"I don't care how inaccurate a generalization this may be, the fact remains: I hate southerners.
I moved north and have not once run into the same attitude that I saw in the south; that attitude that makes you feel you need to take a shower, get fresh air...the feeling that things are just wrong. Poisonous. Sickly. That feeling you get watching the family in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The south is utterly filthy. I can't imagine going back.
I heard my entire life down there about how rude Yankees were, how cold, etc...but, frankly, after spending 5 plus years up here I can honestly say that I have not run into a single situation where a set of people came anywhere close to the broad, sweeping ignorance and lack of manners and outright rudeness that I saw everywhere in the south.
I'm dead serious about that.
I lived in Decatur, Alpharetta, Jasper and Adairsville while I lived in Georgia. That's a fairly good representation of poor, rich, mountainous/rural, flat/rural, urban, etc.
Everywhere I lived the people were far an away more unpleasant than the people I see daily up here and have for the past 5 years.
There is an infinite difference.
Since moving up here, I have traveled extensively between Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, MA and CT.
I lived in Ohio for a while, east of Cleveland in Painesville...
Yet I've never met the same attitude or level of ignorance I saw in the south.
This is not subjective. The fact is, if you're not exactly what you're expected to be in the south, then you're not wanted.
There is infinitely more racism down there...and even tho I am white, just its presence is enough to ruin the area.
And...if the people like you, the only thing you get in return is to hear stories about domestic abuse, complaints about money, etc.
BTW, of all the areas I lived, Adairsville, where the football team put a big D on their jersey's for "'dairsville"...that was rock bottom.
I saw more public domestic abuse there than anywhere else in the south.
Nearly weekly I saw guys screaming at their wives in parking lots. We actually called the cops in one specific instance.
Jasper was pretty bad, as well.
Alpharetta was probably the best, then again both Decatur and Alpharetta had more transplants from the north than natives.
Except that during 9th grade, my highschool(Milton High School) had to be shut down for near a week because of conflicts between students that were in the KKK and black students.
Keep in mind that that school was in one of the richest, most advanced sections of the south, northern Fulton County.
Since moving up here, I have not once, not a single freaking time, seen an instance of public domestic abuse. Once or twice I've seen people scream too loudly at their children...but not to the degree I did down there.
Down there it was common to see some overweight mother driving an absolutely worthless old SUV, with doors that barely shut, sometimes duct taped closed, dragging around 5 children barely dressed...and screaming her head off at them for no real discernable reason.
And in this image, I'm not judging her, I'm highlighting the hopelessness down there, where those people have no ambition. It's the collection of individuals brought together that make the place the cess pool it is.
My mother volunteered in Augusta at a women's refuge, ie where beaten women go. She actually transferred there after she got out of law school in Boston...and she's told me that she never saw the level of problems in Boston that she would see almost daily in Georgia. "
You should never Generalize. You might have lived in a bad area or focused more on the negatives of the south while you live there. You also moved to two of the best states in the Union, Ohio and Pennsylvania, let me tell you the entire North isn't all that pleasant and the entire South isn't all that pleasant ever part of the nation has their bad areas. Your politics might also have affected your view of the South since many liberal Democrats like yourself see the South in a very bad light so what they thought about the South might have influenced you views, I know my Conservative views have shaped my views of New York whenever I go there I feel as if I'm in enemy territory. But you have to really try to get beyond politics and actually see what is really there.
