It's all just class. One can be just as intelligent with a Southern accent as one can be stupid with another.
Todd Barry has a great bit on this (language might be offensive to some) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfNnM2aYsWo
In my experience, there isn't a huge difference in the level of racial bigotry between northern and southern states. The difference lies primarily in the openness of it.
For example, the effects of deed-restricted home sales are still being felt today in many neighborhoods in northern states.
In some ways, the openness of the southern brand of racism is more respectable than the northern brand. While the southern real estate agent was open with you, the northern real estate agent may simply assume you don't want to live in a neighborhood that's "too black," never say so to your face, and proceed to only show you houses in the "nice" part of town.
Yes, it's a contrived example, but it's also something that happens every day all over the country.
When I was managing people in the '90s in California one of the technicians who worked for me was black and had worked all over the country.
He said he much preferred living in the South, because while there was no difference in the number of bigots he ran across, outside the South the bigots weren't brave enough to be open about it so it was harder to tell where he stood.
I think there's probably some legitimacy to that view, but I always wonder how much "shit happens" type stuff gets identified as racism. I'm white, so when a white guy is an asshole to me I assume he's an asshole. If I were black I might assume he's a racist.
Besides racism, that's also a way to say "too poor/downtrodden/crime ridden".
To which, they would indeed have a point (statistics wise), although that of course is caused by the systemic injustice and lack of opportunities against blacks for centuries.
Also notice how people still say the exact same thing about "white trash" places in the North (and South), and nobody seems to mind, because while the US got more tolerant about race, they still don't give a rats arse about classism and social exclusion based on being poor and not a "success".
There is a lot of bigotry in the Bay Area and online. Considering what we know about the mental shortcuts people use to process complex social information, evidence/science minded people should expect there to be bigotry as an unfortunate phenomenon to be aware of. Instead, it has received the imprimatur of "sin."
It's a thorny problem. Talk about bigotry in the "wrong" way, and you ironically open yourself up to yet more bigotry involving projections about your internal mental state.
I mean, sure, there are super racist areas in the south. I grew up and lived in mostly rural Alabama for the first 20+ years of my life, and there were some rural areas that were just as terrible as people imagine (cross burnings, open Klan meetings, etc, though that was starting to die down in the last 10 years or so I lived there).
That said, a lot of cities in the south are 30% - 50% black (sometimes more), and people who live in those cities, generally speaking, coexist and interact with many black and white people on a continual basis. It'd be kind of hard to do that and be super racists to the level people imagine the south to be.
Or maybe I am just bitter about a 70% white city talking about how racist a 53% black city must be.
A lot of tribes in the US have members that exhibit this same behavior. A respectful pause to consider a response and a slow cadence should be a sign they have considered their words, but instead is portrayed as stupid. It made going to DC and dealing with bureaucrats in the 90's a pain in the butt.
I'm really glad to hear that I'm not alone with this struggle. Still don't have a good answer for it though. :(
If I could participate in this career/industry from a smaller town, you bet your butt I'd do it in a second.
The people who ended up working remotely are the ones who worked in the office for many years and gained the trust of their employer. Then when the family moved (usually due to a spouse changing jobs) the employer decided to let them work remotely rather than letting them go, at least in the near term.
Well yes pretty much this. I worked for a year on-premises before switching to remote, and I can imagine it's harder to find remote work from the get-go.
My father was a school board administrator. He was able to make good money, work in an office with colleagues, and still had the ability to live in practically every town in the US. School boards are everywhere. Tech companies are only in the largest cities.
It's really frustrating.
Fox News Network, LLC 1211 Avenue Of The Americas New York, NY 10036
The question was whether there's a network "showing what's important to the middle states".
(Which I interpret as "important related to their views on laws, life, politics, ethics, etc", not as "related to regional news").
As much as I like rural folks and like to spend time with them (and despise folks who look down on them), the farmer is just as reliant on the financiers who ensure a steady cash flow for the multinational which delivers him his fertiliser, his fuel, the parts for his tractor, his clothes, his food &c. &c. &c.
We're all interconnected.
But do you think your medicine, qualified doctors, medical equipment, internet, computers you use, movies and tv series you watch, trucks you drive and tons of other things besides grow on trees?
(Not to mention farming subsidies)
Not many medicine schools, pharma corps, research labs, car manufactures, tech companies, tv and movie studios, etc operating out of rural Idaho, or South Dakota, or Alabama, or what have you...
If the opposite happened, urban areas would buy their food somewhere else and eventually save some money thanks to the increased competition in the market and the lack of agricultural subsidies, not to mention all the other ways we subsidize rural America's inefficiencies.
I grew up in the city and spent summers on my uncle's farm and have seen both sides. Gods, I am tired of this fucking stupid rural vs urban debate. They need each other, and can't exist in a modern world without each other. Move to the countryside and I hear stereotypes about how shit the people in the city are. Move back to the city and hear stereotypes about how shit the people in the country are. Both sets of stereotypes are largely wrong. Likewise, the people whose jobs straddle both urban and rural environments are not the people who use these stereotypes.
I've found that it's the keywords that indicate where people are from within the Midwest:
Is it soda or pop? Is it car-mel or care-uh-mel?
(I do linguistic stuff in my day job.)
To my ear, the Chicago accent is represented but exaggerated in the "Bill Swerski's Superfans" sketches from SNL in the 1990s - "Da bearssss".
And it's "cur-muhl". :)
Not saying one group is smarter/dumber, just that the difference in values makes it hard to come to an agreement, which can make the "other" side seem stupid / "full of shit" / nuts.
It's only reasonable to recognize and acknowledge that the South as a whole acts somewhat differently. But it's wrong to talk about all Southerners as if they're the same, or treat all Southerners badly because of it.
It's just like with race. There are real, factual differences between racial groups, and acknowledging this is not a bad thing. What's bad is judging or biasing your interaction with people from those racial groups because of it.
I'd wish people would get that, and only complain when a generalization is statistically wrong (e.g. doesn't really hold for the majority of the people it lumps along), instead of everytime they find a counter-example...
Are the people in California traditionalist, religious, backwards, or even racist, etc, as the people in Georgia? They might not be, regardless of who they chose to vote for -- which takes into account many factors and policies.
That said, California is also traditionally regarded as conservative (at least by us in Europe) -- it's places like Massachusetts or Vermont that we'd count as progressive. Especially since California is regarded as hardcore pro-money/big-business, which is large part of being a "conservative" here.
Atlanta is not all that different from LA and Boston politically.
Saying the entire south in aggregate is "stupider" because of that is plain wrong.
2) I also meant to highlight "some do, some don't" by saying "perhaps 51%". Perhaps 51% is even too high, maybe it's just a vocal minority.
3) By calling them (in quotes) "those people" and "other" I was alluding to a certain amount of xenophobia on the part of coastal dwellers when considering fly-over dwellers. And yes, that cuts both ways.
Educational outcomes are far worse in the South. Teachers make less, schools are funded more poorly, especially for poor folk.
I bet half of those people left the South and are fronting about it.