edgarblythe wrote:At the time my friend lived there, things were beginning to change, possibly even in Mississippi. But, where he lived, that's the absolute truth, like it or not.
absolute truth...absolutely not...and it isn't about liking it or not...
You weren't there. This is why I avoided this thread so long. People never want to look squarely at the truth. Go on and tell yourself lies if you want. I've said my say.
I was and still am here...your friend may have been frightened and experienced some racial injustice but to characterize his experience as some sort of hellish nightmare full of white-robed boogeymen is flat out false...it just didn't happen like that...and it doesn't matter in which part of Mississippi he resided...
Quote:You weren't there. This is why I avoided this thread so long. People never want to look squarely at the truth. Go on and tell yourself lies if you want. I've said my say.
wrong...been here all my life......and the truth is only interpretations...
You were in every burg and town in Mississippi? I find that highly unlikely.
Quote:You were in every burg and town in Mississippi? I find that highly unlikely.
don't be silly edgar...I've lived in the state of Mississippi all my life and can clearly say that you are under the wrong impression...your friend didn't live in every po azz crossroads hamlet either...and again I'll state the problem I have with your friend's characterization of life here and your interpretation of what he said...I find it highly unlikely that he and his family were cowered down in the corner of his house after nightfall waiting in fear of the white-robed boogeymen to unleash a hellish nightmare of toment upon him, his family or the community...it just wasn't like that...
Quote:You were in every burg and town in Mississippi? I find that highly unlikely.
don't be silly edgar...I've lived in the state of Mississippi all my life and can clearly say that you are under the wrong impression...your friend didn't live in every po azz crossroads hamlet either...and again I'll state the problem I have with your friend's characterization of life here and your interpretation of what he said...I find it highly unlikely that he and his family were cowered down in the corner of his house after nightfall waiting in fear of the white-robed boogeymen to unleash a hellish nightmare of toment upon him, his family or the community...it just wasn't like that...
Where you are in error is assuming his experience is being ascribed to everyone in that state. I could go to most any part of Houston and pick people at random. I guarantee a huge percentage would claim that what goes on in Vidor Texas could not be going on, because they haven't heard of it. And Vidor is not far away.
where you are in error is assuming that the experience of your friend characterizes the nature of the entire state...
Quote:. One of my black friends tells me of his childhood in Mississippi, how whites got together in packs after dark, looking for any blacks foolish enough to be caught out of doors
whites didn't gather in packs after dark seeking to torment the black community...I'm sure these activities happened but to paint the picture with a wide brush and allude that whites across the entire state terrorized blacks is far from what actually occured...
I'm loving this bs.
Mississippi didn't get it's reputation as one of the last bastions of raw race hatred in the US just by chance.
Catfish's point is that it wasn't all white people, okay, point taken.
I can even concede that some might exaggerate the numbers of people and events involved in the acts of violence.
But in the 50's and 60's and early 70's, catfish would not have wanted to trade places with any black person in Missisippi.
snood...what you say is exactly right...pre-1970 Mississippi wasn't the best place to live especially if you were black...being poor and white wasn't much better...
this is somewhat of an extreme characterization also...certainly true but overstated...most of the activities that made headlines were the actions of a few militant haters...by far the subtle racism was the most pronounced...the generation that spawned that brand of racism in the days before civil rights are dead and gone...we still have many things to improve but it aint like it used to be...
There are these little towns scattered over (especially the South) of Germany with a modest, friendly, hard-working and law-abiding population of good Catholics. People living in these towns believe that it was always like that. They cannot imagine that from 1933 onwards these towns were eager to be the first to be ethnically cleansed of Jews, gipsies and other undesirables. If you ask the townspeople now, there were never any Jews in their town, Hitler was a bad man and they all suffered very much during the war. However, their archives show a different story. It shows how racist agitators organised mobs to drive anyone who was not a white Catholic out of their houses, beat them up and hand them over to the police, then the houses were looted and subsequently assigned to "good" citizens, while the rest of the good citizens stood by and did nothing.
And now the whole town suffers of collective amnesia and even their own children have no idea of what it was like in those days. They do believe their parents and grandparents suffered, were victims of the war. Anyone raking up the real history is ridiculed first and then threathened (We have a nice clean community here and we don't need troublemakers, etc.)
While I have never visited the US, I deem it very likely that the recollection of the segregation era differs starkly between the victim group and the perpetrator group. Not everyone was a victim or a perpetrator, most were bystanders, but they all shared the collective (biased) memory of their group. The whites will paint themselves as victims (it was not easy for us either, we were poor too, we suffered, yes the KKK were bad men (that we had nothing to do with), we were always decent to "our" blacks, we have a nice clean community here, don't you go raking up trouble now!) and they can't imagine that "their" blacks experienced that time in a radically different way. They thought that so long as everyone "knew their place" and no-one rocked the boat, things were as they should be.
I stated twice that my words were not meant to characterize every single person in Miss., but he insists on using that for an arguing point. I give up.
Paaskynen wrote:There are these little towns scattered over (especially the South) of Germany with a modest, friendly, hard-working and law-abiding population of good Catholics. People living in these towns believe that it was always like that. They cannot imagine that from 1933 onwards these towns were eager to be the first to be ethnically cleansed of Jews, gipsies and other undesirables. If you ask the townspeople now, there were never any Jews in their town, Hitler was a bad man and they all suffered very much during the war. However, their archives show a different story. It shows how racist agitators organised mobs to drive anyone who was not a white Catholic out of their houses, beat them up and hand them over to the police, then the houses were looted and subsequently assigned to "good" citizens, while the rest of the good citizens stood by and did nothing.
And now the whole town suffers of collective amnesia and even their own children have no idea of what it was like in those days. They do believe their parents and grandparents suffered, were victims of the war. Anyone raking up the real history is ridiculed first and then threathened (We have a nice clean community here and we don't need troublemakers, etc.)
While I have never visited the US, I deem it very likely that the recollection of the segregation era differs starkly between the victim group and the perpetrator group. Not everyone was a victim or a perpetrator, most were bystanders, but they all shared the collective (biased) memory of their group. The whites will paint themselves as victims (it was not easy for us either, we were poor too, we suffered, yes the KKK were bad men (that we had nothing to do with), we were always decent to "our" blacks, we have a nice clean community here, don't you go raking up trouble now!) and they can't imagine that "their" blacks experienced that time in a radically different way. They thought that so long as everyone "knew their place" and no-one rocked the boat, things were as they should be.
I believe that sort of amnesia is common, much more so than most would like to believe.
Excellent observations, Paasskynen. I have lived in Bavaria (southern Germany) and have made many visits to the American South (not Mississippi, I admit, but Georgia, both Carolinas, Virginia and Kentucky are familiar territory, not to mention Texas and points west). A certain mass amnesia among otherwise good people is a quite common 0occurrence in both places.
This is so strange, I just came on here to read what's been posted, and my husband in the other room just turned on the History Channel...show about the KKK is on.
God they are a bunch of stupid m.f.ers
I don't know why their acid doesn't consume them, it's so potent.
Paasky...what you said is SO true...collective amnesia.
My grandmother, who was born in Poland, used to tell me emphatically when I was little that there were "No Jews in Poland" It's a longer story than that, but from a lot of things I've pieced together, I have a stong suspection that part of my ancestors were Jewish. No proof, just a bunch of things that point that way. I really feel like my grandmother believed that, because it was safer.
Cat fish, I don't know anything about you yet. But really, my gut is saying either you were brought up in an ivory tower, or have some sort of agenda going to get people to thinking history didn't take place, or it wasn't that bad.
Quote:Cat fish, I don't know anything about you yet. But really, my gut is saying either you were brought up in an ivory tower, or have some sort of agenda going to get people to thinking history didn't take place, or it wasn't that bad.
Chai Tea...no ivory tower...no denial of the facts...times were tough for blacks in the South...don't agree or condone the circumstances...I just lived here in those times...I don't have amnesia or an agenda...my objection to the statements made so far are simple...painting a picture of marauding bands of white-robed klansmen terrorized the black community isnt the way it was...
there certainly was a political and economic system that favored keeping poor people poor...black and white...that history did indeed take place...I witnessed much of it...it wasn't Gone with the Wind or Mississippi Burning...
The whites who roamed at night around my friend's part of the state didn't wear robes, to my knowledge. But, they undoubtedly were there.
edgar...I don't question your friends experience...perhaps he was young and it appeared as he said...I also had a hard time trying to understand why there were two completely different cultures existing together...it was a time of social and economic injustice...it was also a time for change...
this is a poor place...an agrarian environment...that creates a have/have-not social system...landowners either grew cotton or timber and those used to be labor intensive activities...so there were the landowners and those that worked for the landowners...not much of a middle class...
let me also add that I don't recall any group of whites around here that made it a practice of terrorizing black people...there wasn't a need for it because the black community was held hostage by the social and economic system...there wasn't a need to further oppress them...
during the 60's with the rise of the civil rights movement, there could have been more of that kind of activity going on....I don't recall it as being widespread...
