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Comment by beranke3 | Hacker News Reader

The amount of racism is pretty depressing in the Midwest.

-Have had coworkers openly talk about how the company hires too many Indians and it's a "bad thing".

-People saying how muslims are ruining and dirtying up their suburban neighborhoods

-Skinheads verbally yell obscenities and spit at me and my minority coworkers.

-Sprinkle in the barrier to entry for tech exec/leadership positions is not diverse and have seen first hand how douchey the hiring process is..

It's reaffirming to hear so many other people have similar sentiments.

>Or are you being bigoted

Maybe you should re-evaluate your outlook because you sound like you're part of the problem that makes the Midwest not appealing to minorities.

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The largest collection of skinheads exists in Oregon. You're showing your bias, totally based off a handful of anecdotal evidence.

>It's reaffirming to hear so many other people have similar sentiments.

Oof sounds pretty similar to something a racist would say.

I'm fine with it though, move away. Part of the reason the Midwest is one of the better areas to live in and still affordable is because coastal elites continue believing they live in some utopia, while suckling the media narrative on flyover areas. Yep it's not appealing just avoid it. Enjoy all those homeless minorities you pretend to care about on the coasts! Thanks! :)

Never been spit at on the east or west coast. We were just walking to grab lunch.

The fact you're the one getting triggered by real anecdotes and dismissive is more reason it's not going to change anytime soon.

Ok how about this since we're going to just throw out unproven accusations and anecdotal evidence...

I was born in the rural midwest and lived there for almost 30 years of my life. Not once have I ever heard of anyone receiving the treatment you claim to have received. Not once have I ever seen anyone receiving that treatment. Therefore, I'm inclined to believe your wild accusations that are so far outside the norm are some Jussie Smollett level incarnations unless you have verifiable evidence.

Since I have the experience of multiple years in the midwest and you were just briefly visiting means my anecdotes have more weight. Just like I wouldn't trust a person from London to provide an accurate representation of life in the Congo I also do not trust you to provide and accurate depiction of life in the midwest.

I live in CO now. I heard the N word multiple times coming out of white student's mouths here. So, I'll just go ahead and make an unfair blanket statement and assume the entirety of the western US is racist scum? NO, because I'm more intelligent than that and not a prejudiced bigot that assumes one person or a handful of people represent and entire area of the country.

Take look at your responses. You're the one painting an entire group of people negatively based on one experience and we have online proof of it. That is the definition of bigotry.

> MARTIN: If you're just joining us, we're talking about a new study that literally puts certain racist, homophobic and hate speech directed toward people with disabilities on the map. Our guest is Professor Monica Stephens, who led a team that literally put these terms on a map. Danielle, you wanted to say something.

> BELTON: Oh, I was going to say that it doesn't surprise me that you'd have a lot of racist tweets out of Illinois or Indiana. Being a native Midwesterner, there are certain regions and hot spots within these individual states that have a reputation for people being very vocal about minorities. And in the case of Illinois and Indiana, and even my home state of Missouri, you have a significant African-American population, not enough where we're the majority in any type of capacity, but just enough where people feel the need that they can be very expressive in how they want to complain about it.

> You know, you can't complain about something unless you actually see it on a daily basis. So it's like - sometimes I think maybe people use Twitter less in Montana, but there's a lot fewer minorities in Montana.

> MARTIN: Well, but that's an interesting question, though, because there's all kinds of conventional wisdom, which may or may not comport with fact, around how racial attitudes are formed. But one of sort of the truisms is that familiarity would lessen these kinds of attitudes because people would know somebody, right, they would know somebody of a different race, and therefore - or hopefully more than one person - and therefore that there would be less inclination toward these kinds of attitudes.

> BELTON: You'd think. That's true, but in the Midwest, a lot of these major cities are heavily segregated. So in many cases, familiarity has bred like contempt between people, because people are in their segregated enclaves, and they feel very strongly about people who are different from them.

[1] https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=187291...

[2] https://www.epi.org/publication/preemption-in-the-midwest/

[3] https://littlevillagemag.com/the-demure-white-supremacy-of-t... (references [4])

[4] https://www.epi.org/publication/race-in-the-heartland/

There are studies proving GP's anecdotal views...

Having the largest collection doesn't mean they're also at their most belligerent there.

Exactly, thanks for agreeing with my point that a handful of experiences from a few people doesn't mean an entire area, race, religion, group etc. is abhorrent. Because, if you did think that way there would be a very specific term for you.

It would be pretty similar to me calling all Muslims evil since 9/11 happened. Agree?

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