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Comment by Technetium | Hacker News Reader

If you think you're going to have a good time living in the Carolinas, then I genuinely hope that you don't plan on being black or gay outside of a major city. There is a ton of bigotry and racism still present there, and the politicians in charge are happy to see it continue.

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As a native North Carolinian who grew up in a rural part of the state, I can confirm that there is a substantial difference between the rural parts of the state, and places like the Triangle region, in this regard. There definitely are still racists, bigots, homophobes, etc. and they are more common when you get out into the country areas.

That said, it's not the case that every 3rd person you meet is a KKK member, raging homophobe, or conservative snake-handling fundamentalist who refuses to send their kids to the doctor, or any of those other stereotypes. Those people exist, but even in the rural areas they aren't necessarily ubiquitous - although this will obviously vary from region to region, town to town, and I haven't lived in every part of NC, so there are probably some spots that are especially bad that I don't know about.

But anyway, the conversation about was about living in the Triangle area around Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, and this region seems to be in pretty good shape as far as tolerance, diversity, etc.

Can confirm.

Born and raised in rural North Carolina. The racism and bigotry and religious zealotry is very prevalent there. Durham, Raleigh, and Charlotte are all nice cities. However, you should really stick to those areas if you're not wanting to deal with any trouble.

Some Boston University researchers have taken a recent look at structural racism across the US, and while that's not everything, it's at least a portion. They actually found that NC is one of the lesser structurally racist states.

Their analysis checks out with my memory of recent events, with IL, WI, VA, and MO ranking very highly racist.

City lab article expounds on it here and has a nice graphic: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/02/the-role-of-structura...

Not sure why this user is being downvoted, what they say is true. I lived for 5+ years in the Triangle and there is a lot of racism/bigotry/misogyny present there. Its one of the main reasons I left, so it shouldn't be left out of the conversation.

It’s because they are casting a wide net on people and stereotyping them. What they say isn’t strictly false, but it’s also perpetuating a specific stereotype—the kind that if directed at others would be rightfully suppressed.

Saying that everyone there is racist would be casting a wide net. Saying that a large enough % of people are racist such that it would materially impact your quality of life if you are a PoC is a perfectly reasonable thing to say.

There is, but this recommendation is specific to the triangle area: the rural trends just don't apply.

Except the urban areas cannot make laws they want to improve conditions - the legislators from rural areas work together to override municipal specific laws in the state legislature and further enshrine the rural hold on the legislature by making the gerrymandering better for rural areas and they are working now to stack the state supreme court. A Democrat won the governship last time round and the GOP response was to remove powers from the executive branch before the governor took office. So even if a minority percentage of the people live in rural areas, they have an outsize effect on the running of certain people's day to day lives in North Carolina.

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