General Discussion

The article is way too simplistic in its thinking. There are many factors, including geography, culture, size of municipalities, and history to name a few, that play a part in how prevalent such attitudes are among various groups of people.

It's not a matter of whether or not racism exists and less well off white people screw themselves because of it. That exists everywhere. It's a matter of how many in various places exhibit those attitudes. Is it ingrained and cultural? In some places it is. In much of the south it's the default attitude, thus the majority in various regions.

I've been told that racism exists in New England. Yeah, it does. But these people have no idea what blatant, ingrained, default racism looks like. People seem to expect my chosen region to be some panacea in that regard (the author teaches at Boston U.) It's not. But compared to the most innately racist place I've ever lived in my entire life, South Carolina, there's no comparison. More of that in the Midwest. But still, no comparison to what I saw growing up and in our stops in the Southeast.

We'd been in South Carolina about 2 months and I was puttering in the garage with the garage door open. Next door neighbor came by and we chatted for a few minutes. Then, out of the blue, he said the most racist thing I'd ever heard in my life. Quite a feat given I grew up in Tennessee. It must have been the expression on my face (I'm terrible at poker) because for the next 2.5 years living there, he never went there again.

Places are different. They have different feels and cultures. Broad brushing isn't useful in a country as large and diverse as ours. And the author does a disservice to think it's as simple as she makes out. It's not. Lazy thinking in my mind. And simplistic, lazy thinking isn't going to help us get out of this mess.