Secession is not an option

[sasha_feather]

So sometimes around the internet I run into this Problem statement:
Something terrible happens in (usually the South or SouthWest).
Some people will respond with "Why do people even live there?" or "just let them secede".

I find this so problematic in so many ways.

-- These folks are essentially writing off whole swathes of people and places. There are many activists working hard to make those places better. There are people all over the country who *can't* move away and who don't want to. There's history and culture and resources in those places and why would just let the haters have those things? And even if the good folks were to move away....

--Assuming that where you live is better is so wrong.

In the important essay I, Racist by John Metta, he quotes his sister:

“The only difference between people in the North and people in the South is that down here, at least people are honest about being racist.”

--White people where I live (Wisconsin) are sometimes smug and think that there isn't racism here. But Wisconsin is the worst state for mass incarceration of black men and Native American men (source: NPR 2013). And we're the worst for having a gap in graduation rates between black and white students (source: Madison newspaper 2013). It isn't different in other parts of the country. Racism is everywhere. It's in your hometown.

--This framing falls into "us vs. them" thinking. "Those racists over there" are the problem. I was taught that as a white person growing up in a racist society, I *am* racist; it's what I do about it that matters. I must actively combat racism within myself. That is where I begin.

Comments

[rootsofthestories]

I live in Florida, not by choice but because I don't have the resources and willing partner to move. It gets uncomfortable as shit sometimes, I'm bi-racial and while I can "pass" for white sometimes, some people still notice.

And that's the thing really. People notice I have to use that word because it's not like I'm another face in the crowd to them. I'm different and, for that, lesser for whatever reason. I don't feel comfortable in certain areas of where I live and that's just...frustrating.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I don't have some prejudices built into me as well. I do and I acknowledge that and do what I can to correct myself. It's just a byproduct of being raised here, I think. Certain things you absorb as a kid from the adults around you who hold biases. However, that doesn't make it an excuse or anything. It just means that I, as a creature who knows their own biases, needs to examine them and do what I can to try and erase them.

[sasha_feather]

Thanks for your perspective. <3

[izzy]

I think Madison does a lot of glossing over the bad crap and putting a nice shiny face on things (looking at you Paul Soglin). Wisconsin sucks a lot, but if everyone who thinks it sucks leaves, it won't ever get better. This is why I get so irritated at the phrase "flyover country." Anything between New York and Los Angeles is backwards and boring and unworthy of anyone's attention. Because NYC and LA are just so much BETTER, aren't they. D:

[sasha_feather]

I hear you a lot. I'm pretty pissed at Soglin right now with the anti-homeless initiatives. I think every place has good and bad, because every place has people!

[davidgillon]

Interesting to compare this with the UK's North-South divide; that doesn't have a racism element, but there's historic snobbery on the part of the South, with the capital in the South and heavy industry traditionally in the North, which with the decline of manufacturing means that the North is significaantly more socially deprived (there genuinely is a startling difference in levels of government investment - I'm a Northerner living in the South, here my local train is a literal Japanese bullet-train, there my local train is an 80's bus body on a goods wagon chassis).

I'm trying to think how to describe the UK divide and keep coming back to snobbery as the core, and I wonder if that may actually be the core issue for the US South as well - look at the redneck/poor white trash narrative, racism is a common part of it, and undoubtedly an issue given the history of race in the States, but you see criticism of Southerners as rednecks even when racism isn't the area under discussion.

Which makes me wonder if it isn't some sort of universal proximity to political power thing - 'We've got it, so we clearly must be better than they are', and that then gets dressed up in whatever local factor can be used to make the underdog look uneducated and less civilised - which in the US is inevitably race.

It makes me wonder how strong a parallel exists in other countries,

[sasha_feather]

Interesting!

[emceeaich]

And that's what I thought was so powerful and different, at least to me, about the end of the new Mad Max movie, calling out the "we'll find a better place" argument.

Now I wonder if anyone's written fic where Roslyn turns the fleet around and says, "okay, we're going to learn to live with the Cylon's because I'm not buying Bill Adama's line about 'Earth.'"

[sasha_feather]

Such a brilliant and amazing movie.

It reminded me of the first Bourne film when Jason decides to stop running and instead go after the people chasing him. boom.