I smell a lawsuit coming on.

I would imagine alot of unsavory names were being yelled in a bar room brawl

I love the smiles in those mug shots! Oh neil young better write a song…who's my generation's neil young? Kanye West? jk jk but maybe…

This seems right in line with what the Louisiana that I knew. I was called a yankee kike by my own family. I don't speak with them anymore …

Cord,

You do know that Shreveport is several hundred miles north of New Orleans, right?

Best,
Cait

I can't believe this is surprising to people. Oh the south, the states that wanted to keep slaves… yeah, those were states we should have kept in our union.

Burton, let me take a wild stab in the dark here - you probably think the Civil War was about slavery. Am I warm?

Cord,

I'm not discounting that local, regional and national businesses/individuals were impacted by the aftermath of Katrina. It's obvious in our gas prices to this day.

But…that's a tenuous argument to make. That's like saying Pensacola and Miami are culturally alike and were unified after Andrew or Ivan. Shreveport is a very typical southern city, where New Orleans doesn't really define "typical" in any category.

I take your point, I just respectfully disagree with your logic.

-Cait

Cait-

Um, why yes I do. Do you believe I am incorrect in that belief?

I do indeed. Slavery was a rallying cry for the U.S., but not the reason for the war. Much as World War II was a natural byproduct of the armistice that "ended" World War I, the socioeconomic paradigms that led to the Civil War were in place long before the abolition debate.

Cait, you go girl. That's all I have since you broke it down pretty succinctly.

By the power of Greyskull…where's my high priest? ;)

While Shreveport and New Orleans are miles apart, the Katrina episode was a wakeup call for the whole nation. I think cultural and racial awareness hit a new high. Along with the Federal level, there was plenty of State level bungling as well. Blanco was a fuckup. Hopefully Jindal has his shit together.

Anyway, you would think that any police officers in the entire state of Louisiana would at least want to pretend that they give a shit about black people. Even if they most likely don't …

Jindal clearly doesn't have his act together, either (see: his ethics reforms). Same political corruption, different day…

I actually read that he believes in and has participated in the rite of exorcism. Wow …

…Much like "terrorism" was a rallying cry for the U.S. but not the reason for the war…

Scary how well that fits in, no?

Alice, absolutely - Jindal is pretty much your Mel Gibson-variety Catholic (which is a stark contrast to the libertine Catholics like myself who populate Louisiana). Basically, he doesn't acknowledge Vatican II…

…which makes him scary. Keebler could exorcise him with some Thin Mints and tequila, though…of that I'm confident.

Yeah, my father is of that same breed of catholic. He's a firey coonass, as they say. Born and raised in Baton Rouge. I only spent a little time with his family. I mentioned how kind they were at post 4.

I picked up on that. :)

Thin Mints and tequila. I'm just sayin'.

mmmmm, I'd like to turn that into some kind of martini.

I'm pretty sure it's already been turned into one, at the end of a long night, after the rest of the liquor/snack cabinet is exhausted.

But I don't remember for sure….

I'm imagining peppermint schnapps, godiva liqueur, tequila … and vomit.

That's the problem with tequila - it creates vomitorious (vomit + glorious) amnesia.

… or maybe creme de menthe and vomit ….

For that minty fresh morning after breath?

Creme de menthe, coffee, and vomit. The irish coffee that says, I drank too much tequila last night.

The South has historically been viewed as a racist society… While I will admit to being a proud Southerner (born, raised, and still living in Louisiana), I will also submit to this discussion a simple idea: Just because a segment of the region's population still uses these old, hateful phrases, that doesn't mean that the rest of us well-mannered and forward-thinking citizens want to be viewed this way!

To top it all off, my husband is a police officer here in Louisiana and would NEVER be so disrespectful to anyone as to utter the "N word" or any other racial epithet! Some of us, though we live in the South, do actually have respect for other PEOPLE.

This remains one side of a two-sided story. How were the two "actors" in question acting before the situation had to be resolved by the police?

Thanks Got Nickel–I was about to write the same thing. For real, I am really sick of "coasties" generalizing about the South as if it's some sort of homogeneous place. Not only is there a difference culturally between Hillfolk and Deltafolk (I'm the former), when you accuse the entire South of being ignorant white rednecks, you completely discount the persons of color that live there and have influenced the culture at large. Finally, after 5 years on the East Coast, I'm telling you that Boston is as racist as my hometown in Arkansas was… they just act they aren't from their de facto segregated homes.

PS There is no excuse for prejudice of any kind, ever… geographic, racial, economic, gender, physical, or sexual. End of story.

I think the issue a lot of people have with the south is the open nature and seeming accepting nature of racism. I went to two middle schools in Louisiana. One was in Denham Springs, the other in Mandeville. I regularly heard the word nigger from both staff and students. No one batted an eye. Me, being a "coastie" just about lost my mind over it. I was stunned.

It was very, very hard to deal with that kind of overt racism. However, I have heard some black people say that they prefer it, because at least they know where the stand. The racism up north is far more subtle and nuanced.

Cait-

But the socioeconomic problems you mention were directly fueled by slavery and the impact that was having on Southern economy. And the initial secession of the South was spurred by Lincoln's election, and his promises to end slavery. And even regardless of all of this, my initial point was that the South wanted to keep slaves, which in my opinion, transcends and defies reasoning and logic, and doesn't really hold up to any excuses, economic or otherwise.

Burton,

Again, I respectfully disagree with you. I'm in NO way defending slavery, but the Civil War was both about the dismantling of the Articles of Confederation and the industrialized/agragian economies. The agrarian economy would have functioned without slavery, but that's not why the CSA was created. If you really want to hold the south to the straw man you've created, then ask yourself: why didn't Lincoln sign the Emancipation Proclamation until midway through the war?

Ugh … ok. The civil war is over, the south shall not rise again. Let's move on.

Oh really, TMZ is the source? Well, its must be the straight facts. (I don't doubt Brolin would use the 'n' word but I thought it was funny that TMZ is the one coming out first with this info)

Haha Cait, I don't think you were ever defending slavery. You seem to know what you're talking about and I haven't taken an American history course in about 6 years, so I'll concede that you're probably more accurate than I am. I should also amend that it was not my intention to condemn all of the South in my initial posting; as a "Coastie" I have to stop myself from generalizing the racist rednecks along with the intelligent people peppered among them.

@ Alice- done and done.

On that we can definitely agree. :)

Done and done.

AUUUUUUUUUGH!!!! "socioeconomic paradigms that led to the Civil War were in place long before the abolition debate"…."The agrarian economy would have functioned without slavery"…."vomitorious (vomit + glorious) amnesia"

CAIT FOR PRESIDENT!!!
THOSE ARE SOME OF THE BEST USES OF FANCYPANTS WORDS - EVER!!

FORGET COMMIES! CAIT 2008!!!

my mother moved us out of shevport when i was 4 because she got called a "nigger lover" because she was friends with alot of black people. of course i don't remember much of it but she told me people would throw rocks at her and her black friends when they were in public together. alot of louisiana is cool but shervport seems to be a breeding ground for racism…or so i'm told.

Deimos, your mother seems like a great person.

Cait–

The war was about states rights, no argument. The Southern States were upset about what they saw as the repeated violations of their rights and the dismissal of their own states' constitutions in favor of the federal government's whims. However, it was the threat of losing slavery (even if Lincoln himself was not an ardent abolitionist prior to the Civil War) that drove them over the edge and begat war. Denying that is no better than anyone denying the role of states rights in the war's causation.

Also, you're kidding yourself if you think the south would have survived economically if slavery completely ended. The South was entirely agrarian and almost all of the work was performed by slaves. The only reason work was able to resume after the Civil War is because the now former slaves had nowhere to go (being torn from your home country and having your family sent to various plantations and work houses across the country is a bitch for family connections) and no money with which to travel–not to mention the very real racism that persisted after the war–so they remained where they were, sometimes in the same conditions and sometimes for very very little pay, rebuilding the agriculture.

So…us Northies will hold onto our beliefs about the war as long as Southerners keep clinging to the belief that slavery was completely irrelevant to the war.

But can we all agree that Eli Whitney was an ass? It was his cotton gin that prevented the eventual petering out of slavery by making cotton a more profitable crop. Whitney!!!!!!!!!! ::shakes fist::

Right, Chelsea, "work" continued after the Civil War. Only, enlightened coasties call it Reconstruction.

FAIL. By. Those. Well-Intentioned. Types. Which. Only. Perpetuated. More. Prejudice.

Then again, prejudice only exists in the south, right? There's no (aforementioned) anti-Semitism in New York? No racism in Boston? No MS-13 vs. Crips in LA?

Slavery was clearly not irrelevant to the war, but it was an afterthought. Slavery was how Lincoln justified the war…when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.

But then again, I'm just an ignorant southerner. What would someone as ill-informed as myself know about American history? (Uh, despite that American History degree I have…)

Cheers! ;)

Cait–

I didn't get completely into Reconstruction because it wasn't my initial point. My point is that slavery was NOT an afterthought by any means. Even if you think in some form that the states’-rights debate would have occurred without a geographically concentrated slave interest (which I don’t) it’s naive to think it would have come to war.

If I can quote Lincoln for a sec: "One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it."

Don't act all high and mighty with your American History degree as I ALSO have a history degree. And even though I might have been born in the terrible/horrible North, I obtained that degree in the South. I NEVER claimed there was no racism in other parts of the country at the time, or in the present day. But just because it exists elsewhere doesn't mean it didn't happen in the South. Get over yourself.

HEY! Don't tell Cait to get over herself. She doesn't have to! She's fab.

Cait, do NOT get over yourself!!

You're right, she doesn't need to get over herself. Basically, she and I BOTH need to get over our history degrees, seeing as how the use we're getting out of them is arguing on gossip blogs…

sorry Cait!