Seriously, I grew up in a small town not too far from here. Yes, it was predominately white conservative but to my knowledge we as a community strongly rejected the KKK even though there "seemed" to be a rival organization called the Black Panthers that we probably feared for no other reason except that the government and media told us to. I never saw inherent racism in my community. During desegregation I personally witnessed blacks gang up on white boys and beat the snot out of them. Our little high school called an assembly and had leaders of our sports teams both black and white get on stage and show unity (I was one of those leaders). I would not say it was smooth but by my senior year some of my best friends were black. I later attended Florida A & M School of Pharmacy and had an amazing experience with an all black administration and excellent professors. During high school and college I read a lot about the Civil War and it's causes. Wrote school papers on the subject and learned a lot. One of the motivating factors was because it seemed our text books was very one sided and I had to find out. The more I read about the confederate soldier the more I seemed to relate. Hard working, family oriented and extremely loyal and yet one of the bravest groups of soldier I read about was a small bunch of Northern soldiers from Maine. During the battle of Gettysburg this small group of soldiers kept coming and coming and coming and finally broke through which turned out to be the beginning of the end of the war. So, the point is that we all have a history whether you are from the North or South or East or West. It would be nice if humans could stop symbolizing and stereotyping and profiling and judging others. Yes there are problems with racism in the South, North, East and West. We have plenty of work to do right here in the South but if we only blame the South it will not solve this problem. It may even make it worse because it evokes and "us against them" mentality. How do we change this? We just do with ever word that comes out of our mouth or word that we type.
I had no expectations of changing your mind about me or anyone who has Southern Pride. You just simply are not able to see two sides of anything. In my little book you are the one going backwards in society as for as your abilities to communicate with people who disagree with you.
