When I was in the army I came face to face with hate from another soldier.

[shockey80]

In the military the number one question you will hear is, where are you from?

One day a new soldier showed up for duty. He was from South Carolina, I'm from New York. When he found out I was from New York he told me, I do not like yankees, stay away from me. His eyes were full of hate. I never had anybody say that to me before, for a couple of seconds I didn't get it. I said I don't like the yankees either, I'm a met fan. What in the hell are you talking about?

I reminded him the civil war ended over one hundred years ago. He said, I don't care, I don't like yankees. I thanked him for letting me know he hated me. I told him I would stay away from him.

Time passed by and my enlistment was coming to an end. I was packing up my belongings, I had collected a lot of stuff over the years. I decided I wanted to travel lite, I decided to give a lot stuff away. I laid the stuff I wanted to give away on my bed and opened the door to my room. As people walked by I would ask them, Do want any of this, I'm giving it away. The guy from South Carolina walked by.

I called him over, On my bed was a nice Buck folding knife. I handed it to him and said, You want it? He said in an angry voice, How much?

I said, nothing, take it. At that moment I saw all the hate melt away from his eyes. He said to me, I never knew there were cool yankees.

That happened forty years ago. I never saw him again. I wonder if I made a mark. Did I teach him something? That man was taught hate. He was taught to hate yankees. He was taught lies. I wonder?

[Stuart G]

1. Thank You for sharing this wonderful story. I wonder too. k and r.

[Lint Head]

2. I was born and raised in South Carolina but moved away many years ago

The times I have been back to visit family and stay for a while I witnessed the hate you were talking about. It is still there. It used to be a Blue State with a Democratic governor. But things turned around quickly. People still talk about the plantation days as if it was some bucolic life. That African Americans should be put in their place and stay there. I remember the segregated bathrooms and water fountains. I was born in 1949. Lived through the 50s and 60s. I was never really taught hate but it was still endemic everywhere and I'm sure it was in my family. I must have been different genetically because I, though I am Caucasian, I never felt as if I was superior to anyone. I cried for days when Martin Luther King was shot. He was my hero. As was JFK and Robert Kennedy. I wanted to join the marches in Alabama but of course I was only in my early teens begging my mom and dad to go and of course they would not let me. I was called and N lover. Got into fights and arguments because of my beliefs while living in South Carolina. I've lived in Tennessee since 1968 and glad I am away from that hate. I hope your kindness really did change that man's mind. But knowing he probably moved right back into that racist cesspool I have my doubts. You would be hard-pressed to find white people there that loved Obama. Most are afraid to speak up because of ridicule. A dangerous racist weed has taken root there and needs to be eradicated. I really wish that when racist pass away, their beliefs would pass away with them but knowing they have children and grandchildren taught that hate makes me sad.

[EndGOPPropaganda]

17. And the Midwest has become more racist

I’m from the Midwest.
Before 1990 there wasn’t a ton of racism there. Some, but not much- as the story above relates.

And then Limbaugh and Fox came in and started telling white people that black people were holding them down. Extending what Reagan had started.

The rightwing propaganda machine amplified racism in the Midwest. It is terrible. These are the racists that now back Trump. The Republican donor base created this racism and now finds it cannot control the racists.

[Martin Eden]

26. MLK's assassination was a very sad event in my family

But when I went to school the next day there was an air of celebration among my classmates in an all white grade school on the southwest edge of Chicago.

[Lint Head]

30. In my school also. Martin Luther King was assassinated on my

birthday.

[TexasBushwhacker]

29. Bucolic plantation life myth

It amazes me when people get all glassy eyed about "the good old days". You know who had slaves and plantations? RICH PEOPLE. Wealth inequality was dramatic. A poor white person in the South was better off than slaves because they were free, but life was hardly easy. Slaves were expensive, and you had to have a lot money to own them. A slave cost $40K in today's dollars.

This fantasy that southern whites have of owning plantations and slaves reminds of people who say they were a king or queen in a past life. No one ever says they were a chambermaid or a sharecropper in their past life.

[Lint Head]

31. Absolutely. I always thought that idea was strange.

[MaryMagdaline]

3. My family moved to Georgia in 1970

We were called Yankees. In school , more than once, I was called an “Uppity Yankee.” There were signs, during the oil embargo, encouraging car owners to by big cars and “freeze a Yankee ass.” This all changed with Reagan, since after that, the Southerners dominated Yankee/Republican politics.

Now, they have voted for the most vulgar Yankee of them all.

[lindysalsagal]

5. And they used to hate russians, too. Haters are too stupid to make any sense at all.

[llmart]

12. I moved to N. Carolina in the early '80's.

I had never been South until then. I grew up in the Midwest. I was on a new job and there was one other new woman working in the building. At lunchtime I went into the lunchroom and saw another woman who I knew was also new to the company, so I figured she and I would have something in common. I sat with her and we got to know one another. When I went back to my office after lunch, everyone was very cool to me, especially the two other women who worked in my area. You see, the woman I sat with at lunch was an African American and I was a Caucasian woman from the North. One of the men I worked with was from New Jersey. He was like a brother to me. I asked him why the other women weren't friendly and he said, "Don't you know what you just did?" I said, "No, I have no idea what I did to make them not like me." He responded, "You sat with a black woman. You are in the South now." I was absolutely floored. I thought that hatred had died out by the '80's. What a rude awakening I had.

Oh, and I, too, was called an "uppity Northerner" because I had a four-year degree and was hired to be one level up from the other two women who had no higher education past high school. I have always been very outgoing and friendly, so this really made my work life pretty miserable for awhile. I was there seven years and the other women eventually began to like me when they got to know me. By then I was moving back north.

For secretary's day we took one of the women out to lunch. We were all in a car going to the restaurant when she told a racist joke using the "n" word. I was sitting next to her in the car and I just blurted out, "I am really offended by your use of that word." It was so quiet in that car you could hear a pin drop. I often wonder if that ever stuck in her bible carrying mind? Yes, she carried her bible with her everywhere and placed it next to her on her desk.

[MaryMagdaline]

25. It's a culture shock for sure

[shockey80]

4. One day I will tell you the story about when I went AWOL to help a hispanic I hardly knew.

My three years in the Army were amazing. I could right a book and I never fought in a war!

[jimlup]

6. Some of it still is bitter resentment over the civil war

half of my family is Southern. While it does't exist within the immediate sphere of my relatives I do know that both racism and hate for yankees is handed down generationally.

[Major Nikon]

10. I don't agree with that

There was a period of time during reconstruction when some areas had a hate and distrust of people from the North. Most of this died out within a generation. During the Civil Rights era there was a neo-confederate movement which persists to this day. Like much of the neo-confederate rhetoric it's nothing more than historic revisionism that pretends the past is something that it's not.

[lindysalsagal]

7. I believe cell phones are going to catapult enough of us out of the 19th century that even

those without them will at some point recognize that their hate is personal, not factual.

If you know young people, they are colorbline, non-religious, non-tribal, and open-minded.

We have to let another generation die off and take racism with it.

[Salviati]

9. While I believe that we are making progress...

We can't believe that time alone will cure racism. It is a virus of the mind, and it will always be with us. We need to constantly be vigilant about fighting against it to vaccinate each new generations minds against it's corrosion.

To stop the fight against racism, bigotry, and hatred because we think those are all issues in the past is akin to being an anti-vaxxer because we've won the fight against measles. It doesn't take long to lose the herd immunity and start suffering from resurgent outbreaks.

[Major Nikon]

11. The problem is that same technology allows some to collectively validate their irrational biases

[Merlot]

16. That's painting with a broad brush:

"If you know young people, they are colorblind, non-religious, non-tribal, and open-minded."

Look around, the alt right rallies are filled with people under 30.

The idea that racism will die out is just not realistic. Children have parents, churches. social groups, extended families, and neighborhoods that re-enforce racism/sexism/bigotry and tribalism.

There are lots of older people who are non-religious who are finally feeling ok with talking about it. For a long time you had to just go along to get along. Now there is more support.

[IronLionZion]

28. People have been saying that forever

and then Trump somehow still got elected.

Progress is happening but it's very slow to wait for bigots to die off. There are young white nationalists holding a rally here in my city today with lots of confederate flags and hate for everyone.

[magicarpet]

8. The die-hard middle aged Fascists like Steve Bannon stir the pot...

... to bring the young Nazis to the surface. Then these younger Nazis go out into the college campuses and recruit the young Rethugs to hop the fence and become full blow Fascists.

Fascism never dies - it must be continuously and vigilantly stamped down or their various forms of hatred will contaminate and destroy progressively minded society and move the culture backwards so that it serves only their benefit exclusively.

[Baitball Blogger]

13. It was a wonderful story, but this is the reality:

He will leave the military and return to his local buddies who will help him decide that the experience with you was a one-off. At the very best, he might learn to treat liberals on a one to one basis, knowing that there might be a charitable benefit in the interaction, but he still hates liberal as a whole.

[randr]

14. Like your southern comrade--most all Trumpers hated him not too long ago

The reason they took him in as one of their own was that he shared their hatred for "others".
Sad but true.

[shenmue]

15. Excellent

[NoMoreRepugs]

18. He learned nothing. My experience with Southern goobers

in the Marine Corps in the 70s was that haters are gonna be haters.

[jayschool2013]

19. I, too, hate THE Yankees

But it's purely a baseball thing.

[Tipperary]

20. Cool story.

[heaven05]

21. interesting

but the reality is outside of specific hates based on culture, race, the geography of origin, humans hate humans. White-Americans still hate other White-Americans. African-Americans hate other African Americans. Hispanic-Americans hate other Hispanic-Americans. Muslim-Americans hate other Muslim-Americans. Asian-Americans hate other Asian-Americans. And last but not least First-Americans hate other First-Americans.

If we could get rid of general everyday hate, could we then be able to rid ourselves of this insanity of hate and mistrust plaguing humankind? Just asking. Is it possible given the precedent already set by almost constant warfare among human beings?

[bottomofthehill]

22. Funny, growing up in Boston in the 60's/70's

We were taught the British were the root of all evil. imperialism, colonialism, slavery, all brought to us by the Brits according to the parents, grandparents and even teachers in my neighborhood. The Civil War was an afterthought to the War of Independence. It was rarely spoken of.

[bottomofthehill]

23. I realize this was during Bussing and not Boston's finest hour

[IronLionZion]

24. And Boston's Irish hated the British for historical reasons

and would hold maybe twice as much hate as other Americans.

[usaf-vet]

27. Well I too have a yankee story. From South Carolina as well.

I was out with friends at a local bar close to the base. A military hang out. Beer, dancing juke box music, pool table a typical bar. There was four or five of us sitting at the table drinking Carlings Black Label in cans.

Music was playing, some were dancing, others were getting the next round. Myself and one other guy was sitting at the table when the music on the juke box change.

I sat there slipping on the beer.... when I saw this bunch, gang, crowd... you chose the descriptor.... head directly for my table. As they crowded toward the table one said in a stern voice YANKEE do you know what that song is... I said no! They all said "Dixie" and you by God better stand up when you hear it playing.

I stood up and raised my beer as the song finished. They were happy with the damn yankee's response.

Until this day when I rarely hear "Dixie", back up in the north, I feel the urge to stand.

South Carolina in the mid 1960's. Sadly I see nothing has changed south of the Mason-Dixon line.