Why Do People Still Complain And Fuss About The Confederate Flag Read Details

What's it like living in a liberal state? How are the social attitudes in a liberal state?

I lived in Vermont for 22 years before moving to the Florida Panhandle (Pensacola).I guess I never really appreciated the generally liberal attitude Vermont has until I moved here.My first week at my job, a guy came up behind me while I was with a black co-worker and said “hey, can you help me? i don’t want to talk to any black people.” It ended up being that he was joking and knew my coworker, but that wasn’t the kind of joke I ever grew up hearing. It wasn’t funny to me, at all.Racism is deeply ingrained here. It’s an unmentioned and unquestioned part of life, that many minorities either don’t bother to confront in public or just simply don’t notice.When Dylann Roof shot nine people in Charleston and sparked a debate about what the Confederate flag represents, Pensacola residents went to the Pensacola Graffiti Bridge to paint the flag and attempt to educate their fellow citizens on what they believed it meant. I learned that night that, as one person put it to me, “that flag means n*****s sit at the back of the bus.” I still want to believe I was being trolled, but sadly I cannot. That was never something I had ever imagined happening, much less hearing, growing up in Vermont.I remember growing up in a state that legalized gay marriage early, I remember race not being much of an issue to anybody, at least as a white person. I never heard anybody spitting racist garbage about a minority group growing up in a liberal state. In the panhandle it seems like it’s hard to go a week with such a thing.I was asked once if I believed in guns, because I’d need them when the refugees came here to wage jihad. That was just last winter.But as I learn more about racial disparities and racial boundaries, I learn my own liberal state dislikes the Sudanese refugees we house and employ. I have seen comments on local cititzen swear in ceremonies in VT that complain about the lack of legitimate immigrants, something these very people were finishing up the process of.I think in liberal states, Vermont at least, racism is less overt. I cannot recall a single homophobic experience in Vermont. Racism ails the entire country, everywhere you go, however. Seeing it in it’s unchallenged state has only enabled me to more accurately identify the hidden kind I thought didn’t exist in a liberal place.