Being Southern and being called racist - my childhood

I see a political climate more charged than ever, it seems, than any I have been in - being born in the late 70s, the 80s and 90s saw politics as more of comedic fodder with a bit of actual work than how it feels today.

One thing I do recall, however, was how the South felt like it was perpetually being depicted as "racist".

Now, before anyone jumps on my case, I am not saying there are no southern racists - that's stupid. Of course there are. This is about the media, and non-media, portraying the South as being just full up racists all the time. That felt odd to me, because I don't remember being in a situation where I was racist, or anyone else I knew was.

You see, I grew up AFTER the Jim Crow era, so schools had mandated integration. While, certainly, there were some racially predominant areas that might cause schools to be mostly one race or another, my school was hardly that. It never occurred to me that going to school with kids of other races might be unusual.

Then, as I got older, I encountered more and more people from up North. I never had a dislike of "yankees" as a kid; and as a teenager, the few I actually chatted with in person loved my "southern accent" (which, to be fair, was very mild - people with strong southern accents would guess that I was from places in the mid-west - I lived in Alabama my entire life until age 25).

As I started interacting more and more with people from up north, and watching more than just the occasional show, I saw how northerners depicted southerners - as racist, backwards hillbillies. I never quite understood WHY that was. It seemed quite insulting. Was it a liberal thing, I wondered - but no, it wasn't. It was a Northern thing. It didn't matter if I was talking to a rare northern conservative or a northern liberal, I was automatically dumped into their mental "racist" file.

Then I visited the north, and found it MUCH more segregated than my life had been. Why? Well, yes, the South had laws forcing segregation way before I was born, but I didn't grow up with it - only the aftermath of them working to rectify it. So to me, an integrated school was a normal one.

Not up North. They had made sure their communities had been segregated, and did nothing to change it. I could hear underlying, racist comments all the time from a lot of people that I encountered. All blacks were X. All whites were X. All hispanics were X. All Jews were X. Don't get me started on the negative comments on Jewish people - I had a Jewish friend in college, and he told me the difference:

In Alabama, he was a novelty. A little annoying at times, but people seemed more genuinely interested in hearing about his practices.

In New Jersey, the moment he left his community he felt the stares and heard the whispered comments.

See, the fact is, Northerners were never approached about their racism - all they had to do was look at pictures of Selma from the 60s and pat themselves on the back about how "not as racist" they were than their southern neighbors. I, OTOH, was shown those pictures and reminded on a daily basis just how racist I was because of where I was born.

Anyway, that's my rant. Prompted by something from my FB feed. MEH.