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Comment by zacinbusiness | Hacker News Reader

Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia - fear these places.

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A Norwegian tourist was sentenced to seven years in prison in Arizona for accidentally running over some guy's foot with his car. The incident happened after he took a wrong turn onto a one-way street and was about to turn around, when he was crowded by a group of people at a nearby music festival, apparently angry with his traffic violation. One of them punched him in the face through the car window, upon which he sped off (accidentally running over a foot in the process).

The charge was assault with a lethal weapon (the car), the case went to trial and he was convicted. It's a circus.

[Edit: Turns out the guy was not a tourist. Here is the story, written right before the sentencing: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002601538]

Any state south of the Mason-Dixon line is portrayed as a cartoonish land of religious fanatics, racism, and overreaction.

In truth it is not exactly so, but I personally wouldn't want to live in any of those places. I probably wouldn't be happy living in the mid-west either though.

It generally holds true that these sorts of things can happen in any state now. If you 'threaten' to shoot up a school (no matter how jokingly) you're likely to get reamed for it.

Context no longer matters... There is a zero tolerance policy on certain words and ideas now it appears.

I've lived in the south my whole life. It's a hell hole of backwards racism, fear. I stay here for my family and my wife's job. But it's hard.

Lived in the south my entire life (currently in Nola).

There's definitely an I don't know...afterglow effect? with this stereotype at play in the south today. It certainly used to be highly isolated culture with it's own weird problems ("fanatics, racism, and overreaction").

These days though thanks to television, the internet, decades of immigration etc. it's pretty much the rest of the US...with better weather.

Don't tell people that, or the Californians will move in and ruin it.

The weather isn't that nice.

Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia - fear these places.

Well, if you're going to paint with such a broad brush, go ahead and list the other 38. I hear there are bad people in San Francisco, Madison, Boise, Olympia, Reading and Topeka too.

Then you should start listing Canadian provinces, because surely they've got some bad apples. And don't forget Mexico, since they've had issues with murderous drug cartels. At that point you should also mention the bloodthirsty populations of Central America as well as the black-hearted people of Iceland.

Really, I think only the Moon is reasonably safe but the place has gone downhill since 1969.

I grew up in Louisiana. The police here are just plain awful. But as young adults we were always warned about dealing with and avoiding dealing with police in Mississippi. Police in the deep south are not the same as police in other places.

I have lived in Georgia all of my life. It is fine. Cases like these are outliers and can happen anywhere. Look at what happened in Illinois when someone recorded a cop with a helmet cam. These types of generalizations have no place on HN.

http://m.gastongazette.com/news/local/kkk-trying-to-recruit-...

I have traveled a lot. I have met small minded bigots all over. I grew up on a moderate sized city in the deep south. There is still a very small population of bigots in almost any rural area. No need to down play it, this is a very small amount of the population. It is still a problem, to some extent: (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2428103/Majority-Ame...). A few more generations and people won't even have living memories of Jim Crow. It takes time to heal wounds like this and that is very certainly the trend (improvement).

Oh fuck off, you obviously haven't been to half of these states, especially considering you dumped New Mexico into a list with Mississippi. How that would ever make sense is beyond me.

What would you even be fearing? Burritos and Barbeque?

I wouldn't fear anything. But I'm white. If I were not white? I'd fear the corrupt cops, the corrupt legal system, and the corrupt banking system to name a few.

Banking system? How is the banking system in those states different than the one in the others?

Because the man at the desk that's in charge of giving personal and small business loans is more likely to be a daddy-tells-me-how-to-think redneck.

Have you ever been to the Southwest? (California counts for half credit at most.)

I'm from New Mexico, and it's a grand place.

However he might be thinking of the backwards and corrupt policing of the state. For instance,

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-new-mexico-... http://www.elpasotimes.com/latestnews/ci_25024804/new-lawsui...

yeah, I'm from New Mexico too. Grew up in Farmington, lived in Las Cruces a year, Albuquerque has always sort of been home base. Still, I lived in SLC for a decade too and I've been in SF for 4 years now, and I've spent a lot of time in West Oakland. I also have a good chunk of family in Louisiana. Guess what? Cops are retarded everywhere. In NYC they stop and frisk you for being a minority on a Friday night, and in the Bay Area they just kill you on BART. Of course, these things happen occasionally but pretending like New Mexico (especially from that list) is some sort of place where minorities aren't welcome and overflowing of racism (notice Oklahoma wasn't even on the list? Trail of tears anyone?) is probably the silliest thing I've ever heard.

Granted, the Deep South still has a ways to go.

I wouldn't put New Mexico in that company, and much of Virginia isn't too bad, but yeah.

I think it's important to remember a fact of humanity: you're generally safer on familiar ground, around people who are similar to yourself. It can be very interesting, exciting, and rewarding to be "the foreigner", but at the same time you should never forget when you're in that position.

Of course one of the horrible things about Texas is it does this sort of thing to actual Texans, in addition to other people. It's really an indictment of the people of the state: could you form a decent jury, judiciary, legislature, or police force if it had to be made up of Texans?

I think it's important to remember a fact of humanity: you're generally safer on familiar ground, around people who are similar to yourself. It can be very interesting, exciting, and rewarding to be "the foreigner", but at the same time you should never forget when you're in that position.

This is generally true. However, the United States is a multi ethnic country. So the question is, does this statement apply to all ethnicities, everywhere? The fact is, for a large number of Americans, they are "the foreigner" exactly in that position most of the time.

> It's really an indictment of the people of the state: could you form a decent jury, judiciary, legislature, or police force if it had to be made up of Texans?

It wouldn't be hard to find prejudiced ignoramuses who would say the same about the people of any state (or religion, or ethnic group, or occupation).

Harder than you might think, pard'ner. Only you can change you.

I take offense to Virginia being in that list

I never thought of Virginia as being a part of the cultural conservative south until the ultrasound bill.

that's just incredibly asinine.

Vanderbilt Duke UNC Rice Georgia Tech Virginia Tech University of Virginia That's a partial list.

PLACES TO BE FEARED! It's legitimately damaging to the American South to perpetuate stereotypes like this. It makes smart people want to leave, or never go in the first place. I've lived in Memphis Tennessee for my entire life and I can guarantee you that it would be a better place if people didn't spew closed minded horse-shit like this.

I think there are places to be feared everywhere. The wrong neighborhoods in Seattle may not be so safe. Ditto with Houston, LA, Detroit, NOLA, etc.

The secret is simple: ask locals. That's the best way to be safe wherever you travel.

I was hoping to live in some of these places in the future. Would you mind clarifying why the states on this list are especially bad rather than others?

I live in Alabama and it's a beautiful state. You are always within 6-8 hours of driving from a beach or mountains. The state undergoes three major geological changes as you go from North to South, leaving some really nice, natural scenery as a result. I'm originally from Huntsville, where the majority of rocket science was fostered and learned in America. I believe that there is an area in this region that holds the highest number of PhDs in the country. Huntsville is chock full of engineers and thus schooling tends to pride itself on its math and science curriculum - offering more opportunities because of sponsorships from local engineering firms like Boeing, NASA, Lockheed Martin, Adtran, and many more.

There's this trope that Alabama (and most of the South) is a fucked up, backwards, redneck, inbred place afraid of all things change, and that just isn't true. There are episodes of each of those things - just like in California or New York. It's nice getting off of work and playing basketball out in your driveway, then enjoying a beer with all of your neighbors outside as it turns from dusk to dark. Generally people are nicer here and I try my best to be as well.

I think Alabama's a great state to live in. I also think people give in to regional stereotypes way more than they should.

Most of it comes down to the fact that you have extremely geographically isolated people. Communities in the mountains of the Carolina's for instance may not even have a bank or a post office. These people are extremely paranoid and fearful of change, and thus they elect politicians that share their views and that, worse, feed into them with religious and political rhetoric about how the bad man with dark skin is going to take away all the things they care for most.

Not a criticism but how much time have you spent in the South?

My entire life. I've met some of the most viciously racist people that exist. And not just poor and uneducated people. Wealthy, educated people as well. There is an institutionalized racism that permeates most of the south. Not all southerners are that way. Some of us try to lift the south up into the 21st century. But it's a hard fight. And the resistance to change is strong.

Thanks.

But the Western USA is much more geographically isolated. Slavery broke the entire nation, and while much of the rest of the nation has recovered, in important ways the South is still broken.

As someone who grew up in the South, I would humbly submit that you have nothing more to fear visiting the aforementioned states than any of the other 38. There are many beautiful places to visit and friendly people to meet.

It's a part of the US called "The South". Which has it's own cultural identity...

I'm 31 and my adult life has been about a 50/50 split between OK and WA. They're not as different as you might think.

So far as I know New Mexico and Arizona aren't part of "The South" either culturally or geographically. If it was that simple, I wouldn't have asked the question.

And add Kansas to the list: http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/02/13/kansas_anti_ga...

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