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Comment by Roboprog | Hacker News Reader

On the other hand, look at how (politically) "those people" behave in aggregate. It might only be a majority of 51%, but clearly there is a sizable portion of people in the (traditionally somewhat sparsely populated) south / center of the country that have quite different values than the the people living along the crowded coasts.

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.

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Yes, but there are lots of Southerners who are just as progressive as anyone. The distribution is skewed relative to the rest of the country, but that sort of thinking is far from universal.

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.

Not everyone southerner has "southern" values. The south also has urban areas where people lean more to the left than their rural counterparts. There are just fewer of them. They (unfairly) get stuck with the same stereotypes.

That's the idea of generalizations. They don't need to be 100% fair, just statistically useful.

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...

Simpsons paradox though. There are more conservative people in California than there are in Georgia (e.g. more people in California voted for Mitt Romney than people in Georgia). Slicing people up into states to make nice sound bite statistics is useless and leads to stupid stereotypes.

Well, that more people in California "voted for Mitt Romney than people in Georgia" might not tell the whole story.

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.

Same percentage voted for Romney in Massachusetts as did in California. Again, grouping people by states is ridiculous to represent the views of the whole population of the state. It usually comes down to urban vs rural and that's about it.

Atlanta is not all that different from LA and Boston politically.

Thank you. Thus my using "51%" as a hypothetical proportion.

I've been living in Georgia for 5 years and I can count the amount of times I've seen or heard someone being blatantly racist on my hand.

Or, you know, less people vote in the south. In the 2012 Election, southern states all had far less turnout than northern states[1]. Your'e not comparing apples to apples.

Saying the entire south in aggregate is "stupider" because of that is plain wrong.

http://www.electproject.org/2012g

1) I said that a difference in values (due to location / population distribution / history ???) made them reason differently, not that they were actually stupid.

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.

In many ways, it's true.

Educational outcomes are far worse in the South. Teachers make less, schools are funded more poorly, especially for poor folk.

"Those people" are stuck with hopelessly gerrymandered districts and voter suppression.

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