North vs. South

As I've been reading various books having to do with the historical and current racial divides in the United States, I've come across a strange fact. Here in the North, we tend to look down on the South for it's involvement in the kidnapping, torture, murder, and enslavement of Africans. It is always right to acknowledge the evil committed by any group of people. However, we tend to get self-righteous and claim that just because slavery was more prevalent in the South, that Northerners' views of black people have always been higher and less racist than those in the South. The truth is, Northerners have been and are just as racist as Southerners, it is just that many times it may be expressed differently, more "sneakily"; behind closed doors or in our jokes among friends (and at other times it's expressed just as blatantly as anywhere else). We like to pretend that we are removed, that we aren't as culpable for our views because we aren't all members of famous hate groups. But in reality, as we have seen throughout history, geography and laws don't change a human's sinful heart. Even if we don't don white masks and haven't played part in violent acts of hatred, doesn't mean that we don't carry the same ugly sin inside of us. And when we stand before the only perfect Man to ever live, to be judged for all of the things we insisted on ignoring in our darkened hearts, He won't be telling us that just because we lived in the North, our sins are lower on the list of reasons that He was nailed to the Cross.

 I know that this topic is much more complicated than I'm getting into right now, but I only wanted to introduce it, not fully analyze it (at least not yet).  I'm sure there are many more examples, but I came across three books where various persons were either more mistreated in places in the North than they were in the South in the present day or just as mistreated in the North as they were in the South while slavery was still legal. These books are Mark Mathabane's Kaffir Boy In America: An Encounter With Apartheid, Grace Halsell's Soul Sister, and the Biography of Peter and Vina Still written by Kate E. R. Pickard.

Here is an excerpt from Soul Sister (If you have never heard of or read this book, I would definitely recommend it. I would also recommend it's predecessor, Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin). In this excerpt, Rudy Shields, a black Civil Rights worker in Mississippi, is explaining some of what I was saying above:

"'I'll say this, being in Mississippi the last few years, I believe that Mississippi will solve this racial problem quicker than most of your Northern states. By '76 black people will be in control of the whole state of Mississippi. And I think we're going to solve the race problem. And this racist down here, in spite of the fact that he'll blow your brains out, in his mind he's a good Christian. And black people and white people live close together and there's more communication between the two races of people in Mississippi than what it'd be in Chicago, or any big city like that, where the blacks and whites are completely separate.

'Here, white and black live together. Well, a block from where I live I have a white neighbor. Of course, you wouldn't never know, I never see her, but that's just how close we live down here together. And as far as the white man goes, as long as you stay "in your place" he'll do you a favor.

'I found this, for instance in Chicago, I was very involved in civil rights and the place where I was employed many of the white people that worked there would ask me, 'Why do the Negroes demonstrate?' And I'd tell them about some of the conditions, not only in Mississippi but right there in Chicago, practically on their doorsteps, and you know, they wouldn't believe me! I remember once I took them into some of the rat-infested buildings and showed them how black people lived, and they all said, 'If I were black, if I had to live under these circumstances, I'd be demonstrating, too.' But in Chicago I saw there was just no communication between black and white.'"

- Grace Halsell

from: http://www.amazon.com/Soul-Sister-Anniversary-Grace-Halsell/dp/0967401305/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1383008172&sr=1-3&keywords=s