If you read nothing else, please try to find a few minutes for a Washington Post article that ran on Friday. It’s called Disconnected from Obama’s America and it’s a look at the feelings and attitudes of rural Arkansans after the election of a black president. To say their racism left a bad taste in my mouth is an understatement. Consider this sentence, and the emphasis is mine: “He has noticed that blacks around Brinkley — many whose families originally came to this region to pick cotton — have a newly emboldened attitude.” You just know the man had two words in mind — uppitty n******. It’s worth noting Arkansas was one of the few states to vote more Republican last November than in 2004.

Yes, we do filter differently — POV again! Thanks for giving me another one.

What is there is a mention of a “newly emboldened” attitude among Blacks after Obama’s election, but in context it didn’t seem derogatory in the slightest (to me) and I passed right over it.

What a good reminder that we all read with different filters! I must say I appreciated the article more after a couple of re-reads. It’s gotten tucked in my files now.
shoreacres´s last blog ..Blues Traveling

I’ll have to re-read it for the “thing” aspect, which I don’t recall at all and I’m not sure I ever got that impression. What I remember most from it is the comment by someone that some of the the blacks were “uppity” after the election. Holy smokes, every American of a certain age knows the vile two-word phrase that starts with “uppity.”

I really think young people are our best hope for change in this respect, whether it’s racism, anti-semitism or any other ism. I don’t believe it’s realistic to expect change from most people who have spent half a century or more using pejoratives to refer to or describe people different from themselves. I’d love events to prove me wrong, but I won’t bet my favorite chef’s knife.

Strangely, I ended up reading it less as an article about racism/bigotry than about regional isolation and the gaps between urban and rural cultures. Geography can be destiny, too – or at least a significant factor in the way lives progress. Familiarity may breed contempt, but sometimes it breeds comfort and acceptance. When I moved from my little all-white Iowa town to my first job and apartment in Kansas City, I moved into an environment where my neighbors included an old black man who played saxophone on the steps at night, some Korean greengrocers with minimal ability to speak English and a pair of transvestites upstairs who worked over at the Jewel Box on Troost – a true neighborhood landmark I came to enjoy my new environment, and began to value diversity.

Another huge difference implied in the article is the gap between those who still produce some “thing” (cars, a crop, a clean house) and those who shuffle bits and bytes around in cyberspace. If you’re making a car, you know in the end whether it’s attractive, whether it runs, and whether it lives up to its advertised hype. You also find out pretty quickly if anyone is buying what you have to sell.

If you’re speculating in the markets, moving commodities,or managing funds, there can be something “unreal” about it – with a consequent loss of accountability, responsibility or guilt when actions lead to very real loss for very real, if somewhat less sophisticated, people.

All that said, I think there’s no question the internet already has begun to overcome geographical isolation and provide the exposure to the “other” that I had to move to KC to find. When I stopped by the Onward store on my Mississippi trip, in the very heart of the Delta emptiness, what did I find? A fellow in the front of the store with a Dr. Pepper and a laptop, checking commodity prices, and a kid in the back with another laptop, doing a research project on Japanese anime. Hello, world.

Didn’t mean to turn this into another post, but gosh – you’re the one who sent me over to that article!
shoreacres´s last blog ..Blues Traveling

While not categorizing individuals, I think it’s hard to deny that as regions the South and Ozarks are far less accepting and tolerant of diversity than, say, the Northeast. And diversity includes ideas and beliefs as well as people. I won’t say the electoral map bears that out because I think it’s the other way round — it is borne out in the electoral map.

Thanks for your comments and I hope you’ll have a few minutes to read that article. It’s from the Washington Post.