Let's all self-identify as Mormons

[_Res Ipsa]

Thanks for continuing, Dean Robbers. I've been ruminating and trying to see what sense, if any, I can make of it all.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

What demonstrations can you make that proves this false?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/go ... dren-live/

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/hunger.html

http://usich.gov/usich_resources/maps/o ... ness_rates

Got to page 15:

http://www.endhomelessness.org/page/-/f ... online.pdf

The point is there are chronically homeless people in the South. Children. Families. Vets. Mentally ill. They run the whole spectrum.

Anecdotally, just walking around Richmond, Charlotte, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Chattanooga, various places in Florida, Montgomery, New Orleans, so on and so forth you'll see a ton of vagrants. Homelessness/vagrancy in the South is just as strong and problematic as it is in other parts of the country. The idea that people are taken in by some romanticized good Southern Samaritans just isn't accurate. Maybe here and there in some small towns, but that can be said of any small town in the US.

Anyway. Not trying to be combative. I just don't get the rosy picture of the South being presented.

- Doc

[_Jersey Girl]

Anecdotally, just walking around Richmond, Charlotte, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Chattanooga, various places in Florida, Montgomery, New Orleans, so on and so forth you'll see a ton of vagrants. Homelessness/vagrancy in the South is just as strong and problematic as it is in other parts of the country.

There's the problem right there. You're talking about urban areas. Quasi said he lived in a small town outside of Nashville.

[_Quasimodo]

What demonstrations can you make that proves this false?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/go ... dren-live/

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/hunger.html

http://usich.gov/usich_resources/maps/o ... ness_rates

Got to page 15:

http://www.endhomelessness.org/page/-/f ... online.pdf

The point is there are chronically homeless people in the South. Children. Families. Vets. Mentally ill. They run the whole spectrum.

Anecdotally, just walking around Richmond, Charlotte, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Chattanooga, various places in Florida, Montgomery, New Orleans, so on and so forth you'll see a ton of vagrants. Homelessness/vagrancy in the South is just as strong and problematic as it is in other parts of the country. The idea that people are taken in by some romanticized good Southern Samaritans just isn't accurate. Maybe here and there in some small towns, but that can be said of any small town in the US.

Anyway. Not trying to be combative. I just don't get the rosy picture of the South being presented.

- Doc

Jersey is quite right. I was talking about the place I knew and the people that lived there. They took care of each other.

I'm aware that there are homeless people in big cities all over the country, but the South I new was the way I described it.

[_sock puppet]

Ultimately the argument over identity is next to pointless unless there are serious stakes. When it comes to being Mormon or not, the stakes are nowhere near as serious or contested as they are in the case of Black or Native American identity. Religion and race are not exactly the same thing--sure the identity issues can overlap: look at the exoticization of Mormon identity in 19th and early 20th century newspaper art. But these days, saying I am Mormon is tantamount to admitting that you are a nice, if sometimes annoying, person with retrograde social views and funny beliefs.

So you are saying that because whether one identifies as Mormon involves pretty low stakes (as compared to say claiming to be Black or Native American), so self-identifying as Mormon is 'next to pointless'?

[_Jersey Girl]

Jersey is quite right. I was talking about the place I knew and the people that lived there. They took care of each other.

I'm aware that there are homeless people in big cities all over the country, but the South I new was the way I described it.

I lived in the South twice. The first time was Montgomery right off the southern bypass. I am more than sure that there are homeless folks in the downtown area now. The second area we lived in was further north. We lived in two different small towns there and I agree that the local folks were very nice.

Except at work where I guess they thought I was an outsider (re:Yankee) who took a job that a local resident should have had. I can't help it if I was qualified! :-D Same thing happened in the next job I got in another state, so while I can't say that was limited to the South, no one ever called me a Yankee much less a Damn Yankee anywhere else in the world.

[_Quasimodo]

Jersey is quite right. I was talking about the place I knew and the people that lived there. They took care of each other.

I'm aware that there are homeless people in big cities all over the country, but the South I new was the way I described it.

I lived in the South twice. The first time was Montgomery right off the southern bypass. I am more than sure that there are homeless folks in the downtown area now. The second area we lived in was further north. We lived in two different small towns there and I agree that the local folks were very nice.

Except at work where I guess they thought I was an outsider (re:Yankee) who took a job that a local resident should have had. I can't help it if I was qualified! :-D Same thing happened in the next job I got in another state, so while I can't say that was limited to the South, no one ever called me a Yankee much less a Damn Yankee anywhere else in the world.

Maybe I was spared because I didn't have a North East accent. One thing I did notice is that the Civil War wasn't quite over down there. The town I lived in was occupied by Union troops for some time during and after the war. It was at the junction of several major rail lines.

People were forced out of their homes to billet the troops. Livestock was confiscated to feed them. Horses were confiscated to mount them.

There were still some bad feelings when I was there.

[_sock puppet]

Maybe I was spared because I didn't have a North East accent. One thing I did notice is that the Civil War wasn't quite over down there. The town I lived in was occupied by Union troops for some time during and after the war. It was at the junction of several major rail lines.

People were forced out of their homes to billet the troops. Livestock was confiscated to feed them. Horses were confiscated to mount them.

There were still some bad feelings when I was there.

When I was there too. There, it was not the "Civil War" but the "War between the States", which has a very significant difference. The Civil War connotes that the federal government was supreme and more primary in importance, whereas War between the States recognizes more sovereignty at the state level than at the national.

I find it ironic that the Union troops so ignored the 4th Amendment with the forcing Southerners from their homes to billet the troops. The Union troops were fighting to establish the supremacy of the national government, which hinged on the compact of the States (on the U.S. Constitution) for the legitimacy and form of that national government in the first place.

[_palerobber]

I lived in the South for a good while [...]

Doc, given your experience, would you say that you have authority to speak to what it means to be a Southerner, though you don't self-identify as a Southerner?

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I lived in the South for a good while [...]

Doc, given your experience, would you say that you have authority to speak to what it means to be a Southerner, though you don't self-identify as a Southerner?

Ha!

Funny you say that. I made great friends with a man in Huntsville, AL who came from old money. He grew up under the Jim Crow laws era, and man oh man life in the Old South was very, very different than it is now. I'll just leave it at that because it makes Mormon racism look like Happy Unicorn Dreamland by comparison.

But of course as an out-grouper I didn't understand anything, and I was unable to make a moral assessment. In fact at one point I couldn't understand his words because... You know... Emic vs. Etic.

- Doc