Racism (Wizbang)

Here's an interesting tale from the front lines of bigotry:

One juror, a white woman, was trying to convice the others that the murder victim had been bruised during a struggle, not during consensual sex with the defendant. Bruises like those, the juror reportedly said, can happen 'when a big black guy beats up on a small [white] woman.'
Another juror, a black woman, took offense and accused her of racism. Things got so heated that the two women had to be separated.

That's par for the course in Boston, Massachusetts.

All of which raises several interesting questions -- especially for those readers old enough to remember the race riots in Boston in the 1970's and the turmoil and court battles there in the 1980's over public school integration:

i. When if ever will Boston's lily-white, blue-blood Democrats cease and desist with their reflexive despising of and discriminating against black people?

ii. How much of an insult is it to present-day Alabamans to trot out Boston's moniker of "the Birmingham of the North?"

Comments (6)

Having lived in both New En... (Below threshold)

1. Posted by John Irving | January 4, 2008 5:32 AM | Score: 4 (4 votes cast)

John Irving:

Having lived in both New England and the Deep South (New Hampshire and Alabama, respectively), I have to say I found more casual and pervasive racism while up north.

Attitudes in the South have changed a lot.

Posted on January 4, 2008 05:32

Living in the south my enti... (Below threshold)

2. Posted by Jeff Blogworthy | January 4, 2008 8:35 AM | Score: 1 (1 votes cast)

Jeff Blogworthy:

Living in the south my entire life, I have run into a number of real racists - not the kind the left likes to imagine behind every rock. They are in the minority and they are almost exclusively old and getting older. They are slowly dying out.

Posted on January 4, 2008 08:35

I recently moved from San D... (Below threshold)

3. Posted by CarlF | January 4, 2008 9:20 AM | Score: 1 (1 votes cast)

CarlF:

I recently moved from San Diego to Newark, Delaware. There certainly seems to be much more of a "soft-racism", especially against blacks, in the Northeast than in the South or Southwest.

Posted on January 4, 2008 09:20

I saw a documentary when I ... (Below threshold)

4. Posted by Veeshir | January 4, 2008 10:21 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)

Veeshir:

I saw a documentary when I was living in Boston on a local PBS station about the black exodus when large numbers of blacks moved from the South to large, Northeastern cities.
They were interviewing this guy who was one of the city leaders and his quote was absolutely stunning in many ways. He was totally racist and totally casual about it.
Basically, the town fathers decided that the blacks should move into Roxbury with the Jews so landlords wouldn't rent to them outside Roxbury and banks wouldn't give them mortgages outside Roxbury.
And it's still that way today, East Roxbury is Jewish while the rest is black.

And not just to tick off J.T., when I lived in Portsmouth I saw the same attitude. There was this black kid working at the Dunkin Donuts there. Nice guy, all the girls just loved him. Until he started asking them out. The looks of horror on their faces told an entirely different story.
As I grew to figure out, they liked blacks just fine in Portsmouth, as long as they kept to their place.