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: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 21:13:50 GMT

 Aengus Lawlor <RBYAML@rohvm1.rohmhaas.com> writes:
>In article <1992Oct5.194156.2202@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu>,
>shazam@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu says:
>>
>>Ummm.....Excuse me, Mr. Walker, but before you start staing facts
>>about the people in other states, perhaps you should live there first?

>Do you know for a fact that Graham hasn't lived in Ms and Ala? Or do you
>apply different rules for posting for other people than for yourself?
>>
	It's glaringly apparent that whether he's lived there or not, a
woman who's worked in the Jackson, MS welfare office for 5 years knows
more about issues of poverty and welfare in Mississippi than he does.
	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.

	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. Why anyone should continue to view the
American South and the power structure there as _more_ worthy of 
censure and contempt than that of the urban centers of the Northeast
and California is beyond me. People of color in L.A. are even more
downtrodden and fucked over by 'the system' than are their stay-at-home
cousins in the deep Delta South. Wake up folks! Check out who it
is that is dying! Where are the beatings occurring? Most recently,
in California and Texas, not Alabama, ancestral home of George Wallace.

>Do you disagree with him? Are there _NO_ poor people in Ms and Ala?
>Why were you working for the Food Stamp program?
>
	See above.

>Or do you believe that Graham was just being gratuituously insulting to
>those states, and you just felt the need to stick up for them? If you
>want a gratuituous insult, try this for size: Learn to read!
	
	The gratuitious insult was yours, m'dear, not Graham's.
But the tendency among British intellectuals to still focus on the 
vicious Old South as an emblematic example of a bigotted society
is rather queer isn't it, considering where the real shit is going
down in this day and age?

	The _habit_ of choosing to cite the South in a rebuttal to
an ultra-nationalist post is so ingrained in you folks. If I were
to engage in the same facile and ill-founded categorization of 
Ireland on a regular basis in my postings, you would be up in
arms. Up in arms....despite the fact that deep, ingrained societal
inequities and pathologies are as common in Ireland as they are in
the Deep South of the US.
	The Deep South and Ireland are strikingly similar in some
particulars of the social problems which beset them. Both regions
have long-term moribund economies which have not yet adequately
switched over from agriculture (sharecropping) to modern light industry.
Both societies are beset by nepotism; in places where jobs are
so scarce, and family ties so strong, this is almost inevitable.
	And in both societies the less educated folk cling
tenaciously to some pretty negative mind-sets. 
	In Ireland, it is hidebound adherence to old ways of 
doing things and grudging resistance to change, irrespective
of the fact that change is absolutely necessary if they want their
children to find employment. In the South, a similar resistance
to change is commonly cloaked in ultra-nationalism and race bigotry.
The South is both lucky and unlucky vis a vis Ireland, in that those
of us who won't bend to fit the prevailing culture can leave, 
without needing to leave our nation entirely behind. That's a
'benefit' the Irish don't have.

>>
>I never used kill files in scc, but I wish I had succumbed to the temptation
>the first time I saw *smile* (*wince*) in a post.
>
	That's because you're the sort of bloody asshole who refuses to
appreciate or understand a Southern woman's tendency to sweeten every-
thing she says, particularly when what she says might be controversial.
Well, you may have to put up with me then. I turned in my union card
at the New Orleans Southern Belle Local 666 quite a few years ago now.
Your ethnocentricity is absolutely appalling. And your petty defense of
Graham's less blatant ethnocentricity is equally asinine.
--
======================================================================
|| Holly Silva			I have nothing terribly clever to say||
|| Applied Earth Sciences	today.  You're in luck.		     ||
|| Stanford University						     ||