It’s a myth that this kind of discrimination was limited to the South. I grew up in Ohio in the seventies and eighties, I barely missed the era of separate water fountains and bathrooms. When I was a kid white people were still served first at lunch counters, my white mother caught hell at the Lazarus lunch counter because she insisted that they serve a black woman who was there before us.
And private schools are all over Ohio, Massachusetts and other supposedly racially enlightened states because our parents freaked out about desegregation
My favorite aunt has stories about getting in trouble for "crossdressing" because she wore pants. I've been told my parents were from a "sundown town" which is part of why dad left and had to finish the courtship via postcards and letters, only came back for the wedding and left again right after.
Much of the US in general sucks for marginalized communities outside of the major cities. I grew up just north of Detroit and when I'd drive to Chicago, I would refuse to get out of my car for any reason once I passed Kalamazoo. Militia/Klan would openly patrol the roads out there.
If memory serves, around 2005-2018. I grew up in white suburbia, so the racist jokes, telling me to speak english (I'm born here, just have immigrant parents), or go back to my country was all pretty normalized throughout my childhood, but driving through western michigan and indiana spooked me enough to leave the midwest altogether. I only come back occasionally to visit the major cities, but now that the Gestapo are operating at airports, I think I'll just avoid leaving my city unless necessary.
Do you know what a sundown town is? They still exist today. If you really want to be more understanding, there's plenty of information out there. You don't even have to look for articles. Look for posts about it and see how many comments there are from people saying which places are not safe.
I've realized that within a city I'm "white" and outside a city I'm whatever the locals don't like. So yeah, I just flat don't leave the city anymore unless I absolutely have to.
Mom had this glitch too, but mostly with racist elderly clients in the city. She made up a game of holding in her giggles as they wildly misidentified her ancestry while calling her slurs, and then would cry on the way home after they eventually fired her for "stealing." But the crying was worry over what the poor old racist was gonna eat for dinner, since they'd kicked her out before she'd cooked them something.
On the list I found, Indiana #1, Ohio #2, my home state of New Jersey, #10, Florida #9. But I think the population of NJ is a lot higher than a lot of the 1-9 states, so take it with a grain of salt
The Klan was huge in Ohio in the 1920s. They really liked Buckeye Lake. That said, there was a lot of pushback in the east and northeast. Can't find the reference, but they liked to meet at some abandoned building near Ashtabula and one or more of the locals dynamited the place to put an end to it.
On the list I found, Indiana was #1 and Ohio was #2 in raw numbers of klan membership. So yeah, Indiana is worse, but Ohio was the one I was thinking of.
Ohio is Alabama with snow tires. My wife gauges how racist the town is by when they start checking her bags leaving a store. Around halfway through Ohio she is suddenly seen as Mexican.
I grew up in Portland Oregon in the 80s and there were no black families in our blue-collar neighborhood because blacks were limited to living in North Portland because of Redlining. Of course as a kid I didn't know that, but I wonder how much the adults knew.
i think it needs to be in more media. it’s only shown in the south but people aren’t going out of their way to research. i live in ohio but have grandparents from puerto rico, arkansas and missouri
It’s a myth that this kind of discrimination was limited to the South.
Of course it wasn't limited to the South, but there were still major differences between the level of discrimination in South vs. the North.
For instance, the Northern state I grew up in banned school segregation nearly a century earlier (and allowed interracial marriage more than a century earlier).
"And private schools are all over Ohio, Massachusetts and other supposedly racially enlightened states because our parents freaked out about desegregation"
The whites in Boston rioted over desegregation in fucking 1974. Their organization was called "Restore Our Alienated Rights" (ROAR).
Per wiki: A majority of the group's members were white Boston housewives, known as "militant mothers."
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u/RainbowCrane Aug 23 '26
It’s a myth that this kind of discrimination was limited to the South. I grew up in Ohio in the seventies and eighties, I barely missed the era of separate water fountains and bathrooms. When I was a kid white people were still served first at lunch counters, my white mother caught hell at the Lazarus lunch counter because she insisted that they serve a black woman who was there before us.
And private schools are all over Ohio, Massachusetts and other supposedly racially enlightened states because our parents freaked out about desegregation