Horrible attitude from the letter writer

[Hanna]

While this kind of prejudice is alive and well (and can even be found on eHell)

Yep - I encountered it here and was shocked!  It was a long while ago, but I have not been able to forget it.

I think this story is a hoax though.

[Dindrane]

Northerners call southerners uneducated hicks and rednecks, and southerners call northerners unrefined boors who wouldn't know good manners if they smacked them in the face.

Hmm.

While this kind of prejudice is alive and well (and can even be found on eHell), I hope you didn't mean for our new poster to think this applies to all Northerners or all Southerners.  Without qualifiers ("some," "an unfortunate few," "too many") it reads that way to me.

Sorry, you're right.  I didn't mean for that to be a blanket statement (and serves me right for posting in a hurry!).  It's definitely not a widespread attitude at all.  But generally, when a southerner is going to be narrow-minded and judgmental towards northerners, those are the terms they use (and vice versa).

I say this as someone who was born and raised in the south.  I have never espoused that particular attitude towards people from the northeast (or anywhere, really), but it does annoy the pants off me when someone assumes I must be an uneducated and/or narrow-minded bigot because of where I grew up.

[Nuala]

Thanks for the clarification, Dindrane.

I am always shocked when I see that kind of bigotry.  I had hoped it would die out with the last century, but we still have a way to go.

[WesternWhiteWolf]

I'm from Washington State, and I just don't understand this kind of behavior. The American Civil War ended in 1865. The war has been over for nearly 150 years. Let it go, people! You won't accomplish anything by 'rising up again' or snubbing anybody. Well, aside from looking silly for holding to some long-obsolete grudge. We're all Americans!!!!

Well, I could imagine someone telling me that I'm from the West, and that I wouldn't understand. It's just so...weird. I remember my AP U.S. History teacher telling us when he took a trip to one of the Carolinas (I forget which one), he had to make sure to tell local people he was from Seattle. He said that if you tell them you're from Washington they'll think you mean Washington D.C., and treat you poorly. People from Washington State 'aren't involved'.

Argh...it just drives me crazy to think people judge others based on where they live!

[Twik]

I'm from Washington State, and I just don't understand this kind of behavior. The American Civil War ended in 1865. The war has been over for nearly 150 years. Let it go, people! You won't accomplish anything by 'rising up again' or snubbing anybody. Well, aside from looking silly for holding to some long-obsolete grudge. We're all Americans!!!!

My mother, product of two plus centureies away from Scotland, still used to warn us about not trusting a certain family. There was that little incident back in '92, you see.

That's 1692. Not forgotten.

[Alida]

I'll never forget, as a kid, being yelled at down South because I was from New Jersey.

Thankfully, I've only run into that attitude once since then over the last 30 odd years since then.

[WesternWhiteWolf]

I'm from Washington State, and I just don't understand this kind of behavior. The American Civil War ended in 1865. The war has been over for nearly 150 years. Let it go, people! You won't accomplish anything by 'rising up again' or snubbing anybody. Well, aside from looking silly for holding to some long-obsolete grudge. We're all Americans!!!!

My mother, product of two plus centureies away from Scotland, still used to warn us about not trusting a certain family. There was that little incident back in '92, you see.

That's 1692. Not forgotten.

But I don't understand. Why?

[Clara Bow]

Because people are crazy?

I think that we get a little flown on what we've "always heard".

[Corbin]

I'm from Washington State, and I just don't understand this kind of behavior. The American Civil War ended in 1865. The war has been over for nearly 150 years. Let it go, people! You won't accomplish anything by 'rising up again' or snubbing anybody. Well, aside from looking silly for holding to some long-obsolete grudge. We're all Americans!!!!

My mother, product of two plus centureies away from Scotland, still used to warn us about not trusting a certain family. There was that little incident back in '92, you see.

That's 1692. Not forgotten.

My grandfather was the same way. Probably about the same incident.

[Twik]

I'm from Washington State, and I just don't understand this kind of behavior. The American Civil War ended in 1865. The war has been over for nearly 150 years. Let it go, people! You won't accomplish anything by 'rising up again' or snubbing anybody. Well, aside from looking silly for holding to some long-obsolete grudge. We're all Americans!!!!

My mother, product of two plus centureies away from Scotland, still used to warn us about not trusting a certain family. There was that little incident back in '92, you see.

That's 1692. Not forgotten.

But I don't understand. Why?

I think the old concept of "blood feud" is something that runs very deep in humanity (yeah, there's that "people are crazy" thing). Particularly in rural areas, where clashing families repeat the stories over and over about "how *they* did (something awful)". In cities, and our more mobile times, these stories get drowned out by day-to-day life, and the smaller offenses and indignities we suffer daily. But where people still see themselves in "clans" (not just the Scottish types, but broad, interconnected family lines that pass through the ages), an offense against one of your own is an offense against you - even if it happened generations ago.

And remember, until recently, terms like "breeding" actually represented a strong belief in the heritability of both virtue and vice. If your clan got accused of, um, failing in your duties as hosts, people assumed that meant the whole pack of you were capable of the same offense.

[Pat]

While I don't think any Scot would qualify the massacre of Glencoe as a "little incident", and while, as a German, I believe and have to believe that we must never forget the past, I also think that we can learn from it and that today's generations can not be held responsible for what happened long ago.
When my German father married my French mother in 1962, the war had not even been over for 20 years. It was a great shock to both families. I did get the odd remark as a child during my holidays in France ("you killed the Jews!"), a swastika was drawn into the dust on my German car while on a uni exchange to England in the 1980s, but today, the friendship between France and Germany is such that there are many, many French-German couples and the "hereditary enemy" is not that anymore. I have now lived in France for 25 years and have not experienced any nationalist comments during that time.
If people in our educated, well-informed society can't overcome a war that took place 150 years back, then the only thing I feel for their stupidity is pity....

[Nurvingiel]

Hoax or not, why do crappy letters like this one get published on the website anyway?

Is it because rude letter writers have something to teach us as much as polite letter writers who experienced rudeness?

[afbluebelle]

Yeah, pretty much.

[SamInTheShadows]

Koneko, wasn't it you who said that where you are calling someone a Yankee was like using the N word?

There are areas like that?!? I have called all Americans I've ever met (socially and after becoming at the least closely acquainted) Yankees, in a joking manner. To me (and I think a to a lot of Europeans), Yankees = Americans.

I certainly never intended to insult anyone (and as far as I know, it was never taken as such; some called me German in return, which is a lighthearted barb to a Dutch person (well, to this one, anyway ))

[Twik]

Koneko, wasn't it you who said that where you are calling someone a Yankee was like using the N word?

There are areas like that?!? I have called all Americans I've ever met (socially and after becoming at the least closely acquainted) Yankees, in a joking manner. To me (and I think a to a lot of Europeans), Yankees = Americans.

I certainly never intended to insult anyone (and as far as I know, it was never taken as such; some called me German in return, which is a lighthearted barb to a Dutch person (well, to this one, anyway ))

It was a long time ago (pre-WII), but my father often told the story about being teen trying to impress the young woman from the US who came to visit the neighbours one summer. All went well, until he referred to her as a "Yankee" - it was the first time he learned that not all Americans consider it acceptable nomenclature.

That romance went down in flames fast...