a news survey taken in Detroit MI in 1960 asked readers to identify the least desirable ethnic groups.

1960...That's going back a fur ways that is. Had that survey been taken in Mobile Alabama, the answer might have been Yankees with the descrptive D word preceding it. Should that survey have been taken in certain communities in Detroit a litttle later in the decade(with the crime increase) that answer might just be Blacks. With jobs being displaced, I'm sure some would now say Hispanics.

Those communites in the North had a pretty much settled population until after 1945. You then saw a vast wave of people from the rural South coming to work in auto plants, factories, mills and such like. The culture, dialect and in some facets the religious expression that they brought with them were alien to the neighborhoods that they moved into. That and the fact that they were economic rivals for those already there lead to trouble, people being what they are.

I can remember having to take a speech class as a kid to correct my pronunciation. Didn't stutter or anything, just had a Carolina accent like most of my mom's family....funny that they now teach ebonics... Then I can remember having to go to school in the South. Everyday I got on the bus, I was greeted with....There's that Yankee Bastard...but that was ok, I got my own seat to myself. Name calling is wrong whichever way you slice it. I do agree that one can use the terms, Redneck, Cracker, Hillbilly and other terms for whites( Not just people from Dixie) and not be called on it. Lke you would for using terms for a racial minority, but that has a lot to do with our liberal society and a racial consciousness. All which like most of this thread have nothing at all to do with the Civil War.