David Tyree is a moron

[illwauk]

Nevermind that David Duke won 60% of the white vote in the 1992 Louisiana primary, or that a majority of whites in Alabama and Mississippi voted on favor of keeping Jim Crow laws on the books less than a decade ago, or that the state flags of Mississippi and Georgia contain Confederate emblems (the latter simply swapped out the Confederate battle flag for the national flag), and I'm pretty sure the South Carolina state house still has a Confederate memorial on its lawn.

In other words, we're not exactly talking ancient history here. Say what you will about the Midwest (I haven't exactly been shy about calling out my own state for its race issues, btw), but I bet marriage equality is adopted by a Midwestern state before it is anywhere down south.

[Norva]

I am a southerner, I grew up in Dixie, I do not deny that the South has racism and bigotry in it. As it does everywhere else in the U.S. Maybe more, maybe not.

I know northerners love to portray us as a bunch of uneducated rednecks, and having moved up to New York a couple of years ago I have heard that stereotype an astounding amount of times and I've heard it on this forum to. The South has issues, and I certainly will point them out, but it has progressed a long way since the 50s and 60s. A long way.

As far as adopting gay marriage, I know plenty of southerners who accept it with open arms, I agree we'll probably be the last to come around but hopefully sooner than later.

[Norva]

dp

[Cosmic]

What the Civil Rights Act did was speed things up. The same thing the Emancipation Proclamation did because slavery was unsustainable in the long run and would have died a natural death at some point. It's great that the government did what it did, be it 1863 or 1964. I wish it was as easy to legislate peoples' feelings as it was to end slavery and spell out the rights we all should have.

Is this that argument where those poor slave owners were stuck giving free room and board to those lazy, freeloading slaves?

If it seems to bother you that the Emancipation Proclamation was a gov't edict that simply sped up something that was already happening, tell us what is the proper speed at which to end the institutionalized enslavement of 30% of your population?

[Dexter Morgan]

A lot of people down south wish it still was 1956

No they don't.

Yes, a lot of people do. Not all, not even a majority, but a lot.

[Dexter Morgan]

Nevermind that David Duke won 60% of the white vote in the 1992 Louisiana primary, or that a majority of whites in Alabama and Mississippi voted on favor of keeping Jim Crow laws on the books less than a decade ago, or that the state flags of Mississippi and Georgia contain Confederate emblems (the latter simply swapped out the Confederate battle flag for the national flag), and I'm pretty sure the South Carolina state house still has a Confederate memorial on its lawn.

In other words, we're not exactly talking ancient history here. Say what you will about the Midwest (I haven't exactly been shy about calling out my own state for its race issues, btw), but I bet marriage equality is adopted by a Midwestern state before it is anywhere down south.

Don't forget David Duke was actually elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1990.

[rams80]

What the Civil Rights Act did was speed things up. The same thing the Emancipation Proclamation did because slavery was unsustainable in the long run and would have died a natural death at some point. It's great that the government did what it did, be it 1863 or 1964. I wish it was as easy to legislate peoples' feelings as it was to end slavery and spell out the rights we all should have.

Is this that argument where those poor slave owners were stuck giving free room and board to those lazy, freeloading slaves?

If it seems to bother you that the Emancipation Proclamation was a gov't edict that simply sped up something that was already happening, tell us what is the proper speed at which to end the institutionalized enslavement of 30% of your population?

Probably somewhere in between "glacial" and "mollases-like".

/Please define the "long run" in which we are discussing slavery's unsustainability. I'm not seeing a drop in the number of slaves leading up to the Civil War.

[Norva]

A lot of people down south wish it still was 1956

No they don't.

Yes, a lot of people do. Not all, probably not even a majority, but a lot.

Have you ever even been to the South?

[IceCap]

You know an argument is REALLY one-sided when I start agreeing with Loooooooogodude.

Really? He came off as incredibly condescending to me. Which is par for the course.

[Dexter Morgan]

A lot of people down south wish it still was 1956

No they don't.

Yes, a lot of people do. Not all, not even a majority, but a lot.

Have you ever even been to the South?

I should be asking you this, since you seem to believe the south has completely moved on from its sad past.

And to answer your question. Yes, among other things, I went to grad school at Vanderbilt.

[rams80]

A lot of people down south wish it still was 1956

No they don't.

Yes, a lot of people do. Not all, probably not even a majority, but a lot.

Have you ever even been to the South?

PROTIP: Florida is kind of like South Yankeeland now.

[Dexter Morgan]

A lot of people down south wish it still was 1956

No they don't.

Yes, a lot of people do. Not all, probably not even a majority, but a lot.

Have you ever even been to the South?

PROTIP: Florida is kind of like South Yankeeland now.

Panhandle sure isn't...

[IceCap]

Nevermind that David Duke won 60% of the white vote in the 1992 Louisiana primary, or that a majority of whites in Alabama and Mississippi voted on favor of keeping Jim Crow laws on the books less than a decade ago, or that the state flags of Mississippi and Georgia contain Confederate emblems (the latter simply swapped out the Confederate battle flag for the national flag), and I'm pretty sure the South Carolina state house still has a Confederate memorial on its lawn.

In other words, we're not exactly talking ancient history here. Say what you will about the Midwest (I haven't exactly been shy about calling out my own state for its race issues, btw), but I bet marriage equality is adopted by a Midwestern state before it is anywhere down south.

Iowa has already adopted it. Does that count? Or am I correct in assuming that Iowa falls into a black hole of geographical ambiguity?

[Norva]

A lot of people down south wish it still was 1956

No they don't.

Yes, a lot of people do. Not all, probably not even a majority, but a lot.

Have you ever even been to the South?

PROTIP: Florida is kind of like South Yankeeland now.

I've lived in Georgia too.

I never said the South has 'moved on', but it isn't 1956 there either. It has come a long way since then, I never said it has shed it's past though.

Do people still say Chicago wants to go back there? I think MLK himself said what he faced there was worse than anything he ever faced in the South. I don't have the exact quote.

Things have changed quite a bit since then, and while I was not alive then my family has been in the South for over a 100 years now and it has been a huge significant turn around. There is a ways to go but don't compare it to the horrors of the civil rights era.

[illwauk]

Nevermind that David Duke won 60% of the white vote in the 1992 Louisiana primary, or that a majority of whites in Alabama and Mississippi voted on favor of keeping Jim Crow laws on the books less than a decade ago, or that the state flags of Mississippi and Georgia contain Confederate emblems (the latter simply swapped out the Confederate battle flag for the national flag), and I'm pretty sure the South Carolina state house still has a Confederate memorial on its lawn.

In other words, we're not exactly talking ancient history here. Say what you will about the Midwest (I haven't exactly been shy about calling out my own state for its race issues, btw), but I bet marriage equality is adopted by a Midwestern state before it is anywhere down south.

Iowa has already adopted it. Does that count? Or am I correct in assuming that Iowa falls into a black hole of geographical ambiguity?

Iowa fought for the Union during the civil war and is firmly within the footprint of the "classic" Big Ten... they're definitely Midwestern. Although I'd completely forgotten that they legalized same-sex marriage. Seems kind of random that they'd be the first though. My money would've been on Minnesota or possibly Illinois.

[Gothamite]

Could be because there's a move in Iowa to strip away those marriage rights. The judges involved in the decision lost their jobs shortly thereafter because of their ruling, which might indicate that Iowans as a whole aren't as progressive as the law might indicate.

[trekbkr]

Nevermind that David Duke won 60% of the white vote in the 1992 Louisiana primary, or that a majority of whites in Alabama and Mississippi voted on favor of keeping Jim Crow laws on the books less than a decade ago, or that the state flags of Mississippi and Georgia contain Confederate emblems (the latter simply swapped out the Confederate battle flag for the national flag), and I'm pretty sure the South Carolina state house still has a Confederate memorial on its lawn.

In other words, we're not exactly talking ancient history here. Say what you will about the Midwest (I haven't exactly been shy about calling out my own state for its race issues, btw), but I bet marriage equality is adopted by a Midwestern state before it is anywhere down south.

Iowa has already adopted it. Does that count? Or am I correct in assuming that Iowa falls into a black hole of geographical ambiguity?

Iowa fought for the Union during the civil war and is firmly within the footprint of the "classic" Big Ten... they're definitely Midwestern. Although I'd completely forgotten that they legalized same-sex marriage. Seems kind of random that they'd be the first though. My money would've been on Minnesota or possibly Illinois.

Modern-day Minnesota isn't doing such a bang-up job living up to its liberal/progressive reputation. The Republican-led Legislature passed a measure this session putting a constitutional gay marriage ban on the 2012 ballot.

[Gothamite]

And it will be interesting to see what happens.

Personally, I'm not all that interested in pointing regional fingers. There are bigots everywhere. I am extremely proud of my state right now, but for all the good we also have state senator Ruben Diaz, who is an outright bigot and embarrassment. And a Democrat, no less.

[BlueSky]

A lot of people down south wish it still was 1956

The kind of ignorance it takes to make those kind of statements, especially from afar, should embarrass you. I've lived in many places, Texas, California, Louisiana, Okinawa, Florida, and Georgia, and Gothamite is right. There are bigots of all stripes wherever you go. What varies is the percentage and perhaps how extremist they are. I've lived in metro Atlanta for the last ten years and what I see here - for the most part - is people of all races who respect each other. There's a definite awareness of racial issues, for example when they renamed the airport that was already named for someone. And that's one thing that amuses me about your opinion of the South and so many other peoples' - you don't call out racism of all types.

For example, the local paper ran a story during the Democratic primaries describing the dilemma facing black women: vote for Obama because of his race or Clinton because of her gender. What's wrong with that picture? Yet nobody called out the paper or seemed to think anything was amiss. Imagine the reaction had the story been about white women having to decide between Palin and McCain using the same criteria.

And please...no lame-ass defense of how long and terrible white racism makes such instances understandable or how reverse racism/sexism pales in contrast with what minorities have suffered. We all get that, and nobody's comparing them.

BTW, I'm strongly reconsidering whether I'm going to watch Season 6.

What the Civil Rights Act did was speed things up. The same thing the Emancipation Proclamation did because slavery was unsustainable in the long run and would have died a natural death at some point. It's great that the government did what it did, be it 1863 or 1964. I wish it was as easy to legislate peoples' feelings as it was to end slavery and spell out the rights we all should have.

Is this that argument where those poor slave owners were stuck giving free room and board to those lazy, freeloading slaves?

If it seems to bother you that the Emancipation Proclamation was a gov't edict that simply sped up something that was already happening, tell us what is the proper speed at which to end the institutionalized enslavement of 30% of your population?

Good grief. It doesn't bother me that it was a government edict. If anything bothers me, it's how limited it was and that people ignore the fact that Lincoln was trying to save the Union and end the war more than he was some torn-up humanitarian moved by the slaves' suffering. What do you really even know about it? Or the fact that there were already numerous anti-slavery movements when the war started? How about this?

The Proclamation applied only in ten states that were still in rebellion in 1863, thus it did not cover the nearly 500,000 slaves in the slave-holding border states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland or Delaware) which were Union states — those slaves were freed by separate state and federal actions.

It didn't even free the Union's own slaves for crying out loud. It originated more as a "doomsday" threat to the Southern states (i.e. the worst thing they could imagine) in an attempt to bring them back into the Union. States' rights and other economic and social conflicts had more, or as much, to do with the Civil War than slavery.

A lot of people down south wish it still was 1956

No they don't.

Yes, a lot of people do. Not all, probably not even a majority, but a lot.

Have you ever even been to the South?

PROTIP: Florida is kind of like South Yankeeland now.

I've lived in Georgia too.

I never said the South has 'moved on', but it isn't 1956 there either. It has come a long way since then, I never said it has shed it's past though.

Do people still say Chicago wants to go back there? I think MLK himself said what he faced there was worse than anything he ever faced in the South. I don't have the exact quote.

Things have changed quite a bit since then, and while I was not alive then my family has been in the South for over a 100 years now and it has been a huge significant turn around. There is a ways to go but don't compare it to the horrors of the civil rights era.

Thanks for stepping up with some first-hand experience and common sense on this. Nobody's claiming the South is a Star Trek-esque utopia. But to read what some of the people on here think about the South, we're all driving '69 Chargers with rebel flags on the roof.

And it will be interesting to see what happens.

Personally, I'm not all that interested in pointing regional fingers. There are bigots everywhere. I am extremely proud of my state right now, but for all the good we also have state senator Ruben Diaz, who is an outright bigot and embarrassment. And a Democrat, no less.

Well said.

Still interested in your empathy views using the execution example. I notice you ignored that.

[illwauk]

Could be because there's a move in Iowa to strip away those marriage rights. The judges involved in the decision lost their jobs shortly thereafter because of their ruling, which might indicate that Iowans as a whole aren't as progressive as the law might indicate.

I think I would draw an analogy at how America as a whole is not as progressive as having a Black President might indicate. Before the 2008 primary season my money was on John Edwards because I didn't think a black or female candidate had a snowball's chance in hell at being elected as I felt that not enough Americans were ready for either. Obviously I was wrong, but the fact that the Tea Party was formed almost immediately after Obama was elected showed that a (embarassingly, IMO) large number of people in this country took having someone in the white house who didn't look like them as proof that they were being taxed without representation.

Sadly, the marriage equality issue seems to be divided along similar lines (controlled for religious morons of color like Tyree, of course).