A story to share

[KB21]

One of the new interns in my family medicine residency program is a black guy from Sierra Leone.  When he moved to the US, he moved to the Washington DC area.  I'm not sure how old he was when he came over, but it is obvious to me that he hasn't been around long enough to be brainwashed with the idea that he is entitled.  Anyway, our residents had a retreat recently.  This guy stayed in the room with me.  We got to talking.  He told me that a lot of his friends in the DC area told him he was crazy for wanting to come to Mississippi.  He said that they told him that it was the south and he would be treated poorly down here because southern people don't like black folks.  He said that after talking with them, he was nervous about moving to Mississippi.  He's been here for almost 6 months now.  He told me that after moving here, he said the people down here are nothing like what his friends talked about.  He said people here are much nicer than they are around DC.  He said he has never been in a place where you can have a conversation with the person serving you your food.  He also said that he has never been in a place where people who don't even know you wave hello to you and actually ask how are you doing?  He said that in DC, if you asked someone that, they would think you are crazy.  He said that his short time here in Mississippi has made him want to stay, and he's thinking about setting up his practice here in Mississippi when he finishes residency. 

I had a good talk with him and told him about the many myths of the south that are out there and told him the truth about our people and about the War for Southern Independence. 

[SHOOTALL]

As long as the politicans can keep people of different rases hating each other the longer they will control us . What else would he hear in W DC ?

[Ga.windbreak]

It seems as if people from the North think that all are just like them. Sad to say we seem to all be viewed as Red Neck and non caring people.

Another story of interest in the time after the war by a northerner who came with built in ideas of who and what we are about.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/features/timeline/civilwar/recon/ogden.html

At the time I worked in Pine Bluff the white man and the negro did not work together in the fields or else where, always in separate crowds. At first this struck me as odd, but in time I assumed the same attitude as the southern man towards the negro, with this exception, that I could not understand the southern mans attitude of responsibility towards their former slaves. If the slave tried to do right the former owner gave him a crop and furnished him his supplies, gave him part of the crop he made and saw that he was taken care of, just as if there had been no war with the slavery question involved. But he knew how to handle the situation it seemed."

[SHOOTALL]

Funny thing about the term redneck is it was the northern West Va. coal miners who put a red bandana around there necks to ID themselves when going to southern W.Va. to form unions . Thus they were called rednecks in the war that came about .

[subdjoe]

Funny thing about the term redneck is it was the northern West Va. coal miners who put a red bandana around there necks to ID themselves when going to southern W.Va. to form unions . Thus they were called rednecks in the war that came about .

It may date to be fore that:

Possible Scottish Covenanter Etymology

The National Covenant and The Solemn League and Covenant (also known as Covenanters) signed documents stating that Scotland desired a Presbyterian Church government, and rejected the Church of England as their official church. In doing so, the Covenanters rejected episcopacy—rule by bishops—the preferred form of church government in England. Many of the Covenanters signed these documents using their own blood, and many in the movement began wearing red pieces of cloth around their neck to signify their position to the public. They were referred to as rednecks.[6][7]

Large numbers of Scottish Presbyterians migrated from their lowland Scottish home to Ulster (the northern province of Ireland) during the plantation era. In the mid to late 18th century, they emigrated again to North America in considerable numbers, comprising the largest group of immigrants to the American colonies from the British Isles before the American Revolution.[6] This etymological theory holds that since many Scots-Irish Americans and Scottish Americans who settled in Appalachia and the South were Presbyterian, the term redneck was used for them and their descendants.

And a few other more obscure uses in the 1700s and 1800s.  But always with the idea of it somehow referencing a rube.  (does 'rube' come from 'rubricate' - to make red?)

[Ga.windbreak]

On this matter I fear there is little, if any, desire to understand the scope of our interlocking relations with our fellow man from a Northerner's point of view. They "won" the war so there is no reason for them to feel otherwise or to question the status quo in their minds. A sad state, to be sure, but one that I feel should be responded to every time it comes up.

I want to repost something SBG posted awhile back which is most fitting imho.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/arp/arp.html#arp347

GOOD PEOPLE, BUT THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND.

The northern point of view:

"It is certainly a great curse to have so many illiterate, low-lived negroes in your State; but how true is the Bible, that you revere, when it says, 'The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations.' To my mind, the 'forefathers' of Georgia sinned in purchasing and owning slaves, and now their children's children suffer the consequences.

Bill's reply:

This is a good letter. A good man wrote it. I could neighbor with him and his folks and never say a word to give him offense. But I would teach them something do not not know--teach them gently, line upon line, precept upon precept--here a little and there a little. Now, here is a gentleman of more than ordinary intelligence and education who does not know that the sin of slavery began in New England among his forefathers--not ours - and from there was gradually crowded southward until it got to Georgia. and that Georgia was the first State to prohibit their importation.

No, no, my friend. If slavery was a sin at all, which I deny, it was not our sin, nor that of our fathers, nor were we cursed with so many illiterate, low-lived negroes as you suppose. Our slaves were not educated in books as they were in manners and morals and industry, and, mark you, there was not a heinous crime committed by them from the Potomac to the Rio Grande.

General Henry R. Jackson said in the great address he delivered in Atlanta in 1881: "During the four years of war, when our men were far away from home, and their wives and daughters had no protectors but their slaves, there was not an outrage committed in all the Southland. Where does history present a like development of loyalty? Does it not speak volumes for the humanity of the master and the devotion of the slave? If I had power to indulge my emotional nature I would erect somewhere in the center of this Southland a shaft, which should rise above all monuments and strike the stars with its sublime head, and on it I would inscribe, 'To the loyalty of the slaves of the Confederate States during the years '62, '63, and '64. ' "

        But this will do for the first lesson to my friend. It may take some time--weeks or months--for us to harmonize, and we will not until we get the facts straight, but I know that he is a gentleman and I think more of Iowa and her people since I received his letter.

 

But my friend is lamentably ignorant about the condition of our negroes before the war and their condition now. I must resent any slanders upon our slaves. They were not low-lived. They were affectionate and loyal. I believe that our family servants would have died for my wife, or for me or our children. They were born hers and expect to die hers. Tip was my trusted servant during the war and was twice captured and twice escaped, the last time swimming the Coos river in the night. But I have done for this time, for I am not well and the doctor says I must not strain my mind.

[subdjoe]

On a totally different matter, something I found while perusing the rest of the document Ga provided the link to:

   I am very fond of sausage--home-made sausage such as Mrs. Arp knows how to make, and so she delicately informed me that the meat was all chopped and ready for the machine, and said something about my everyday clothes and one of her old aprons. She further remarked that when it was all ground up she would come down and show me how much salt and pepper and sage to put in and how to mix it all up together. Well, I didn't mind the machine business at all, but I remembered seeing her work mighty hard over that mixing of the salt and pepper and sage, and frying a little mess on the stove and tasting it, and then putting in more salt and working it over again, and cooking another mess and tasting it again, and then putting in more pepper and more sage, and after the job was all over, heard her declare there wasn't enough of anything in it, and so I conjured up a bran new idea, and sprinkled about a hatful of salt and a quart of black pepper and a pint of cayenne and all the sage that was on the premises all over the meat before I ground it. Then I put it through the machine and cooked and tasted it myself. Well, it was a little hot--that's a fact--and a little salty, and a right smart sagey, but it was good, and a little of it satisfied a body quicker than a good deal of the ordinary kind, and the new plan saved a power of mixing. I took a nice little cake of it to Mrs. Arp to try, which she did with some surprise and misgiving. By the time she had sneezed four times and coughed the plate out of her lap, she quietly asked me if it was all like that. "All," said I, solemnly. "Do you like it?" she said. "Pretty well, I think," said I; "I wanted to save you trouble. and maybe I've got it a leetle too strong." She never replied, but the next day she made up the little cloth bags and stuffed 'em and hung 'em all overhead in the kitchen, and remarked as she left, "Now, children, that's your pa's sausage. It's a pity he hadn't stayed away another day."