From: silva@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Holly Silva)
Subject: Re: Mr. Walker's comments about welfare in Ms. and Ala.
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 22:27:38 GMT

 (Ray Dunn) writes:
> (Holly Silva) writes:
>>	Suzanne's not always coherent objection to his offhand mention
>>of welfare and poverty in Alabama and Mississippi stems from the regularity
>>with which people who know nothing of the South feel free to accept
>>a rather Hollywood view of the place as valid truth.
>
>Did Holly or Suzanne actually *read* Graham's posting.
> 	
	Yes, Mr. Dunn. I even read your postings. I have _very_ 
catholic tastes in net.news.

[an abbreviated list of the places GW cited as having severe poverty:]

>>Northern NY state, Alabama, Missippi,
>>etc.
>>the south Bronx, the coal
>>mining communities of West Verginia, or inner city Liverpool
>

>From this general condemnation of poverty in the world, he should get
>attacked for daring to say that there's poverty in Mississippi & Alabama?
>


	No, he should not. Suzanne was a bit off in jumping to the
South's defense in reaction to this post. It should be fairly clear 
by now as to why she flew off the handle  --  she's a southerner who's 
spent many years working with the indigent in the south, specifically
in Mississippi. 
	What did and should receive condemnation from me are the facile,
knee-jerk attacks upon her which followed her postings. Those attacks
came from you, and from Aengus Lawlor.

>Holly again:
>>	If you require complete coherence on this subject Aengus, I'll
>>be happy to oblige.
>>	Suzanne probably disagrees with his facile assumption of Alabama
>>and Mississippi as 'good' choices to cite in a rebuttal to Gary's
>>ultra-nationalist posts. Implicit in that choice is the same set of
>>tired assumptions about the South which have been promoted by the
>>mainstream American media for 20-30 years now, assumptions regarding
>>its backwardness and bigotry.
>
>I think Suzanne is demonstrating her bigotry very well in her remarks on
>the poor, but where did _Graham_ mention any of this?  Holly it is _you_

	This is a specious argument Mr. Dunn. One doesn't need to make
outright statements reiterating the tired assumptions one bases one's
worldviews upon for them to be apparent to a reader. Lawlor's post
reached me a few days after I'd read Graham's article, and the broadness
of his discussion of poverty escaped me. However, I do believe that his
choice of including the deep Delta South in his listing was a facile one.
Moreover, I haven't forgotten that the gist of his post was a viperish
little attack on one of Nattering Newell's tongue-in-cheek rants.

>who is bringing up these subjects.  Whether the south in general is
>bigotted or not is not the point.  Is there _poverty_ there, or not?  Do
>these places deserve to be on Grahams list?
>

	As much as Liverpool, no doubt. The real question is, does
his list deserve to be on s.c.c? Does your continued posting to s.c.c.
'deserve' to be here? The original posting which generated this 
Welfare in MS and AL thread was not something I'd care to 'bring home
to Mama'. It was ugly.


>You go from complaining about the south being labelled as backward and
>biggotted, to _stating_ that not only _is_ the south resistant to change
>but that the resistance is hidden under its bigotry.
>
>Holly, this is your "complete coherent" response?
>

	Oh consistency. The hobgoblin of little minds. Yes. this is
my completely coherent response - to Lawlor's attack on Suzanne and your's,
if not to Graham's original post. Inherent in this 'coherent response'
are 

	1) a distaste for seeing anyone savaged by the petty, PC, net-
police.

	2) a distaste for seeing facile, negative assumptions about
the South being bruited about by people who've never been there.

	3) a recognition that, however self-serving and outlandish
some of those assumptions may be, they do have some roots in reality.


>From Graham's general statement about poverty in the world, Holly and
>Suzanne pull out their pet states to defend, and now Holly complains of the
>ethnocentricity of Graham's camp?  Appalling, indeed!
>

	Actually, I'd also thought about registering a complaint about
his choice of including West Virginia in his list. Appalachia is as
ill-served as the deep Delta South by the manner in which middle class
intellectuals from elsewhere dwelt on its poverty.
	Most of the his list dated from the mid-60's, in terms of when
the greater world became aware that these were troubled spots. There 
are many localities in America today which are more troubled than
those which made Graham's list. These include south central L.A., 
Oakland, the South Side of Chicago, Washington Heights (NYC), Jamaica
Plains (Boston), the Southwest and Southeast quadrants of the District
of Columbia, East St. Louis, and the Desire Housing Projects of New Orleans.
	
	I'm not surprised that you've worded a rebuttal to my
criticism of your attack on Suzanne Sims in terms of Graham's original
posting. It would have been almost impossible to defend your own.
But in closing, I'd like to point out that Graham's original post
was, as I'd mentioned above, a nasty piece of work for the most part.
That's not to say that Newell didn't deserve it, nor that he couldn't
handle it. However, your use of Graham's post as a sort of 'clean'
reference from which to base a rebuttal to my criticisms of yours is 
rather weak.

--
======================================================================
|| Holly Silva			I have nothing terribly clever to say||
|| Applied Earth Sciences	today.  You're in luck.		     ||
|| Stanford University						     ||