Intolerance of Southern accents - the last acceptble prejudice?

By Kip Burke, News Editor
The News-Reporter, Washington, Georgia

It's amazing how blind some people are to their own inborn prejudices, but I got a chance to open one or two women's eyes last Fourth of July.

Three women were visiting Athens from Connecticut, and happened upon our fair city with about 10,000 other people for our annual Independence Day celebration. I was volunteering at the Chamber of Commerce's Welcome Center, helping visitors with questions on where to eat, what to do, and how to spend their money in town.

The three Connecticut women came in to cool off, sit a spell, and complain to me about the heat as if I had arranged it personally for them. They were educators, they said, which are like teachers only better paid, apparently.

While we were talking, a handful of local kids came in to use the restrooms, and they chattered away while they waited. To my eyes, they were bright and smart, a fine crosssection of our local kids, our pride and joy.

The Connecticut educators, however, saw and heard something far different. "My Gahhhdddddd," one woman said through clenched teeth. "The schools here must be terrible! Listen to those little… I can't understand a word they're saying with that hideous accent. Can't the schools teach them to speak correctly? Are the teachers as ignorant as they are?"

And it went on, the three of them mocking the schools and the teachers who would allow children to speak with the rural Southern accent that these precious children were born to. I admit I got pretty angry, which is rare. When it happens, The Ancient Burke comes forth, the spirit of 390 years of my Southern ancestry.

The Ancient Burke spoke the truth, and hoped it would hurt.

"I am absolutely shocked," I said quietly. "I'm shocked and appalled that you educators would be so intolerant of our diversity."

They all gasped and went wideeyed and pale. I could tell that tolerance and diversity were gods to them, at least in theory. Certainly they'd always thought they worshipped at the altar of tolerance and diversity, but I'd just caught them being very intolerant of our children's rural Southern diversity. And they knew it.

So, of course, I twisted the blade a bit. God forgive me, I enjoyed it.

I looked down my nose and asked them, "Do you really think it's acceptable for teachers to express such ugly intolerance against children with diverse linguistic backgrounds?"

"Oh, no, we're not really…" they began to babble, suddenly realizing what they'd said.

"Surely you don't teach your students that your way of speaking is the only one that's good, that it's perfectly fine to discriminate against minority accents because they don't sound just like you?"

I could tell that one hit bone. One woman broke into tears, then another, and they got up to leave, blubbering apologies and swearing that they weren't really intolerant, "We're just, just …"

"Hypocrites?" I suggested. "Blind to your own intolerance? Seems to me that you think discrimination against rural Southerners is the last acceptable prejudice in America. You came here, guests in our community, and mocked our children as hopeless and stupid little rednecks and back-country black kids, simply because you're so prejudiced you think that being Southern means being backward and ignorant."

I held the door open for them. "We appreciate visitors who come here with open hearts and open minds, but some folks make it clear that they just don't belong here. In the words of the great Georgia philosopher Lewis Grizzard, 'Delta is ready when you are.' Good day."

See the original article here:  http://www.news-reporter.com/news/2009-07-02/opinion/022.html

The Confederate Flag ... Is it Racist?

Black Confederates Proudly Wave their Flag

"Is the Confederate Flag Racist?" is a question which appeared on WikiAnswers.com. The answer read:

The Confederate flag is generally considered to be racist, because the Confederacy which it symbolizes practiced slavery based upon race; people of African descent were enslaved by people of European descent. It is frequently used by racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and Skinheads, so many people do assocate it with racism.

I do not agree with the above answer, so I have offered an alternative, and am proud to say my version now stands as the Wiki Answer. You can read it below:

No, the Confederate flag does not and never has represented racism. It is a symbol of Southern heritage, representing freedom, states rights, individual responsibility, and resistance to an out of control federal government.

It may be true that some racists have used the Confederate flag, but racists also wave the American flag. Consider these facts:

No slave ship ever sailed from a Confederate port or under a Confederate flag. On the contrary, virtually every American slave ship was from either New York or one of the New England states and they all sailed under the United States Flag. Also, at the time of the American Civil War, slavery had been practiced in every state and colony in America and was still being practiced in several northern states, under the Stars and Stripes, even during the War Between the States.

Ulysses S. Grant, commanding general of the United States Army during the War was a slave holder. Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army, was against slavery. The Confederate constitution outlawed the slave trade and Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, offered a plan that would have emancipated the Southern slaves in exchange for recognition from England and France. Davis personally had an adapted black son who lived as a member of his family in the Confederate White House. There were more free blacks, and also more abolitionists, in the South than in the North. Tens of thousands of black soldiers fought for the Confederate States of America in a war which they considered a second American Revolution, a "War for Southern Independence."

Unfortunately some racist groups have used the Confederate flag in recent years, but those same groups, especially the Ku Klux Klan, have historically used the American flag for a much longer period of time.

The truth is, neither the American Flag nor the Confederate Flag is racist. If people who are racists fly either flag, that does not mean the flag itself represents racism.

The Ku Klux Klan displays their United States Flag

The Top Ten Most Segregated Cities in America

Detroit Michigan, Second most Segregated City in America

Data released from the most recent United States census (2000) reveal the most segregated cities for blacks in America. Not surprisingly, cities in the North are still the most racially divided in our country. In compiling the list, formulas were used that calculated five different dimensions of urban segregation. They are:

1. Least Even Metro Areas (cities where blacks are least evenly spread; the number is the percent of people who would have to move for the group to be evenly distributed across the metro area)

2. Lowest Exposure Metros (cities where blacks have lowest chance of having contact with non-blacks)

3. Most Concentrated Metros (cities where blacks are most densely concentrated/least spread throughout the metro area)

4. Most Centralized Cities (cities where blacks are closest to the central core of the city)

5. Most Clustered Cities

Using the five dimensions above, the top ten most segregated cities for blacks in America are, in order:

1. Milwaukee, Wisconsin
2. Detroit, Michigan
3. Cleveland, Ohio
4. St. Louis, Missouri
5. Newark, New Jersey
6. Cincinnati, Ohio
7. Buffalo-Niagara Falls, New York
8. New York, New York
9. Chicago, Illinois
10. Philadelphia, Pennsylvaina

Having visited every city in this list on multiple occasions, and having lived in two of them, I am not at all surprised by the top ten. I personally encountered much more racism when I lived in Philadelpha and Cincinnati than I ever did while living in Tennessee, Georgia or South Carolina.

Nine of the top 10 most segregated cities are in the North - that area which formed the Union during the War Between the States. The lone exception is St. Louis, which was in a border state, claimed by both North and South.

In 1831, three decades before the outbreak of the War Between the States, Alexis de Tocqueville came from France to take an extended study tour of America. He wrote of his findings and observations in a book, Democracy in America, which has become a historical classic. De Tocqueville said: "Race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known."

Seems to me that some things haven't changed much.

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Photo and Story by J. Stephen Conn