[quickthrowman]

When you come in dead last (or in the bottom 5 states) in virtually every possible positive metric, people are going to make negative assumptions. I understand the historical reasons for that, but it doesn’t change what it is.

[greenie_beans]

fair enough, but their assumption wasn't even about that. a better joke on that quote would've been about vermont.

i hear people online punch down on mississippi all the time, and often they don't know anything about the state except whatever metric they've heard about from a headline. the rest of america isn't very far behind, and if you think the state of mississippi isn't a product of america as a whole then you are extremely mistaken. without the industrialized north you have no plantation economy and without the civil war you have no "dead last (or in the bottom 5 states) in virtually every possible positive metric."

i grew up there, attended public school all the way through my BA, and then spent significant time as a young adult there. based on the stereotypical assumptions, it might be shocking to the big brains on hacker news that somebody from mississippi is an audience of this website.

[quickthrowman]

> i hear people online punch down on mississippi all the time, and often they don't know anything about the state except whatever metric they've heard about from a headline. the rest of america isn't very far behind, and if you think the state of mississippi isn't a product of america as a whole then you are extremely mistaken.

Agreed, people usually just say ‘lol MS is full of idiots, they’re bad at school’ instead of taking the time to understand why. It was more isolated than GA and LA (and AL), there was a higher ratio of slaves to freedmen in the antebellum period, the Delta was undeveloped so lots of impoverished people from across the south moved there to try and develop the land, to name a few reasons.

> i grew up there, attended public school all the way through my BA, and then spent significant time as a young adult there. based on the stereotypical assumptions, it might be shocking to somebody on hacker news that somebody on a similar enough intelligence level to be an audience of this website is from mississippi.

I can say that I don’t assume everyone from Mississippi is stupid, but the generalization about Mississippi that you related seems to be more common than it should be. I think a lot of it has to do with a lack of exposure to people from Mississippi or Mississippi itself.

Thanks for taking the time to respond, I appreciate the discussion.

[selimthegrim]

There was a recent post at the top of HN done by someone who went to USM in Hattiesburg who lives in New Orleans now (and which inspired a show HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45183050 )

[sukhdeeppravish]

True. As an AI engineer from Gurajatar, Uttar Pradesh I can relate to your experience in this auspicious website sir. We are top human capital.

[deltarholamda]

Isn't diversity a positive metric? Mississippi has the highest black percentage of all the states. If one wants to use statistics, use all of the statistics.