Racially-fueled anti-Obama demonstrations broke out at various colleges and universities in the American South on election night, after the president's reelection was called. Counter-demonstrations by other students, urging tolerance and an end to racism, followed.

  • erikistired

    dear other southerners, please stop displaying your ignorance in public, it really makes the majority of us down here who don’t hate everyone look bad. hate exists everywhere, but we seem to get singled out a lot and you aren’t helping. if you refuse to stop being ridiculous, at least do it in private so that the rest of us can stop being labeled as racists. thanks.

    • petertrepan

      Thank you. Every four years, I get an incredible urge to leave the South by any means necessary. I’ve constructed a little tolerant bubble of friends and coworkers, so it’s always shocking when people openly weep about the reelection of a black president or put Roy Moore back in office by popular vote. I’m sad to say almost all Southern political issues really do boil down to bigotry. I’m not sure what I can do about it besides move.

      • http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

        Also a resident of the South I feel the same way, and see it all too frequently. But both of you remind me of something very important: we’re not all like that. And I don’t feel I should be compelled to move because of the people who are bigots and who are opposed to science because they feel it has a “liberal bias”.

        Sometimes when I criticize the politics of the area where I live people ask, “Why don’t you move?” As I’ve often said, though, I don’t because this is my home. I’m aware that the roof leaks, everything needs to be repainted, and the foundation is cracked. And even though it may be beyond the power even of all of us who are aware of these problems that doesn’t change the fact that there are also many things about my home that I love.

        • petertrepan

          Thanks, I needed that. :) I’m also strongly motivated to stay by the fact that moving a thousand miles would be a holy pain in the ass.

          • Quiche de Resistance

            The American South:  come for the food, flee from the racism.

          • wrecksdart

             Boiled peanuts, baby!

          • http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker

            Check. And check. 

          • erikistired

            eh. it’s not nearly as bad as the press makes it out to be, but it’s here. of course, it’s also in every state in the country in some form or another, but because of our past we tend to get the brunt of the news coverage. i don’t live in mississippi tho, so it could be worse there than in georgia.

            i really couldn’t live without boiled peanuts tho.

          • Antinous / Moderator

            Now I’m going to hear the rest of the comments in Slow Paula Deen voice.

  • Chuck

    Glad to see the counter-demonstration.  I know I said some not-so-nice things offline about Ole Miss after the first protests.  Probably shouldn’t have generalized.

    • EH

      Eh, it’s as predictable as sports championship riots.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      And the number of students at the racist riot who were pepper-sprayed and arrested is……?

      Bueller?

      Bueller?

      Don’t be silly.  They was just funnin.

      • C W

        Hate gets the good ol’ boys response, love/peace/justice gets the club.

  • giantasterisk

    The GOP can deny all they want that they are not the party of racism and bigotry, but their ugly past is quite clearly not in the past. IMHO, they insist they are a “big tent” and not the party of white people because they truly believe the lie themselves.

    • EH

      Because Lincoln.

  • Steve Collins

    Blar, really? We’re still doing this? Glad to see the counter-protesters outnumbered the bigots. 

    • petertrepan

      I’m glad to say they’re far outnumbered at Klan rallies as well.

      (Oh, but sorry to say that we still have the occasional Klan rally.)

      • erikistired

         when i moved out to college they were listed in the phone book. i grew up in georgia and that still shocked me. i always figured they were more of an underground organization.

  • Wild Rumpus

    I would not be surprised to see the “United” States dissolve in my lifetime. Either you’re Repub or Democrat, black or white, north or south, Christian or atheist. This idea that you are either for us or against us is tearing the country apart.

    “The south will rise again”, indeed… (btw – is that phrase inherently racist? Treasonous maybe, but racist?)

    • ChicagoD

      The U.S. won’t dissolve. There aren’t enough Southerners in the South to leave the U.S. Everyone in the suburbs of the major Southern cities is from the North.

    • http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

      I will be the first to say I could be wrong, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that whether “The south will rise again” is inherently racist depends on who’s saying it.

      There are some Southerners who feel that the region or their home state should have greater autonomy. They may simply be ignorant of the racist implications of the Confederate flags they proudly wave, or they may not care because they’re really not interested in bringing back segregation or slavery. (To clarify, I’m not defending the practice, but I think I understand the mindset of some people who do it.) These are people who think of the Civil War not as a war over slavery, but merely over states’ rights. They believe they’ve been denied privileges and freedoms by “Washington”, although they often have a hard time citing specifics. These are people who see even the mildest attempts to curb their behavior–HOV lanes, for instance–as government tyranny.

      And, let’s face it, there are still plenty who would be happy to go back to the “simpler times” when segregation or even slavery was the law of the land. They don’t necessarily all don white hoods, but they have pointed little minds.

      And just in case it’s not clear I’m not in either camp.

    • C W

      “btw – is that phrase inherently racist?”

      The way it’s used today? Exclusively.

  • Navin_Johnson

    The South depends on Federal largesse more than the rest of the country anyway.  As soon as they have that taken away and have to put as much of their taxes toward revenue as we do…..well you can imagine..

    • OldBrownSquirrel

      I’ve seen the maps.  In fairness, I wonder how much of that Federal largesse is really going to retired Northerners in the Sun Belt collecting Social Security and receiving Medicare benefits.  In short, I wonder how much of that actually goes directly to people who identify as Southerners.

      • http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

        I suspect quite a bit of it is also in the form of assistance to farmers. I drive around here, though, and can tell you one thing with certainty: it sure as hell ain’t goin’ to road maintenance!

      • Navin_Johnson

        Nah, welfare, AG subsidies, and think of all the military for starters.

        I should clarify that it isn’t just The South, but Red States in general.

      • SamSam

        Oh please. What percentage of the Southern population is made up of “retired Northerners?” You can’t just make up hypothetical questions and put them out there as if they had some weight behind them.

        Here, let’s try it. Mississippi gets more than twice from the Federal Government what it gives in taxes. Meanwhile, Mississippi is near the very bottom of the states with immigration from other states, with a total of just 2.3% of it’s population moving in from outside the state last year. These are certainly not all retirees, but even if they were, does this mean that these 2.3% are responsible for consuming the entire output of the state?

        Poverty, subsidies for agriculture and in-state retirees are guaranteed to each get more benefits from the Federal government than them damn Yankees coming down and retiring.

        • IronEdithKidd

          This.  I was going to comment similarly regarding Alabama, but you got here first.  Well said.

  • Navin_Johnson

     And music.  But yeah… that extremism is a deal breaker.

  • Eark_the_Bunny

    Racism is everywhere, although more so in the southern US but you will find everywhere is this world.  It is the irrational hatred of something different.  Maybe at one time in the long past it was a survival trait, “They are a different tribe, clan, etc., they will rape our women and take our stuff”. Now it is just plain idiotic and has become a non-survival trait which needs to disappear.   Times do change but very slowly and I do not have answer to this problem.  Do you???

    • petertrepan

      Over the next several generations, all the people of the world should get together and boink themselves beige.

      • http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

        “Keep mixing the races until we’re all the same grayish color — then there’ll be no more racism, once we’re all the same shade, man. ‘Hey, gray!’ ‘Who you callin’ gray, gray?’ And then we’ll actually be able to hate someone for the person that they are.”
        -Tom Rhodes

      • Antinous / Moderator

        That theory has been deprecated.  A very white person and a very black person won’t necessarily produce a bunch of medium brown children.

        • petertrepan

          That’s interesting! I suppose I should have asked myself why, if that sort of thing is possible, it hasn’t happened already. Just as well. It would be a fake fix for racism at the cost of all that variety.

      • Lupus_Yonderboy

        I know that I’ve been trying to do my part.

  • http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy

    Oh deep south, is there any hope when these are your college and university students? FFS, they can’t find some injustice to protest? 

    Shouldn’t they be railing against… shit they have it so good. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/eric.neuman Eric Neuman

    I can’t find video or textual evidence of what was actually said. Has anyone seen what was actually racist about the riot?

  • EH

    Finally, this can be the thread where we determine whether or not racism still exists in the South.

    • petertrepan

      Are you kidding? One of our most popular regional restaurants has racial slurs right in the name:  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/2f/Cracker_Barrel_Old_Country_Store_logo.svg/220px-Cracker_Barrel_Old_Country_Store_logo.svg.png

      • Felton / Moderator
        • petertrepan

          Indeed. And we also have Chik-fil-A, of course.

          I thought Cracker Barrel was especially stupid for discriminating against black people, given that everything on their menu is essentially soul food.

        • Antinous / Moderator

          More to the point, who the fuck would keep their crackers in a barrel? They would just be a mass of crumbs.

          • Felton / Moderator

            Good point.  Also, assuming the barrel is completely full of crackers, they’d go stale months before you could finish them, especially in the Southern humidity.

  • travtastic

    Is it at all possible that we’ve finally hit Peak Bigot?

    • Thorzdad

       Unfortunately, bigotry is a seemingly unlimited renewable resource.

  • petertrepan

    I can totally understand it. He’s not just black, but the first black president, and living testimony that black people are first class citizens. I’d feel the same way about an openly atheist president. The first time, at least.

  • Navin_Johnson

    I never put much thought into it, but that experience sealed the notion that there are people that vote for him just because he is black(ish). Not just black people, mind you, but people that would think they are being racist by NOT voting for him.

    Yeah, Obama got elected twice because a slight majority of Americans are afraid of not voting for a black man. Not because John McCain and Romney were such crap candidates, or because Bush took the country to the brink of collapse, and because The GOP’s constantly telling everyone who’s not an angry white protestant man that they’re lazy scum, and not part of the this f’in country, and that they need to get the hell back in their place under their bootheel where they belong….

  • BrotherPower

    Was she also yelling “I ONLY VOTED FOR HIM BECAUSE HE IS ALSO BLACK — LIKE ME!!” and you just forgot to say that part? Because otherwise, your story says more about your attitude than hers.

  • Quiche de Resistance

    Many will vote for a person they identify with more than for any other factor.

    This aint exactly rational voting compared to weighing the issues and voting accordingly, but it is common.  This is why the candidate will make some transparent comment about the local favorite sports team or the corn festival or whatever the fuck just to appeal to this sentiment.

    The whole idiotic “who would you rather sit down and have a beer with?” notion.  (A lot of people felt that way about Bush 43, at least til thy found out he was sober.)

    Not to jump down your throat, but I think it’s not fair to say black people voted for the black dude.  Like anyone else, I’m sure many black people voted for Obama because he had a similar life journey and values; understood them more.

    I will call you out for seeing one black person shout Obama and “sealing the notion” that black people might vote by race.  And “black(ish)”???  What the fuck?

  • wysinwyg

     Think about how many white people voted for Romney because Obama is black.  Much, much sadder.

  • bcsizemo

    As a white male who worked in a company where more than 50% of the workers were black I’d say you are pretty much right.  At least around where I live.  I’m sure a great many of them voted for him because of their views, but I certainly did know a few that voted for Obama (in 08 at least) because he was black.

  • OldBrownSquirrel

     Palin and Ryan were scarier than McCain and Romney, respectively.  They probably cost their party votes.  The GOP needs to learn that you can’t effectively shake the Etch-a-Sketch after the primaries by picking an extremist as a VP candidate.

  • bcsizemo

    I guess no one remembers Herman Cain then…

  • Quiche de Resistance

    Then there are the really confused people, who voted for Romney because he’s black.

  • relawson

    Yeah :(

  • petertrepan

    First I heard that Obama was Muslim — from a violent and frightening culture with reason to hate us — and would help “his people” at our expense if elected.

    Then I found out he had a “radical black supremacist” United Church of Christ preacher. I heard these two things from the same people in quick succession. You can’t be Muslim and United Church of Christ at the same time, but those people didn’t seem to care.

    I can’t tell you what made Herman Cain acceptable to the right wing, but I can definitely tell you what those rumors were all about.

  • wysinwyg

     So what you’re trying to say is that because Herman Cain ran a completely failed campaign and had very little support from the Republican party we should conclude that no Republicans are racist?

    Seriously, I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make.

  • http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy
  • Navin_Johnson

    And why in God’s name would blacks at large vote for a racist party that constantly demonizes them as lazy takers that need to be cut off from government aid?  If there was no difference in how minorities are treated by the parties you might have more of a point.

    If Obama was gay, and most gays voted for Obama would you say it was because they hate straight people, or probably because the other party persecutes them?

  • SamSam

    Why don’t you check to see how many of your black co-workers voted for W Bush, or other Republicans. Do you think there may be any correlation with the fact that they generally vote *Democrat* because of the contempt the other party has shown for them?

    Obama being black may have helped get out the vote. It didn’t make anyone vote for him who wouldn’t have voted for him anyway.

  • C W

    “As a white male who worked in a company where more than 50% of the workers were black”

    Gosh, you must really know exactly what they’re thinking.

  • Navin_Johnson

    This next part is awesome. He again asks the “isn’t it enough to have Condoleeza Rice” question, and here even supplies an answer – it should be enough, because, get this: she’s not just black and a woman, she’s WELL-SPOKEN! He actually plays the “well-spoken” card:

    Okay, if that’s what we have to do, pretend we’re doing it. Pretend that in the next couple of weeks, couple of months, the Republican Party announces that it is for contraception being given out by the state, and in fact the Catholic Church must give contraception away and make abortion available. Are we going to get the votes Obama got last night. We’re not? Really, we’re not?

    We won’t. But we’re not getting the votes that Obama got last night because we have Condoleeza Rice– and she is a pinnacle of achievement, and intelligent, and well-spoken . . . You can’t find a more accomplished person. Marco Rubio. And really, speaking in street lingo, we’re not getting credit for it. Now is it that Republicans are looking for credit? And it’s not perceived as genuine? Are these people perceived as tokens?

    The fish is swimming with the line way out to sea at this point . . . Just let him run, he’s tiring himself out:

    And the white Republican establishment is putting these people out front, but they really don’t believe that Marco Rubio is that good of a deal. Window dressing! If that’s the perception of Obama voters, than how do we change that?

    Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/hey-rush-limbaugh-starting-an-abortion-industry-wont-win-you-female-voters-20121108#ixzz2BkVJRY6O

  • petertrepan

    Amen to that.

    My state just re-elected Roy Moore – the Ten Commandments judge – who ran on the message that the problem with America is that it accommodates nonbelievers. He’s Republican, of course.

    I think the question of whether government’s role should be large or small is a legitimate one, and the question of whether the federal or state government should have more authority is a legitimate one, but regardless of my views on that matter, I will never, ever, ever vote Republican because they have made hating me a significant part of their platform.

  • bcsizemo

    Actually I might be inclined to pick the third option – they voted for a gay president because he was gay.  Which, in my mind, was the direction of most of these early comments were heading.

    I don’t really know why a person would vote for the people telling them they suck.  But as a voter I have a tendency to actually look at what the candidates are proposing to do and base my decisions off that.  Most people I know (black, white, latino, ect.) have a few key points they know and fall back on gut feelings.

    From what I’ve seen and understand about the black community being part of the cohesive mass is very very important.  Even if a black person voted Republican I highly doubt they’d go around telling all their black friends.

    But frankly what do I know about the black community…not a whole hell of a lot.  And unless there are some commenters in here that are black I’m guessing a lot of other people don’t know that much either.

  • Quiche de Resistance

    Even worse, the confused racists who didn’t vote for Romney because he’s black.

  • Navin_Johnson

    Seriously, it’s such a ridiculous argument.  Blacks have voted in the majority for Democrats since the 40′s. Republican support declined steadily since FDR and for good reason.  LBJ putting through The Civil Rights Act, and The Voting Rights Act and the switch of allegiance of racist Southern Democrats over to the GOP was the final nail in the coffin.  As it should have been.

  • Antinous / Moderator

    Black people mostly voted for Obama for the same reason that women and LGBT people mostly voted for Obama, not because he’s the same gender or sexual orientation as us, but because he seems substantially more interested in assuring our human rights.