y ago
  I more or less agree... But, does it make it any less true?
  • 23B1 4y ago
    No it absolutely does not change the facts - but I’d be willing to bet people are more likely to change their minds (about policy, politics, their way of life) if folks didn’t look down their noses at them. Of course everyone knows this, but grace and empathy is much harder than condescension and schadenfreude.
    • lapcat 4y ago
      It goes both ways though. "Woke" has now become almost exclusively pejorative. And they're pulling "Communist" out of retirement lately, despite the fact that Russia and China are both capitalist now. What about the contempt for gay people? The contempt for "hippies" in 1960s? I doubt that anyone is innocent of condescension. Here's an article about "No-Respect Politics" from 20 years ago: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2002/07/26/no-respect-politics/f7f00171-0731-4fd8-9c07-7fae9ecb725f/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2002/07/26/n...
      • 23B1 4y ago
        Evidently you missed the part about grace and empathy? "But they started it" "They do it too" "They are meaner" 'They they they' is the problem.
        • vaidhy 4y ago
          Grace and empathy only go so long. You cannot be tolerant of the intolerant over and over again. There needs to be some amount of reciprocity.
        • lapcat 4y ago
          > "But they started it" "They do it too" "They are meaner" You're using quotes, but I said none of those things. > 'They they they' is the problem. The problem is as vaidhy suggested. You said grace and empathy is much harder than condescension and schadenfreude, but it becomes even harder when grace and empathy are met in return with condescension and schadenfreude. If you're acting in good faith, how much can you stand to be humiliated? It takes two sides to come to the table. Trust must be built mutually. Otherwise it's like talking to a brick wall.
• mrzimmerman 4y ago
  I’m not really sure how this relates to the problem. People may be awful or cruel sometimes, but that doesn’t force civic leaders or individuals into making bad policy/personal decisions. Furthermore, a lot of this is an explicit problem. Poverty is high in the south and poverty correlates strongly with less access to healthcare, or healthcare avoidance to avoid the cost.
• lern_too_spel 4y ago
  I have direct experience with non-coastal people doing things bad for their health because somebody told them it was bad for their health, not because they think the person who told them was wrong, but because they want to show that they can exercise their right to be stupid anyway. Everything from eating things they didn't really like just because they were unhealthy to modifying their cars to be dirtier. This was a frequent enough occurrence to be noticeable.
• corbulo 4y ago
  Viewing every woe as a policy issue is actually very technologist/authoritarian. The South obviously has a unhealthy diet, but the inner cities are dramatically poorer than blue state cities with even more crime to match (St. Louis in particular). It's not a blue/red thing. It's more income and culture driven.
• red-iron-pine 4y ago
  > "Haha guys look at the poor dumb hicks who don't know what's best for them" We can factually and objectively demonstrate how the south is lagging. This isn't some moralistic "lol those dumb hayseeds wear shitty clothes", there is a measurable, concrete divide in things like healthcare and scholastic outcomes. People are dying early, considerably so. dying Child mortality is notable higher. Standardized test scores are just lower, and by non-trivial numbers.