Reply #47: As someone who grew up familiar with "goddamned Virginia" [View All]

[Leopolds Ghost]

(As we in Maryland liked to call it when I was growing up) I nevertheless think your attitude toward Virginians is needlessly condescending.

I assume you are one of the thousands of people, who, if they became a political intern in DC, would thumb their noses at Maryland for being a "southern state" (it is not, and we have nothing in common with Virginia, even in the rural areas.)

If you want to criticize Virginia, criticise:

* The fact that Virginia's notion of "property rights" is even more screwed up than elsewhere in the country...

* The fact that Arlington, a Democratic hotbed, was until recently a fiefdom of the military and is now yuppieville and trying to force all their military jobs out to the exurbs of Virginia, producting sprawl. They won't acknowledge their history of being a military fiefdom, however...

* The fact that Arlington and Alexandris have (and will continue to have) roads named after Jefferson Davis and other prominent Confederates that run through minority areas (and past the Lincoln Memorial), not because they are racists (the roads received their names in the mid-20th century), but because they are extremely affluent and indifferent to the concens of people who might be offended, just like the Democrats in Maryland who voted against Kweisi Mfume because of his name. People of color tend to avoid "affluent, liberal, urban" Northern Virginia like the plague, just like they avoid small, insular (and racist) townships throughout the Northeastern US. That's why I don't see much difference between overt Southern racism and systemic Northern racism.

* You can't criticize the fact that the southern parts of the state are where most of the Democrats in Virginia live. Northern Virginia merely puts them over the top. All the racist republicans tend to live in the suburbs, and the Shenandoah valley. Compare that to northern states where rural counties always vote Republican.

ON EDIT: I don't seem to recall the Stars and Bars on Virginia's flag. Got a cite for that?