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Comment by blantonl | Hacker News Reader

I didn't get that at all. Many of the topics covered later in the article are aren't a hit job, they are a reality and cover an underlying tone of the gathering. It seems like an amazing tradition and frankly a pretty cool thing. But, make no mistake, this is rural Mississippi we're talking about there.

There are some uncomfortable truths.

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I'm not from Mississippi, but from blue-collar Kansas. I think there can be something to celebrating a tradition of "white-trashiness" (ha ha) that is devoid of any racist over(under?)tones (Kansas though was of course a "free-state", so that legacy would not be a contributing factor to any perceived racism).

Now that my sister and I are older, have left our roots, become (I hope) cosmopolitan, we can laugh about growing up on "shit-on-shingles" and meat-loaf sandwiches (and butter/sugar sandwiches, mayonnaise sandwiches, Jiffy corn muffins...).

There is a part of me that could celebrate that. (Although when I stop and reflect, when the wife and I raised our own kids we kind of dispensed with our own "traditions" in favor of newly created ones — except for shit-on-shingles maybe once a year.)

There definitely is something great about these traditions, family, food etc. The article does a great job covering it. I was raised in the south, mostly southern Louisiana, and make no mistake many of these events are not "white-trashiness" celebrations. Owners of these cabins and the traditions that surround them are decidedly run, managed, and participated mostly by the "ruling families" of the rural south. And like I said, there are a lot of uncomfortable truths that accompany those families. It definitely is easy for "coastal elites" to look at this as simply a gathering of racists, but that paints an enormously broad brush.

I'm definitely not going to sit here and decry the tradition of the events, because they are a great time. But at the same time, I grew up around a lot of these families and I know what's up. The rural areas of the south are absolutely no different than the 1950s other than federal law.

I'm in rural Mississippi and around this area we have people of all shapes, sizes, and colors. We get along quite well. I don't know where this racist part of the state is. It's not the 1950s anymore.

2 of the 3 Black attendants interview in this piece don't interact with the white attendants beyond a professional level. One is there to race horses, once that's over he doesn't stick around. The other is a homecare nurse who only came to look after her patient but was worried about her own safety outside the cabin.

You may not like it but the subtext was clearly there.

Does every article about an event have to bring up the sordid history of the place it happens? Is Burning Man about the Mexican American War, massacred natives and Chinese railroad workers?

Fairgoers wear that "sordid history" on their sleeves, and keep it alive. Why not talk about that?

How so? Nothing in there program seemed racial or political.

They do mention confederate flags on display, which is hard to imagine not being seen as political if not racial even in the South in 2023.

They also mentioned playing the song Dixie during the nightly sing-along

> this is rural Mississippi we're talking about

Sounds like you might have as many biases as you presume that they have.

There is no way to ignore the history of a place. It should be remembered, because, when people forget history, they end up repeating it, which would be terrible in this specific case.

I grew up in a racist country, Brazil. We don't talk much about it, we don't have laws singling out races, and we are, on paper, very egalitarian, but make no mistake: existing while dark-skinned (Brazilians have and are aware of all shades of brown - I'm a very white Caucasian, my first wife was Moorish-Italian, our son is a mix) will get you searched by security and kicked out of places. I was caught doing things that would land anyone darker than me, my son included, in jail. I am aware of my privilege, even if I wasn't while growing up.

It's everyone's responsibility not to repeat these errors and to do our best to break the cycles that perpetuate them.

There is a world of difference between remembering the past and refusing to see people outside of a historic and antiquated context.

OP is doing to these rural Mississippians what OP is accusing them of doing, and the article even mentions at the end that there was no problems. The only problems, ironically, are coming from others who are typecasting these southerners.

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