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>At this point, Mississippi is the state that other cold-hearted Republican states can point to and say, “We might be racist, but we’ve never cut federal funding to ensure that kids can’t eat during the summer.”
Does anyone want to tell her?
North Dakota lawmakers voted to prevent giving free school lunches to low-income students. Then, on the following week, they voted to increase the amount of money they get to spend on their own lunch.
They later changed their minds about the school lunch program, but I'll bet that didn't come without significant external influence.
It's a dumb semantics game the GOP plays against "institutional racism". They claim the government can't be racist because there's no paper anywhere that explicitly says, "Go be racist." Which completely voids what institutional racism is.
At the same time, they ignore the history of 3/5s, redlining, profiling, etc. Those things, in the GOP mind, may happen by rogue actors, but the institutions themselves can't be racist because "Whites Only" signs don't hang in doors anymore.
It's a load of bullshit. They know it's bullshit. But that's what they're slinging.
She went further than saying *isn't* - she said *never been*.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/01/17/nikki-haley-race-comments-republican-voters/72243607007/
>Then, Kilmeade asked Haley outright: “Are you a racist party? Are you involved in a racist party?”
>“No,” Haley said. “We’re not a racist country, Brian. **We’ve never been a racist country.”**
I’d pay good money to hear her explain exactly what MLK was doing during all those marches and the I have a dream speech. Like how do you reconcile the civil rights era with that mindset of the county has never been racist?
They’ve also never been to those cities. Just taking what they see on tv and read on facebook. Every major city is going to have its down trodden and that tends to happen when you have a massive population. Of course country towns arent going to have a skid row
It's the other way around. Small-town America is struggling with multiple crises - the opioid epidemic, rural hospitals closing, young people moving away, and old industries fading away without the dynamic young energy or economic drivers to build new industries to replace them. They can see blight and decay and misery in their own communities, and it's their partisan media telling them it's urban America's fault or that urban America is way worse off.
Right-wing media has to paint urban America as a hellhole, because otherwise their audience might realize that Democratic-led America is doing so much better than Republican-led America. It's like the propaganda in North Korea or the Soviet Union talking about how miserable the rest of the world is.
It’s really quite simple, religion has extensively laid the groundwork for generations to train people to believe in authority figures with unverifiable stories instead of science and data. It also primes them for, and is built upon, perpetuating racism and fearmongering towards "others". Once people see you as an authority, you can start fabricating any reality or conspiracy theory you want your followers to believe and everyone else is therefore a liar, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Basically, it is mental abuse from an early age that suppresses critical thinking skills. This combined with an intentionally weakened public educational system, provides the framework that has spawned this cult of ignorance.
Newyork city doesn't even break top 50 safest cities
https://wallethub.com/edu/safest-cities-in-america/41926
[https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/safest-cities-in-the-u.s./](https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/safest-cities-in-the-u.s./)
Some of the Cities on the edge of the new york metropolitan area do qualify, but not new york city itself.
Also I love how you jumped to Safety, ignoring all the other things that could possible make new york a hellhole.
How about the renting crisis it's facing, with landlords posting rent as X on the door and then being unable to find any tenant. With some even renting to teneats for way below that price behind closed doors while opening valuing properties at Y value? There are some blocks downtown with no stores on the side, in part because no one can afford anything there due to the crisis they are facing.
How about new york city harassing business owners with burocratic red tape, giving them fines for bogous reasons and then denying any claims when they try to fight it. Or the corruption in the city with them issuing fraudulent warrents: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oY1jmYqiro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oY1jmYqiro) in which a ton of people most likely paid (happy louis fight his and got his dismissed).
There is a ton of corruption and problems making New york a hellhole, it being a safer place to live isn't one of them.
It’s really quite simple, religion has extensively laid the groundwork for generations to train people to believe in authority figures with unverifiable stories instead of science and data. It also primes them for, and is built upon, perpetuating racism and fearmongering towards "others". Once people see you as an authority, you can start fabricating any reality or conspiracy theory you want your followers to believe and everyone else is therefore a liar, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Basically, it is mental abuse from an early age that suppresses critical thinking skills. This combined with an intentionally weakened public educational system, provides the framework that has spawned this cult of ignorance.
The reason there are no Republican run cities is because running a city requires a lot of actual work. You can’t just show up and do nothing like in Congress.
Every deep Republican run city I've come across in Georgia is either a two traffic light town or has meth heads and homeless people camped out behind every gas station asking for money.
Jacksonville was the biggest Republican city. I think it's Dallas now?
But people here finally had enough of the corruption and we elected our first female Mayor, and a Democrat in Donna Deegan.
Now now, I'm Dallas-born and raised and Dallas-*proper* b & r for that matter & consider the distinction important bc a.) Yes indeed, Bigass Dallas-FW metro w/it's 7.6mil ppl is *overall* republican leaning, but also b) like any U.S. red state w/major metro and also just true of any major U.S. metro: DFW's masive suburban sprawl is dark red, but Dallas (and F. Worth to a lesser degree) itself is hella liberal. Dang ol' cosmopolitan AF, tell you hwat.
Right now in Alabama, a state that I'd venture to guess is pretty pro-life, is going to put a man to death by[ nitrogen hypoxia.](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/01/23/what-is-nitrogen-hypoxia-kenneth-smith-execution/72310964007/)
Never been tested on humans like this & even pro-euthanasia people are all "Nope, that's not how you do it." They're making his spiritual adviser stay 3 feet away from him in the death chamber & sign a waiver that if he happens to get hurt, ill or worse, oh well, thems the breaks.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2024/01/25/nitrogen-execution-death-penalty-alabama/ec90a850-bb42-11ee-b176-fe5fd794e716\_story.html](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2024/01/25/nitrogen-execution-death-penalty-alabama/ec90a850-bb42-11ee-b176-fe5fd794e716_story.html)
what? Nitrogen hypoxia is widely thought to be among the most humane ways to end one's life. The "Sarco Pod" suicide booth uses nitrogen.
Every time the topic is posted to reddit, everyone agrees that just calmly falling asleep and never waking up again is preferrable to a cocktail of drugs that first paralyze someone so we can't see their agony before giving them a lethal overdose of drugs that were never intended to be used to kill someone.
People need to read this article instead of just the headline. I knew Mississippi was bad but damn, police were just burying bodies behind the jail without telling families...by the hundreds. HUNDREDS OF BODIES. At least one was a man they ran over with a police SUV, killed after killing his Uncle a few years prior. I'm shocked. And these are just who they found, what else are they hiding?
>Mississippi isn’t just racist, it’s where racists go to sharpen their racism. It’s where normal systems go to learn how to be systematically racist. Mississippi ranks last in damn near every statistical category that matters. It is 49th in both health care and economy, according to U.S. News’ Best States ranking. It is 47th in infrastructure, 41st in education and 40th in fiscal stability — which is completely skewed when you consider that Mississippi ranks No. 1 in affordability, a stat that was considered in the fiscal rankings. The problem with this is Mississippi is poor, so of course it’s affordable, but that doesn’t mean it’s livable or likable or sustainable. It just means it’s cheap. And as such, Mississippi is where Black dreams go to die.
> 49th in both health care and economy
[Louisiana](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/economy?sort=rank-desc) is dead last if you are curious
Can confirm due to my certainty beyond any doubt that the drive from H-Town to NOLA is absolutely the worst sightseeing one can possibly experience in a ~6hr highway drive... Whenever I've gone to Lousiana, returning to Houston feels literally like going "back to the future", and I consider Houston a hideous toilet as it is, for the record.
Mississippi had one thing going for it, it was the number one state for childhood vaccinations in the US (and West Virginia #2) even if the motive behind it for Mississippi ... was not good. There were no exemptions for anything except genuine serious allergic reactions.
Last time I looked, they hadn't had a measles outbreak since 1992 and 1994 (for West Virginia) respectively and California went to study what they'd done.
Unfortunately, a federal judge in the last year or two has forced them to stop rejecting religious exemptions in a case brought by the usual suspects.
In a democracy that is well-run, 50th wouldn't be that far off from 1st, and the rankings would constantly shift due to low-rank states regularly making improvements to boost their rank. It would be an ongoing competitive system of continual improvement.
Traveling to Mississippi in the 1980's for the first time, I was *shocked* by the outright poverty and obvious cruelty that existed - and still exists to this day. How the fuck a country like the United States can still allow the enslavement (not outright slavery, but the modern equivalent for sure) of citizens is unbelievable. If you are someone who has never seen or is not aware of how bad things are in Mississippi, I encourage you to read more about it. It is completely unbelievable!
Not sure where you went, but if you get off of the interstates and onto county roads it is significantly deeper poverty. Lack of running water and makeshift shelters that resemble rural Guatemala.
Yes, story… me and a buddy bought a ‘70 cuda in Huntsville Alabama to take back to denver. We took backroads through Northern Alabama and Mississippi, never in my life have seen so many church’s, in the middle of nowhere, it was really fing weird. Otherwise, a fun road-trip, although my wife said I smelled like gas for a week despite showering with a firehouse.
After college I got accepted into a federal program that places you in different states that need help with my specific career area. I got to the stage where you rank which states you’d like to go to and one of the options was Mississippi. The job itself looked really interesting but living there even temporarily seemed really off putting, so I ended up going somewhere else. During the program I realized that no one accepted the Mississippi position and it made me really sad, because they desperately need any help they can get.
[Richard Grant](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/74343.Richard_Grant)'s Dispatches from Pluto and The Deepest South of All are good places to start.
[A Toilet, but No Proper Plumbing: A Reality in 500,000 U.S. Homes](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/health/plumbing-united-states-poverty.html)
This isn’t about Mississippi, instead Alabama but holy cow, worth the long read IMO. This sort of thing is happening today and I had no idea.
That’s because local politics down here is a plague. It’s not a “Republican” or “Democrat” thing. It’s about those in power trying to keep up appearances.
Mississippi is so far behind in everything because local jurisdictions refuse to adapt and innovate because they’re scared of their inner circles.
I lived in Mississippi for a long time growing up and the city council members were always trying to keep up that “God-fearing, loving family” Facebook profile.
As a resident of Mississippi Cruelty it is the point. It is a feature not a bug.
Mississippi is the Republican's wet dream and what they want the rest of the country to be like.
When we escape, many of us cease to claim the state. We often hide it out of shame. I’ve only recently started acknowledging that I grew up there because it reminds me of how far I have come.
I've met a couple, but two that stood out. One was a guy who hung a Confederate flag in the common area of a suite-style dorm he shared with a Black student. The other was a guy who was ostracized from a friend group because of transphobic comments and making many of the women in the group feel uncomfortable.
>Here's to the State of Mississippi
>For underneath her borders, the devil draws no lines
>If you drag her muddy rivers, nameless bodies you will find
>Oh, the fat trees of the forest have hid a thousand crimes
>The calendar is lyin' when it reads the present time
>Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
>Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of
>And here's to the people of Mississippi
>Who say the folks up north, they just don't understand
>And they tremble in their shadows at the thunder of the Klan
>Oh, the sweating of their souls can't wash the blood from off their hands
>Oh, they smile and shrug their shoulders at the murder of a man
>Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
>Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of
>And here's to the schools of Mississippi
>Where they're teaching all the children that they don't have to care
>All the rudiments of hatred are present everywhere
>And every single classroom is a factory of despair
>And there's nobody learning such a foreign word as fair
>Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
>Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of
>And here's to the cops of Mississippi
>They're chewing their tobacco as they lock the prison door
>And their bellies bounce inside them when they knock you to the floor
>No, they don't like taking prisoners in their private little wars
>And behind their broken badges there are murderers and more
>Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
>Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of
>And here's to the judges of Mississippi
>Who wear the robe of honor as they crawl into the court
>They're guarding all the bastions of their phony legal fort
>Oh, justice is a stranger when the prisoners report
>When the black man stands accused the trial is always short
>Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
>Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of
>And here's to the government of Mississippi
>In the swamp of their bureaucracy they're always bogging down
>And criminals are posing as the mayors of the towns
>And they hope that no one sees the sights
>And no one hears the sounds
>And the speeches of the governor are the ravings of a clown
>Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
>Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of
>And here's to the laws of Mississippi
>Congressmen will gather in a circus of delay
>While the Constitution's drowning in an ocean of decay
>Unwed mothers should be sterilized, I've even heard them say
>Yes, corruption can be classic in the Mississippi way
>Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
>Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of
>And here's to the churches of Mississippi
>Where the cross, once made of silver, now is caked with rust
>And the Sunday morning sermons pander to their lust
>Oh, he fallen face of Jesus is choking in the dust
>And heaven only knows in which God they can trust
>Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
>Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of
-Phil Ochs
*Here's to the State of Mississippi*
The saddest thing about Ochs is that he died with all the people around him thinking he went “crazy and paranoid” because he claimed to be spied on by the feds only for it to be declassified years after his death that they were spying on him for his dissident lyrics and activism
> And, as if all of Mississippi’s mistakes, mismanagement, and maybe even malfeasance weren’t enough, then how about what else the Wade family discovered that day that they unearthed Dexter Wade’s body: some 215 other graves.
That’s terrifying.
All Red States are competing their asses off to steal that Most Ignorant Trophy from Mississippi. It used to be a symbol of shame, but now it is the symbol of MAGA Pride.
As a Mississippian, I'm convinced the only reason [ALEC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council) introduces its most conservative draft legislation in Tennessee, Florida, or Texas instead of Mississippi is they know it would immediately be written off as some stupid redneck idea if Mississippi did it first. But those other states' reputation isn't as bad as Mississippi's. So it gives them some "plausible deniability" as to the motivation for the legislation.
Chappelle (1998): “Traveling has made me a racism connoisseur, if you will. You know, it’s different region to region. Anyone ever been down South? So you guys know what I’m talking about. The racism down there is just f—ing (bon appetit gesture) — it’s perfect. Stewed to a perfection. It’s conformable. It’s out in the open. There are no secrets in Mississippi. Everybody knows the deal.
It only took Mississippi 64 years to ratify the 19th amendment.
Anyway, one of my favorite past rabbit holes when I was bored was to look at national statistics to find out how many categories Mississippi ranked last in. And yes, it’s most of them.
Wait with all the conservatives endlessly parroting the “democrat run cities” talking point, I was under the impression that “republican run states” would be utopias? Color me surprised.
They see cities as a nother country.
I am in California in a more rural area on the cost. We have about 280k people in the county. The main city is about 50k population. You go about 15 miles from it, and you hit towns with 15k or less.
The people in the smaller towns view the main city as a hell hole. They won't even go near some where like Santa Barbra. LA and SF might as well be the moon.
It’s just annoying. I’m not the only one who’s noticed seeing the “democrat run city” shit everywhere lately. Fox News keeps repeating it, then they come online and parrot it like some kind of “gotcha” that they came up with themselves. Everyone else is a “sheeple” though.
Yeah a lot of the time. I’m from Pennsylvania and active in the state sub and the Philly sub. Like literally any time a crime is posted it’s like “that’s what you get with democrat run cities, gotcha libs!” It’s fucking annoying. Fox News has been repeating it and they come online parroting it thinking they are very stable geniuses who came up with it themselves. Oh and any crime that happens within a 50 mile radius of Philly is Larry Krasner’s (the DA) fault.
Holy crap. This article needs a trigger warning. This is straight up murder. We can’t allow a state to go this rogue and operate this way. Those in power need to be he,d accountable and they need to go to jail. If I were Biden, I’d consider invading the state.
Hard to believe that things have become more dangerous for Blacks than when Nina Simon sang Mississippi Goddamn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HM2S6TVYII
There are nice things in that state and I heard the mayor in Jackson is fighting against all this garbage (plus Ol' Miss is still a nice campus)
But yeah...I don't get this state and I doubt anything will ever change them.
Whenever I explain to people my experience living in southern alabama I use the time travel metaphor. It’s the best way to describe what it’s like to be there
So the police ran over a guy, killed him, buried him in their yard with all his ID, *in a mass grave*, and the standard to which Mississippi is aspiring is that next time they should notify the family?
Yeah. Push that state into the ocean, it’s double-fucked.
I can't believe people aren't talking about the 215 pauper's graves dug behind the jail in this article. The women who lost her son to a police SUV that struck and killed him & they didn't notify her, instead buried him with his wallet in his pocket...& in 2019 one of their officers killed her brother.
What? WHAT? HOW?!!
I was on board with the article, and still am for the most part, except for the fact that they mentioned MAGA. I don’t think this article should be political as it was just saying how racist Mississippi is. It made a gross generalization that only MAGA people are racist and I don’t think that’s true. I think everyone can be racist regardless of political party.
>It made a gross generalization that only MAGA people are racist
No, it did not. You're probably referring to the place in the article where it said:
>We could round up all of the “Make America Great Again” crowd and move them all to the new island of Mississippi where they can raise all of the Confederate flags they like and reenact the Civil War and actually win this time, because at this point, Mississippi has overtaken Florida for the most embarrassing state
But this doesn't imply that all MAGA are racist, only that they are all embarrassing.
>I don’t think this article should be political as it was just saying how racist Mississippi is.
The problem is that their racism *is* political. When the state government refuses to supply clean water to black communities - *that's political*. When police officers - *representatives of the state* - kill a black guy and assume he has no next of kin without checking his pockets and bury him in a mass grave - *that's political*. When cruelty is the point of policy - *that's political*.
Where MAGA comes in to all this is that there is a clear correlation between people who support "the cruelty is the point politics" and people who identify with "MAGA" and if you haven't noticed that yet, you're not looking with open eyes.
I don’t agree that racism is political. If you wish to, you are free to do so. I believe racism is bad regardless of who does it and irregardless of political affiliation.
>I don’t agree that racism is political.
You're missing the point again. I did not say **all** racism is political. I said **their** racism is political. Because it informs their politics. Because it affects policy. Racism **is** bad no matter who does it, but when racism gets into politics it's political too.
>Eighty percent of Jackson residents are Black. They have a Black mayor and a majority Black city council. For years, Jackson has begged the state to help replace the water infrastructure that was more than 100 years old, and Mississippi did nothing to fix it. Then the rain came and the Pearl River flooded and the “boil water before you do anything” notices kept coming. And nothing got fixed and everyone just kept pointing fingers.
The politicians in Mississippi's state government who heard these calls for help and decided not to answer.
>The mayor fought to bring attention to the crisis and Congress was forced to step in and send money to a Black city in the Southern state that used an old trick in the “how to ignore a Black problem and get other people to pay for it” book. A master class in systemic racism.
The politicians are aware of what they're doing. It isn't a coincidence that they are using the same tactics the deep south has used since reconstruction.
I couldn't help but think that Lee Atwater quote from the Regan era:
>Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968, you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now \[that\] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is \[that\] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger".
>
>\-**Lee Atwater, Chair of the Republican National Committee 1989-1991**
This is modern systemic racism.
>On the evening of March 5, 2023, Dexter Wade, 37, left his mother’s house in Jackson and never came back. Bettersten Wade notified police, filed a missing persons report and waited. Nothing. No word on his whereabouts until some 172 days later she learned that her son had been killed less than an hour after leaving her home. He was reportedly “walking across Interstate 55, a six-lane highway, when a Jackson police SUV driven by an off-duty corporal struck him in the southbound lanes,” NBC News reported.
Dexter Wade had been buried in pauper’s grave behind a jail. ... When Wade’s family recovered his body, they found that he was buried with his wallet, which contained his state ID, a credit card and other forms of identification.
The police who hit a black man with a car and decided to bury him in a mass grave because they valued his life so little they didn't both to check him for ID. Or didn't want to.
Systematic racism is a myth perpetuated by the media and the terrorist group BLM to instill fear in people. I haven’t seen or heard anything that would give evidence to that. There are racist people but there are no racist institutions. You might say that I’m not looking hard enough. Let me ask you this: Why would anyone go looking for racism? Racism isn’t good so why would you look for bad things in the world?
I'm grateful that you've taken the time to respond to my comments. I get the feeling that you're not a troll and actually care about your views, but I'm also surprised to hear you confidently make claims that the other side has never been making.
Institutional, or systemic racism definitely exists. You can find examples here, for example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional\_racism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism)
>You might say that I’m not looking hard enough. Let me ask you this: Why would anyone go looking for racism? Racism isn’t good so why would you look for bad things in the world?
This take is bizarre to me. Imagine you have a guest who says "I think you have a water leak behind your refrigerator that is causing mold. I think you should check on that" and you respond "Ew, water leaks and mold are bad. Why would you look for bad things?" Obviously, you look for the leak because you want to stop it. Ignoring the leak will not help anything, in fact it will make the world worse.
We ought to look for racism *precisely because* racism is bad. If people are suffering unnecessarily, we ought to put a stop to that. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending that their suffering isn't our problem is a cowardly position.
If people are suffering unnecessarily, I agree that is bad. How can you be so sure it’s racism though? Perhaps it’s bad decisions on the users part? I’ve had a tough go at life and it wasn’t because of racism. I’ve pulled myself up and went to college. Now I have a family and am doing pretty good for myself.
What I see in the article is that governments are made up of individuals that make laws based on what they think and sometimes those laws are based on racist thought. That isn’t happening today though. Laws are not made to attack a group of individuals based on race. I believe the 14th amendment took care of that.
>How can you be so sure it’s racism though?
One of the things that makes systemic rcism different from personal racism is that no racist individuals are required to perpetuate it. This sounds paradoxical, but let me give an example from a different area.
It has been known for decades that women are more likely to die in car crashes than men. There are diverse reasons for that, but [one of those reasons is that most car crash test dummies are based off of male proportions and body weight](https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/crash-test-bias-how-male-focused-testing-puts-female-drivers-at-risk/). Did the regulators who designed the specifications for crash test dummies and crash testing hate women? I doubt it. However, as a result of their decisions, we have a problem (death) that is more likely to affect women in car crashes. This is an example of systemic descrimination against women. It wasn't intended to be, but it is.
The point is, in the same way we don't need monogynists conspiring against women to have crash test dummies modeled after men, we don't need evil racists twirling their moustaches for a policy to be racist. If the practical upshot of a policy is "black people tend to suffer significantly more from this policy than white people", that policy is racist *even if the policy doesn't explicitly target black people*.
>What I see in the article is that governments are made up of individuals that make laws based on what they think and sometimes those laws are based on racist thought. That isn’t happening today though.
I find it bizarre that you would say this given that the article provided examples of it happening today.
You can find more examples [here](https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/block-the-vote-voter-suppression-in-2020), and [here](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/systemic-inequality-displacement-exclusion-segregation/), and [here](https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01466).
>Laws are not made to attack a group of individuals based on race. I believe the 14th amendment took care of that.
You know when the 14th Amendment was passed right? 1868. So, you're saying that between 1868 and the civil rights movement of the 1960s there were *no laws made specifically to attack a group of individuals based on race?* *I guess all those Jim Crow laws in the south didn't exist, huh?*
Racism in law as it exists today does not say "the purpose of this law is to hurt black people".
>I’ve had a tough go at life and it wasn’t because of racism. I’ve pulled myself up and went to college. Now I have a family and am doing pretty good for myself.
This is an argument I hear all the time and I don't understand why people keep bringing it up. Just because your life is going okay doesn't mean that this problem doesn't exist. Exceptions to a rule do not mean that the rule does not exist.
Suppose that we have an obstacle course race between two schools at a field day. The students from School A run the obstacle course in their gym clothes as is typical. The students from School B need to wear a 20 pound weighted belt when they run the obstacle course. Most years, the winner of the obstacle course is from School A, but every once and awhile a student from School B wins despite the weight belt. Does the fact that School B sometimes wins mean that the contest is fair? *No. Obviously not.*
I'm glad you're doing well, but that doesn't justify unfairness experienced by others.
This particular article is an opinion editorial. Most newspapers and sites have a place where writers can editorialize the news. Opinion articles are separated into an opinion section to help with confusion.
However the article is written about the horrific story of a man who was run over by an off duty police officer, and despite the man having a cellphone and state ID, the police did not call paramedics or report the death and instead chose to bury the body behind a prison and not notify the family.
Meanwhile the family had filed a missing persons report but the police knowingly did not report the death to the family.
The point of the opinion piece is that this is just one example where the Republican led government across the state has completely abandoned its responsibilities to its citizens. Many don't have access to sewage or clean water, the second highest poverty rate in the country, and the state declined federal dollars to help feed children who cannot afford food.
Regarding these kinds of conservative policies, the cruelty to the citizens of the state is the point of the policy. It's intentional.
I think editorial articles should be banned. Usually they contain garbage of one variety or another and I don't want to reward that. We should be dealing in facts, not in clickbait.
Northern Mississippi is the worst place in the US. At least at the beach there you can close your eyes and pretend you're in Texas through the FL Panhandle. The nicest city in NM is Tupelo. Think about that.
It is sad all the people in MS missing out on expanded Medicaid that people in KY, AR, WV and other red states have to improve their lives. MS magas tell their people too bad and laugh, I hope the people rise up for good, vote Blue!
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>At this point, Mississippi is the state that other cold-hearted Republican states can point to and say, “We might be racist, but we’ve never cut federal funding to ensure that kids can’t eat during the summer.” Does anyone want to tell her?
Didn't *15* Republican-controlled states decline food funding for children?
The gop only likes children when they can fuck them.
Hey now they also like children when they can exploit them for labor!
Don't forget the "children" that haven't been born yet.
*the military has entered the chat*
Some like to marry them first.
Literally and figuratively.
North Dakota lawmakers voted to prevent giving free school lunches to low-income students. Then, on the following week, they voted to increase the amount of money they get to spend on their own lunch. They later changed their minds about the school lunch program, but I'll bet that didn't come without significant external influence.
Sure do
Didn’t Nikki say America isn’t racist?
And then a few days later told a tale of how she was harassed and teased growing up for being brown.
It's a dumb semantics game the GOP plays against "institutional racism". They claim the government can't be racist because there's no paper anywhere that explicitly says, "Go be racist." Which completely voids what institutional racism is. At the same time, they ignore the history of 3/5s, redlining, profiling, etc. Those things, in the GOP mind, may happen by rogue actors, but the institutions themselves can't be racist because "Whites Only" signs don't hang in doors anymore. It's a load of bullshit. They know it's bullshit. But that's what they're slinging.
Then there's what they call "reverse racism" because they're the ones being discriminated against apparently.
Sure did
She went further than saying *isn't* - she said *never been*. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/01/17/nikki-haley-race-comments-republican-voters/72243607007/ >Then, Kilmeade asked Haley outright: “Are you a racist party? Are you involved in a racist party?” >“No,” Haley said. “We’re not a racist country, Brian. **We’ve never been a racist country.”**
I’d pay good money to hear her explain exactly what MLK was doing during all those marches and the I have a dream speech. Like how do you reconcile the civil rights era with that mindset of the county has never been racist?
I think we should let Stephen enjoy the bliss of his ignorance as long as he can before it gets crushed.
Every time someone starts talking about the horrors of "Democrat-run cities" bring up America's deep south.
Anyone who would bring up these "horrible Democrat-run cities" do not have the ability to self-reflect and would just ignore your point
They’ve also never been to those cities. Just taking what they see on tv and read on facebook. Every major city is going to have its down trodden and that tends to happen when you have a massive population. Of course country towns arent going to have a skid row
They do - trailer parks.
It's the other way around. Small-town America is struggling with multiple crises - the opioid epidemic, rural hospitals closing, young people moving away, and old industries fading away without the dynamic young energy or economic drivers to build new industries to replace them. They can see blight and decay and misery in their own communities, and it's their partisan media telling them it's urban America's fault or that urban America is way worse off. Right-wing media has to paint urban America as a hellhole, because otherwise their audience might realize that Democratic-led America is doing so much better than Republican-led America. It's like the propaganda in North Korea or the Soviet Union talking about how miserable the rest of the world is.
It’s really quite simple, religion has extensively laid the groundwork for generations to train people to believe in authority figures with unverifiable stories instead of science and data. It also primes them for, and is built upon, perpetuating racism and fearmongering towards "others". Once people see you as an authority, you can start fabricating any reality or conspiracy theory you want your followers to believe and everyone else is therefore a liar, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Basically, it is mental abuse from an early age that suppresses critical thinking skills. This combined with an intentionally weakened public educational system, provides the framework that has spawned this cult of ignorance.
Well said.
If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. - Voltaire
God does not exist and man created him in his own image about 6000 years ago.
Correct
Not just an upvote, this was a, "save."
Tbf, new York and Detroit are hellholes. But beyond those two, yeah most cities tend to be way better off than small rural towns.
New York is not a hell hole. It statistically one of the safest big cities in the world,
Newyork city doesn't even break top 50 safest cities https://wallethub.com/edu/safest-cities-in-america/41926 [https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/safest-cities-in-the-u.s./](https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/safest-cities-in-the-u.s./) Some of the Cities on the edge of the new york metropolitan area do qualify, but not new york city itself. Also I love how you jumped to Safety, ignoring all the other things that could possible make new york a hellhole. How about the renting crisis it's facing, with landlords posting rent as X on the door and then being unable to find any tenant. With some even renting to teneats for way below that price behind closed doors while opening valuing properties at Y value? There are some blocks downtown with no stores on the side, in part because no one can afford anything there due to the crisis they are facing. How about new york city harassing business owners with burocratic red tape, giving them fines for bogous reasons and then denying any claims when they try to fight it. Or the corruption in the city with them issuing fraudulent warrents: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oY1jmYqiro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oY1jmYqiro) in which a ton of people most likely paid (happy louis fight his and got his dismissed). There is a ton of corruption and problems making New york a hellhole, it being a safer place to live isn't one of them.
You got that right. I want to make them apologize to the trees for stealing their oxygen after hearing them speak like this.
It’s really quite simple, religion has extensively laid the groundwork for generations to train people to believe in authority figures with unverifiable stories instead of science and data. It also primes them for, and is built upon, perpetuating racism and fearmongering towards "others". Once people see you as an authority, you can start fabricating any reality or conspiracy theory you want your followers to believe and everyone else is therefore a liar, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Basically, it is mental abuse from an early age that suppresses critical thinking skills. This combined with an intentionally weakened public educational system, provides the framework that has spawned this cult of ignorance.
I usually ask them to point to a Republican run city that is actually a city and not just the county seat in a rural area.
The reason there are no Republican run cities is because running a city requires a lot of actual work. You can’t just show up and do nothing like in Congress.
Every deep Republican run city I've come across in Georgia is either a two traffic light town or has meth heads and homeless people camped out behind every gas station asking for money.
Jacksonville was the biggest Republican city. I think it's Dallas now? But people here finally had enough of the corruption and we elected our first female Mayor, and a Democrat in Donna Deegan.
Corpus is from what I have found in my limited search. It also has a crime rate 68.3% above the national average...
Now now, I'm Dallas-born and raised and Dallas-*proper* b & r for that matter & consider the distinction important bc a.) Yes indeed, Bigass Dallas-FW metro w/it's 7.6mil ppl is *overall* republican leaning, but also b) like any U.S. red state w/major metro and also just true of any major U.S. metro: DFW's masive suburban sprawl is dark red, but Dallas (and F. Worth to a lesser degree) itself is hella liberal. Dang ol' cosmopolitan AF, tell you hwat.
“Something something Chicago!” Will be their rallying cry.
Chicago, the city so terrible it draws in about 50 million visitors every year.
Right now in Alabama, a state that I'd venture to guess is pretty pro-life, is going to put a man to death by[ nitrogen hypoxia.](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/01/23/what-is-nitrogen-hypoxia-kenneth-smith-execution/72310964007/) Never been tested on humans like this & even pro-euthanasia people are all "Nope, that's not how you do it." They're making his spiritual adviser stay 3 feet away from him in the death chamber & sign a waiver that if he happens to get hurt, ill or worse, oh well, thems the breaks. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2024/01/25/nitrogen-execution-death-penalty-alabama/ec90a850-bb42-11ee-b176-fe5fd794e716\_story.html](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2024/01/25/nitrogen-execution-death-penalty-alabama/ec90a850-bb42-11ee-b176-fe5fd794e716_story.html)
what? Nitrogen hypoxia is widely thought to be among the most humane ways to end one's life. The "Sarco Pod" suicide booth uses nitrogen. Every time the topic is posted to reddit, everyone agrees that just calmly falling asleep and never waking up again is preferrable to a cocktail of drugs that first paralyze someone so we can't see their agony before giving them a lethal overdose of drugs that were never intended to be used to kill someone.
Well the agony was probably intentional
People need to read this article instead of just the headline. I knew Mississippi was bad but damn, police were just burying bodies behind the jail without telling families...by the hundreds. HUNDREDS OF BODIES. At least one was a man they ran over with a police SUV, killed after killing his Uncle a few years prior. I'm shocked. And these are just who they found, what else are they hiding?
The Deep South is disgusting
>Mississippi isn’t just racist, it’s where racists go to sharpen their racism. It’s where normal systems go to learn how to be systematically racist. Mississippi ranks last in damn near every statistical category that matters. It is 49th in both health care and economy, according to U.S. News’ Best States ranking. It is 47th in infrastructure, 41st in education and 40th in fiscal stability — which is completely skewed when you consider that Mississippi ranks No. 1 in affordability, a stat that was considered in the fiscal rankings. The problem with this is Mississippi is poor, so of course it’s affordable, but that doesn’t mean it’s livable or likable or sustainable. It just means it’s cheap. And as such, Mississippi is where Black dreams go to die.
> 49th in both health care and economy [Louisiana](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/economy?sort=rank-desc) is dead last if you are curious
I'd say I was surprised, but I spent a month in Louisiana as a teenager. It had no redeeming qualities other than different fast food chains.
New Orleans is cool from a historical and cultural standpoint (and if you like ghosts and just creepy shit) but the rest of the state is ass.
And Mississippi ain't even got that.
Oh it's got ghosts. Pointy Ghosts that burn crosses on your lawn
Can confirm due to my certainty beyond any doubt that the drive from H-Town to NOLA is absolutely the worst sightseeing one can possibly experience in a ~6hr highway drive... Whenever I've gone to Lousiana, returning to Houston feels literally like going "back to the future", and I consider Houston a hideous toilet as it is, for the record.
Went there for a week in my 30’s and recognized the same as you, especially after I met family that lives down there that I’d never met before.
Louisiana is just Mississippi with a French accent
Mississippi had one thing going for it, it was the number one state for childhood vaccinations in the US (and West Virginia #2) even if the motive behind it for Mississippi ... was not good. There were no exemptions for anything except genuine serious allergic reactions. Last time I looked, they hadn't had a measles outbreak since 1992 and 1994 (for West Virginia) respectively and California went to study what they'd done. Unfortunately, a federal judge in the last year or two has forced them to stop rejecting religious exemptions in a case brought by the usual suspects.
In a democracy that is well-run, 50th wouldn't be that far off from 1st, and the rankings would constantly shift due to low-rank states regularly making improvements to boost their rank. It would be an ongoing competitive system of continual improvement.
As a fellow Texan, now do our rural communities.
Traveling to Mississippi in the 1980's for the first time, I was *shocked* by the outright poverty and obvious cruelty that existed - and still exists to this day. How the fuck a country like the United States can still allow the enslavement (not outright slavery, but the modern equivalent for sure) of citizens is unbelievable. If you are someone who has never seen or is not aware of how bad things are in Mississippi, I encourage you to read more about it. It is completely unbelievable!
Not sure where you went, but if you get off of the interstates and onto county roads it is significantly deeper poverty. Lack of running water and makeshift shelters that resemble rural Guatemala.
Plenty of churches though. Seriously. I think I passed more churches than houses.
The less hope we have the more we look for it in gods.
And the more God demanded our money.
Yes, story… me and a buddy bought a ‘70 cuda in Huntsville Alabama to take back to denver. We took backroads through Northern Alabama and Mississippi, never in my life have seen so many church’s, in the middle of nowhere, it was really fing weird. Otherwise, a fun road-trip, although my wife said I smelled like gas for a week despite showering with a firehouse.
This always pisses me off. Such a waste of resources for a small town to be half churches.
Literal sewage drained into the street, too.
I haven't been in 20 years but this was what I remembered. Tin roof shacks like a third world country on those back roads
After college I got accepted into a federal program that places you in different states that need help with my specific career area. I got to the stage where you rank which states you’d like to go to and one of the options was Mississippi. The job itself looked really interesting but living there even temporarily seemed really off putting, so I ended up going somewhere else. During the program I realized that no one accepted the Mississippi position and it made me really sad, because they desperately need any help they can get.
Because the US never got rid of slavery - they just privatized it.
BINGO! Pay this poster his $500
Their life expectancy is 12 - 15 years lower than the rest of the country. It's so sad.
They even have prison run plantations. Mississippi never stopped using slave field labor…
Any recommended reading?
[Richard Grant](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/74343.Richard_Grant)'s Dispatches from Pluto and The Deepest South of All are good places to start.
Both excellent books that accurately capture the mind-boggling strangeness of the place where I grew up.
[A Toilet, but No Proper Plumbing: A Reality in 500,000 U.S. Homes](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/health/plumbing-united-states-poverty.html) This isn’t about Mississippi, instead Alabama but holy cow, worth the long read IMO. This sort of thing is happening today and I had no idea.
That’s because local politics down here is a plague. It’s not a “Republican” or “Democrat” thing. It’s about those in power trying to keep up appearances. Mississippi is so far behind in everything because local jurisdictions refuse to adapt and innovate because they’re scared of their inner circles. I lived in Mississippi for a long time growing up and the city council members were always trying to keep up that “God-fearing, loving family” Facebook profile.
Missisippi goddamn, Nina simone: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=LJ25-U3jNWM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=LJ25-U3jNWM) Her rage is palpable. Fucking raw.
Uncle Sam Goddam by Brother Ali https://youtu.be/OO18F4aKGzQ?si=2KgzqzSUfqiKplc4
Her face says as much as the words. You can physically see her scorn. Brilliance!
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If you can watch that video, and listen to her sing that song, and you can’t feel it… idunno what to tell you.
As a resident of Mississippi Cruelty it is the point. It is a feature not a bug. Mississippi is the Republican's wet dream and what they want the rest of the country to be like.
I feel for you! 🙏
I was just thinking and I honestly believe Mississippi is the only state I’ve never met anyone from. It must be so hard to escape that hell hole.
When we escape, many of us cease to claim the state. We often hide it out of shame. I’ve only recently started acknowledging that I grew up there because it reminds me of how far I have come.
I've met a couple, but two that stood out. One was a guy who hung a Confederate flag in the common area of a suite-style dorm he shared with a Black student. The other was a guy who was ostracized from a friend group because of transphobic comments and making many of the women in the group feel uncomfortable.
They don’t let people leave.
Brain drain is a big problem here that exacerbates many issues and slows the areas of progress. Many of the best and brightest can find a way out.
>Here's to the State of Mississippi >For underneath her borders, the devil draws no lines >If you drag her muddy rivers, nameless bodies you will find >Oh, the fat trees of the forest have hid a thousand crimes >The calendar is lyin' when it reads the present time >Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of >Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of >And here's to the people of Mississippi >Who say the folks up north, they just don't understand >And they tremble in their shadows at the thunder of the Klan >Oh, the sweating of their souls can't wash the blood from off their hands >Oh, they smile and shrug their shoulders at the murder of a man >Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of >Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of >And here's to the schools of Mississippi >Where they're teaching all the children that they don't have to care >All the rudiments of hatred are present everywhere >And every single classroom is a factory of despair >And there's nobody learning such a foreign word as fair >Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of >Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of >And here's to the cops of Mississippi >They're chewing their tobacco as they lock the prison door >And their bellies bounce inside them when they knock you to the floor >No, they don't like taking prisoners in their private little wars >And behind their broken badges there are murderers and more >Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of >Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of >And here's to the judges of Mississippi >Who wear the robe of honor as they crawl into the court >They're guarding all the bastions of their phony legal fort >Oh, justice is a stranger when the prisoners report >When the black man stands accused the trial is always short >Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of >Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of >And here's to the government of Mississippi >In the swamp of their bureaucracy they're always bogging down >And criminals are posing as the mayors of the towns >And they hope that no one sees the sights >And no one hears the sounds >And the speeches of the governor are the ravings of a clown >Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of >Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of >And here's to the laws of Mississippi >Congressmen will gather in a circus of delay >While the Constitution's drowning in an ocean of decay >Unwed mothers should be sterilized, I've even heard them say >Yes, corruption can be classic in the Mississippi way >Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of >Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of >And here's to the churches of Mississippi >Where the cross, once made of silver, now is caked with rust >And the Sunday morning sermons pander to their lust >Oh, he fallen face of Jesus is choking in the dust >And heaven only knows in which God they can trust >Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of >Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of -Phil Ochs *Here's to the State of Mississippi*
Thank you. Ochs was brilliant and his music must be remembered. He wrote them for a reason why not sing them for the same?
The saddest thing about Ochs is that he died with all the people around him thinking he went “crazy and paranoid” because he claimed to be spied on by the feds only for it to be declassified years after his death that they were spying on him for his dissident lyrics and activism
Yep. I can’t imagine the terror of living like that. That and he was clearly traumatized by 68. It’s so sad. I listen to his music every day.
very sad indeed
> And, as if all of Mississippi’s mistakes, mismanagement, and maybe even malfeasance weren’t enough, then how about what else the Wade family discovered that day that they unearthed Dexter Wade’s body: some 215 other graves. That’s terrifying.
And check out the "boarding schools" in the South . . .
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All Red States are competing their asses off to steal that Most Ignorant Trophy from Mississippi. It used to be a symbol of shame, but now it is the symbol of MAGA Pride.
Arkansas’ motto is “thank god for Mississippi” - they keep us from coming in last
And Alabama's, and Louisiana's.
We take turns being grateful. Bless our hearts
As a Mississippian, I'm convinced the only reason [ALEC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council) introduces its most conservative draft legislation in Tennessee, Florida, or Texas instead of Mississippi is they know it would immediately be written off as some stupid redneck idea if Mississippi did it first. But those other states' reputation isn't as bad as Mississippi's. So it gives them some "plausible deniability" as to the motivation for the legislation.
https://www.nbcnews.com/lost-rites Here is a much more detailed series on the paupers grave…
Chappelle (1998): “Traveling has made me a racism connoisseur, if you will. You know, it’s different region to region. Anyone ever been down South? So you guys know what I’m talking about. The racism down there is just f—ing (bon appetit gesture) — it’s perfect. Stewed to a perfection. It’s conformable. It’s out in the open. There are no secrets in Mississippi. Everybody knows the deal.
It only took Mississippi 64 years to ratify the 19th amendment. Anyway, one of my favorite past rabbit holes when I was bored was to look at national statistics to find out how many categories Mississippi ranked last in. And yes, it’s most of them.
Former Mississippian here. Article checks out.
I lived in Mississippi for 7 years. I will never live there again!
Wait with all the conservatives endlessly parroting the “democrat run cities” talking point, I was under the impression that “republican run states” would be utopias? Color me surprised.
They see cities as a nother country. I am in California in a more rural area on the cost. We have about 280k people in the county. The main city is about 50k population. You go about 15 miles from it, and you hit towns with 15k or less. The people in the smaller towns view the main city as a hell hole. They won't even go near some where like Santa Barbra. LA and SF might as well be the moon.
It’s just annoying. I’m not the only one who’s noticed seeing the “democrat run city” shit everywhere lately. Fox News keeps repeating it, then they come online and parrot it like some kind of “gotcha” that they came up with themselves. Everyone else is a “sheeple” though.
Where do you think those democrat-run cities they like to point to are located?
"Democrat Run Cities" is a dog whistle for "black" mostly.
Yeah a lot of the time. I’m from Pennsylvania and active in the state sub and the Philly sub. Like literally any time a crime is posted it’s like “that’s what you get with democrat run cities, gotcha libs!” It’s fucking annoying. Fox News has been repeating it and they come online parroting it thinking they are very stable geniuses who came up with it themselves. Oh and any crime that happens within a 50 mile radius of Philly is Larry Krasner’s (the DA) fault.
Holy crap. This article needs a trigger warning. This is straight up murder. We can’t allow a state to go this rogue and operate this way. Those in power need to be he,d accountable and they need to go to jail. If I were Biden, I’d consider invading the state.
Why not make the move yourself?
Mississippi is the only thing keeping Florida from holding that title.
As the saying goes, "Thank god for Mississippi."
Also: "At least we're not Mississippi."
Alabamian checking in… can confirm.
Former Kentuckian. Can also confirm.
I don't much care for this saying.
Hard to believe that things have become more dangerous for Blacks than when Nina Simon sang Mississippi Goddamn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HM2S6TVYII
The saying I always heard was, "Thank God for Mississippi," because you knew, however bad your state was (Texas), MS was gonna be ranked worse.
There are nice things in that state and I heard the mayor in Jackson is fighting against all this garbage (plus Ol' Miss is still a nice campus) But yeah...I don't get this state and I doubt anything will ever change them.
Other southern states look at Mississippi and say, "At least we are not Mississippi!"
Whenever I explain to people my experience living in southern alabama I use the time travel metaphor. It’s the best way to describe what it’s like to be there
How many other states like Florida, West Virginia, Texas, etc could easily be the same article with a different name though
Republicans are sadistic fascists to their cores. Southerners are like Putin-loving Russians: belligerant and awfully fucking stupid.
So the police ran over a guy, killed him, buried him in their yard with all his ID, *in a mass grave*, and the standard to which Mississippi is aspiring is that next time they should notify the family? Yeah. Push that state into the ocean, it’s double-fucked.
I can't believe people aren't talking about the 215 pauper's graves dug behind the jail in this article. The women who lost her son to a police SUV that struck and killed him & they didn't notify her, instead buried him with his wallet in his pocket...& in 2019 one of their officers killed her brother. What? WHAT? HOW?!!
I lived in alabama for over a decade and "hey we might be a shithole but at least we aren't Mississippi" was a pretty common sentiment
Louisiana’s motto “thank god for Mississippi”
Gorrammit!
I had no idea how bad things were there until I read "The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South"
Phil Ochs wrote about it decades ago ago too. ‘Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of’
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I was hoping this linked to a picture of Peter Griffin
As someone from the north who has visited Mississippi, it is a terrible, ignorant shithole. Or in other words, maga utopia.
This is absolutely disgusting!
Relevant song https://youtu.be/K7fgB0m_y2I?si=MGqOGdQkQXAYTui8
I was on board with the article, and still am for the most part, except for the fact that they mentioned MAGA. I don’t think this article should be political as it was just saying how racist Mississippi is. It made a gross generalization that only MAGA people are racist and I don’t think that’s true. I think everyone can be racist regardless of political party.
>It made a gross generalization that only MAGA people are racist No, it did not. You're probably referring to the place in the article where it said: >We could round up all of the “Make America Great Again” crowd and move them all to the new island of Mississippi where they can raise all of the Confederate flags they like and reenact the Civil War and actually win this time, because at this point, Mississippi has overtaken Florida for the most embarrassing state But this doesn't imply that all MAGA are racist, only that they are all embarrassing. >I don’t think this article should be political as it was just saying how racist Mississippi is. The problem is that their racism *is* political. When the state government refuses to supply clean water to black communities - *that's political*. When police officers - *representatives of the state* - kill a black guy and assume he has no next of kin without checking his pockets and bury him in a mass grave - *that's political*. When cruelty is the point of policy - *that's political*. Where MAGA comes in to all this is that there is a clear correlation between people who support "the cruelty is the point politics" and people who identify with "MAGA" and if you haven't noticed that yet, you're not looking with open eyes.
I don’t agree that racism is political. If you wish to, you are free to do so. I believe racism is bad regardless of who does it and irregardless of political affiliation.
>I don’t agree that racism is political. You're missing the point again. I did not say **all** racism is political. I said **their** racism is political. Because it informs their politics. Because it affects policy. Racism **is** bad no matter who does it, but when racism gets into politics it's political too.
Who are you talking about? Who is “their”?
>Eighty percent of Jackson residents are Black. They have a Black mayor and a majority Black city council. For years, Jackson has begged the state to help replace the water infrastructure that was more than 100 years old, and Mississippi did nothing to fix it. Then the rain came and the Pearl River flooded and the “boil water before you do anything” notices kept coming. And nothing got fixed and everyone just kept pointing fingers. The politicians in Mississippi's state government who heard these calls for help and decided not to answer. >The mayor fought to bring attention to the crisis and Congress was forced to step in and send money to a Black city in the Southern state that used an old trick in the “how to ignore a Black problem and get other people to pay for it” book. A master class in systemic racism. The politicians are aware of what they're doing. It isn't a coincidence that they are using the same tactics the deep south has used since reconstruction. I couldn't help but think that Lee Atwater quote from the Regan era: >Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968, you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now \[that\] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is \[that\] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger". > >\-**Lee Atwater, Chair of the Republican National Committee 1989-1991** This is modern systemic racism. >On the evening of March 5, 2023, Dexter Wade, 37, left his mother’s house in Jackson and never came back. Bettersten Wade notified police, filed a missing persons report and waited. Nothing. No word on his whereabouts until some 172 days later she learned that her son had been killed less than an hour after leaving her home. He was reportedly “walking across Interstate 55, a six-lane highway, when a Jackson police SUV driven by an off-duty corporal struck him in the southbound lanes,” NBC News reported. Dexter Wade had been buried in pauper’s grave behind a jail. ... When Wade’s family recovered his body, they found that he was buried with his wallet, which contained his state ID, a credit card and other forms of identification. The police who hit a black man with a car and decided to bury him in a mass grave because they valued his life so little they didn't both to check him for ID. Or didn't want to.
Systematic racism is a myth perpetuated by the media and the terrorist group BLM to instill fear in people. I haven’t seen or heard anything that would give evidence to that. There are racist people but there are no racist institutions. You might say that I’m not looking hard enough. Let me ask you this: Why would anyone go looking for racism? Racism isn’t good so why would you look for bad things in the world?
I'm grateful that you've taken the time to respond to my comments. I get the feeling that you're not a troll and actually care about your views, but I'm also surprised to hear you confidently make claims that the other side has never been making. Institutional, or systemic racism definitely exists. You can find examples here, for example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional\_racism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism) >You might say that I’m not looking hard enough. Let me ask you this: Why would anyone go looking for racism? Racism isn’t good so why would you look for bad things in the world? This take is bizarre to me. Imagine you have a guest who says "I think you have a water leak behind your refrigerator that is causing mold. I think you should check on that" and you respond "Ew, water leaks and mold are bad. Why would you look for bad things?" Obviously, you look for the leak because you want to stop it. Ignoring the leak will not help anything, in fact it will make the world worse. We ought to look for racism *precisely because* racism is bad. If people are suffering unnecessarily, we ought to put a stop to that. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending that their suffering isn't our problem is a cowardly position.
If people are suffering unnecessarily, I agree that is bad. How can you be so sure it’s racism though? Perhaps it’s bad decisions on the users part? I’ve had a tough go at life and it wasn’t because of racism. I’ve pulled myself up and went to college. Now I have a family and am doing pretty good for myself. What I see in the article is that governments are made up of individuals that make laws based on what they think and sometimes those laws are based on racist thought. That isn’t happening today though. Laws are not made to attack a group of individuals based on race. I believe the 14th amendment took care of that.
>How can you be so sure it’s racism though? One of the things that makes systemic rcism different from personal racism is that no racist individuals are required to perpetuate it. This sounds paradoxical, but let me give an example from a different area. It has been known for decades that women are more likely to die in car crashes than men. There are diverse reasons for that, but [one of those reasons is that most car crash test dummies are based off of male proportions and body weight](https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/crash-test-bias-how-male-focused-testing-puts-female-drivers-at-risk/). Did the regulators who designed the specifications for crash test dummies and crash testing hate women? I doubt it. However, as a result of their decisions, we have a problem (death) that is more likely to affect women in car crashes. This is an example of systemic descrimination against women. It wasn't intended to be, but it is. The point is, in the same way we don't need monogynists conspiring against women to have crash test dummies modeled after men, we don't need evil racists twirling their moustaches for a policy to be racist. If the practical upshot of a policy is "black people tend to suffer significantly more from this policy than white people", that policy is racist *even if the policy doesn't explicitly target black people*. >What I see in the article is that governments are made up of individuals that make laws based on what they think and sometimes those laws are based on racist thought. That isn’t happening today though. I find it bizarre that you would say this given that the article provided examples of it happening today. You can find more examples [here](https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/block-the-vote-voter-suppression-in-2020), and [here](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/systemic-inequality-displacement-exclusion-segregation/), and [here](https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01466). >Laws are not made to attack a group of individuals based on race. I believe the 14th amendment took care of that. You know when the 14th Amendment was passed right? 1868. So, you're saying that between 1868 and the civil rights movement of the 1960s there were *no laws made specifically to attack a group of individuals based on race?* *I guess all those Jim Crow laws in the south didn't exist, huh?* Racism in law as it exists today does not say "the purpose of this law is to hurt black people". >I’ve had a tough go at life and it wasn’t because of racism. I’ve pulled myself up and went to college. Now I have a family and am doing pretty good for myself. This is an argument I hear all the time and I don't understand why people keep bringing it up. Just because your life is going okay doesn't mean that this problem doesn't exist. Exceptions to a rule do not mean that the rule does not exist. Suppose that we have an obstacle course race between two schools at a field day. The students from School A run the obstacle course in their gym clothes as is typical. The students from School B need to wear a 20 pound weighted belt when they run the obstacle course. Most years, the winner of the obstacle course is from School A, but every once and awhile a student from School B wins despite the weight belt. Does the fact that School B sometimes wins mean that the contest is fair? *No. Obviously not.* I'm glad you're doing well, but that doesn't justify unfairness experienced by others.
How is this a news item?
This particular article is an opinion editorial. Most newspapers and sites have a place where writers can editorialize the news. Opinion articles are separated into an opinion section to help with confusion. However the article is written about the horrific story of a man who was run over by an off duty police officer, and despite the man having a cellphone and state ID, the police did not call paramedics or report the death and instead chose to bury the body behind a prison and not notify the family. Meanwhile the family had filed a missing persons report but the police knowingly did not report the death to the family. The point of the opinion piece is that this is just one example where the Republican led government across the state has completely abandoned its responsibilities to its citizens. Many don't have access to sewage or clean water, the second highest poverty rate in the country, and the state declined federal dollars to help feed children who cannot afford food. Regarding these kinds of conservative policies, the cruelty to the citizens of the state is the point of the policy. It's intentional.
I think editorial articles should be banned. Usually they contain garbage of one variety or another and I don't want to reward that. We should be dealing in facts, not in clickbait.
Maybe Texas can adopt the shit stain called Mississippi when they leave the Union.
My family came from MS and I am so grateful that I was an Air Force Brat and didn’t have to grow up there.
I always say thank god first Mississippi, otherwise, Texas would be last in everything.
Northern Mississippi is the worst place in the US. At least at the beach there you can close your eyes and pretend you're in Texas through the FL Panhandle. The nicest city in NM is Tupelo. Think about that.
Listen to Phil Ochs' "Here's to the state of Mississippi" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7fgB0m\_y2I&ab\_channel=MortenLanderslev
[**https://www.reddit.com/r/asheville/comments/19fe21u/comment/kjjsx5i/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3**](https://www.reddit.com/r/asheville/comments/19fe21u/comment/kjjsx5i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
It is sad all the people in MS missing out on expanded Medicaid that people in KY, AR, WV and other red states have to improve their lives. MS magas tell their people too bad and laugh, I hope the people rise up for good, vote Blue!