Granted I googled Sylacauga and the first line on their website is
>Sylacauga (syl-a-cau-ga) is a progressive community where all the pieces fit.
So they're aware of the image which is a pretty good sign...
But I'm not doing these cities/towns that are "progressive" oases in vast deserts of backwards communities ever again.
At the end of the day, the people in backwards communities are still numerous. They still end up dominating state-level politics.
Instead of embracing change and the wealth that not being a backwards backwater can bring, they actively fight it and if anything become more emboldened in trying to band together against the "common enemy"... that is progressive people (read: non-white, non-straight and/or non-Christian).
In a more ideal world, the answer to these people would be exactly what Sylacauga seems to be, forcing them to co-exist with people who are in the 21st century, but I now feel like the answer is to let these areas wear themselves down. When the pie of wealth grows and these people are locked out for their views, they'll eventually lose the power they had.
> they'll eventually lose the power they had.
would do much to change the situation. Georgia, Virginia and Texas are states that are being fundamentally changed because of the influx of progressives from both rural areas and urban coasts. The fastest way to change seems to be to move to these places and use the democratic process to introduce real changes, and these folks will have no choice but to change their views or retreat to more rural areas of their states (usually its the latter).
The other aspect is that a lot of the southern states do actually have sizeable populations of African Americans...I really do hope that we don't just ignore them as successive generations seem to have done....
Why are progressives moving en mass so much that that are able to replace the local population and fundamentally alter voting patterns? What is happening to drive people out like that? I'm not an American for the record and likely am missing parts of the context here.
The advent of mass air conditioning made the climates much more bearable to live in, fueling economic expansion. Otherwise it’d be too hot and humid.
They are moving to affordable places that vote against taxes, regulations, and government services. Oddly they continue to vote for the policy that caused them to migrate, and so eventually they must migrate again.
But it's like a see-saw, injecting wealth while the ride is still tipped so strongly towards these backwards communities is counter-productive. It's adding more weight (money) to the other side than it is to the side of progressives and African-Americans already living there.
Especially when you consider even in these "progressive" oases, it's not uncommon for gentrification to disproportionately affect African Americans, and even end up destabilizing otherwise functional communities of black people.
I want to see us set up the progressives who live in those states for success with federal actions like fighting gerrymandering and national political movements before pouring money into those states.
The old guard losing power as wealth left their states has very much been a large part of why places like Virginia have been able to transform. You need the backwards incumbents to be weakened enough not to take your wealth generation and turn it back on the group you're trying to uplift.
I don't even want to imply there are no backwards communities right on the doorsteps of the major cities that everyone just kind of sweeps under the rug.
In Denver I went to a restaurant I overheard "why do I have to serve that spic". So okay no racism in America right? You idiot.
Discussing cultural factors and our perceptions of them are fair game, especially in this thread, because they affect the relocation thought process.
I invite people to weigh in on the degree of racism across regions and states. I would like to see if there are ways to get more specific with data, though I don’t demand it. There are many aspects of society that are not easy to measure. That lack of data does not mean we should not talk about our experiences and perceptions.
This is not to mention the personal connection to people with direct experiences (although perhaps availability bias).
If you’re a minority, in an interracial relationship, or are LGBT, living in a rural area can have serious quality of life issues that often aren’t mentioned.
Literally 100% of the time that anywhere in the US outside of the major tech cities gets brought up, the comments are full of people claiming that the inhabitants of those areas are racist, stupid, dangerous, unwelcoming, or otherwise bad and undesirable to be near.
The double-standards on this website are mind boggling, for how casually and openly people will believe negative stereotypes and repeat discriminatory beliefs when the 'out group' is rural, southern, or even just non-coastal.
In my daily sheltered life in the Bay Area, I hardly ever see overt racism. And when it happens, it bothers me.
If I’d see it happen on a daily basis, it would seriously impact my quality of life.
I see nothing wrong with saying: don’t move to this or that place because racism is rampant, even if 75% of inhabitants are not.
These kinds of comments scare me off...
https://m.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/move-ca...