[cowboyhater]

Votes of white male landowners counted as one vote, but non-white citizens only had 3/5ths of a vote.

You had a lot in there to respond to, and you got the history mostly right, however I just wanted to clarify the above line.

The 3/5's rule in the Constitution had nothing to do with individual voting rights, it had to do with congressional apportionment, NOT to how much a vote counts.

Example:

If Virginia had 300,000 people including 50,000 slaves according to the census, their population for purposes of determining representation in the House of Representatives would be 250,000 + (3/5 * 50,000) or 280,000. The slaves counted as 3/5's of a person for representation purposes, but of course were not allowed to vote.

The land ownership requirement more or less faded away after the Constitution, though the several states certainly had restrictions that made it easier for land-owners.

Before the Articles of Confederation, some states even allowed one-man several votes, if he had property in more than one jurisdiction. The land-owner would get in his carriage and spend the day voting.

One other note, of the various stereotypes you mention, I find most of them innocuous even if largely true. As a VERY pale little boy I LOVED watermelon and fried chicken even before I knew it was a black thing. In college I was lucky ebough to be introduced to Harold's Chicken Shack (extra hot sauce please, see other thread) and Leon's Bar-B-Q. What's wrong with liking good food? I'll take that over boiled British cuisine and all the herring laden Swedish stuff any day! (and the Brits and Swedes I know agree!) I have also found that certain types of ethnic humour cause no harm. I have never met a Scot or a Dutchman who was at all offended over a joke implying that they are cheapskates. They laugh, are proud of the fact, and return with an even funnier joke along the same lines. I'm part Polish, and I do not take umbrage at some of the Polish jokes. If I really had any doubt about brains in Poland, I would review the list of all-time great Polish-born physicists. The list includes Gabriel Fahrenheit (yeah, THAT Fahrenheit) and Madame Curie. The jokes that poke fun at African-Americans are much more often mean-spirited, and served a different (and nefarious) purpose. They also generally concentrate on a small segment of only one sub-culture among all the various kinds of black people in America. Because these jokes are so often different in kind, they are best avoided altogether.