# Is "Southern Culture" inherently racist? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 5, 2021, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-southern-culture-inherently-racist/950125 "2021-09-05T03:29:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2021, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-southern-culture-inherently-racist/950125/61 "2021-09-06T22:03:20Z")
> Is “Southern Culture” inherently racist? I live there. Yes. Yes it is. Except for the food. ---
**Author:** ![ArtBeforeScience](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/73ab20/32.png) [@ArtBeforeScience](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ArtBeforeScience)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2021, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-southern-culture-inherently-racist/950125/62 "2021-09-06T22:31:49Z")
Hi @Martin_Hyde: Thanks for the Atlantic articles (paywalled btw - I have no more free articles now). Criticisms put focus on the one disputed claim that the Revolutionary War was primarily driven by a desire to preserve slavery, and say that it’s too ideologically driven. I don’t think history can avoid ideology, though. It needs to have some meaningful impact. Otherwise why are you telling the story? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2021, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-southern-culture-inherently-racist/950125/63 "2021-09-06T23:02:47Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > […] one of the big issues I took with it was the claim made that slavery and the defense of slavery was a significant motivation, you could even say they suggest it was **the** motivation for our Revolution against British rule. I do not believe that is supported by the history–and fairly respected historians like Sean Wilentz of Princeton, have frankly made the points far better than I could […] I think if anybody’s actually saying that the defense of slavery was the motivation for the American Revolution, they’re overstating it. But is anybody really saying that? Other respected historians, such as Indiana University’s [Alex Lichtenstein](https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/125/1/xv/5714757), seem to find Wilentz’s criticisms misleading: > [@](#): > > The aim, [Times editor Jake] Silverstein observed, was to “place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country.” If some historians might quibble with this or that specific conclusion drawn from such an approach, the overall reorientation strikes me as laudable, if unexceptional. […] > > […] many, if not most, American historians already teach about that past in the undergraduate classroom. Speaking for myself, for three decades now I have emphasized in my U.S. survey class that the African American experience must be considered central to every aspect of American history. You cannot understand anything about the latter, I inform my students, unless you incorporate the former into the narrative. Yes, that includes the Revolution and the founding of the nation. […] > > In early September, the website of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) fired a broadside at the _Times_ , denouncing the 1619 Project as “a politically motivated falsification of history” designed, in their view, to bolster the Democratic Party’s alignment with “identity politics” at the expense of any serious engagement with class inequality. This attack came not from the expected quarters of the _right_ , which one imagines would find offensive and unpatriotic the denigration of the American promise as irredeemably racist, but from the Trotskyist left. […] > > On December 20, the _New York Times Magazine_ published a letter to the editor circulated by Princeton’s Sean Wilentz and signed by these four interviewees, “to express [their] strong reservations about important aspects of The 1619 Project.” In particular, the letter objected to “the factual errors in the project and the closed process behind it.” This was followed by a spirited rebuttal from _Times_ editor Jake Silverstein, and then rapidly spiraling coverage in the _Atlantic_ , the _Washington Post_ , and elsewhere, including follow-ups on the WSWS [Trotskyist World Socialist Web Site]. […] > > The animus of the Fourth International types seems clear—in placing race at the center of history, 1619 elides the central role of class and class conflict in the history of settler colonialism, continental dispossession, and rapacious capitalism. But that is probably not the same hill that Wilentz and the gang of four are planting their flag on. So what gives? […] > > Reading only the WSWS interviews and the subsequent historians’ letter, one might be surprised to learn that several well-respected historians actually contributed material directly to the _Times_ project: Anne Bailey, Kevin Kruse, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Tiya Miles, and Mary Elliott (who curated a special supplementary _Times_ “broadsheet” for the 1619 Project organized around objects in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture). […] > > None of this is to defend unconditionally what appears in the 1619 Project. Historians would be justified to complain that the _Times_ presents as a radical reorientation an interpretation that differs little from a long-term, if still incomplete, trend to move African American history to the center of the American narrative. I share my colleagues’ frustration that journalists occasionally draw on years of our unacknowledged research to publish under the banner of “Extra, extra, never been told before!” Reasonable interpretive disagreements can stem from the bad habit some journalists have of substituting dramatic overstatement for historical analysis, and there is no shame in pointing these out. […] But singling out errors in one essay does not suffice to dismiss the project in its entirety. I gotta admit that one of the weirdest aspects of this is seeing many conservatives line up next to Trotskyists to complain that the 1619 Project presents American history with too much emphasis on race. I can see why each of the groups has its objection to that emphasis, but I don’t find either of their objections that persuasive. Oh right, we were talking about Southern culture here, weren’t we? Sorry for ramble. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2021, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-southern-culture-inherently-racist/950125/64 "2021-09-07T02:37:20Z")
> [@ArtBeforeScience](#): > > Hi @Martin_Hyde: Thanks for the Atlantic articles (paywalled btw - I have no more free articles now). > > Criticisms put focus on the one disputed claim that the Revolutionary War was primarily driven by a desire to preserve slavery, and say that it’s too ideologically driven. I don’t think history can avoid ideology, though. It needs to have some meaningful impact. Otherwise why are you telling the story? Keep in mind I specifically said I was mostly a fan of the 1619 Project, but that I did take some issue with its historicity in a few points. I think they went quite a bit outside the bounds of what has ever been demonstrated with any kind of scholarly historical evidence by ascribing preservation of slavery as a significant cause for the Revolution–that was also as noted, just one example since my understanding is we weren’t looking to make this thread about the 1619 project. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2021, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-southern-culture-inherently-racist/950125/65 "2021-09-07T02:49:00Z")
It’s been awhile since all this controversy went on, it should be noted by the way the Wilentz letter and the four other historians who signed it, are basically the epitome of progressive elite. These aren’t Breitbart guys or Victor Davis Hanson types. It’s very much an argument between two entities that very much agree actually with most of the same core conclusions–that slavery was very important to American colonial life from the very beginning, and that the practice of chattel slavery tinges the entirety of American history from beginning to end. That core ideological conclusion is not contested by the five professional historians. The right wing critique of the 1619 project is much less honest, and much less frankly defensible as anything other than just partisanship fueled racial bigotry. That being said I do think the response of some of Wilentz’s peers who _declined_ to sign the letter was instructive. Several of them basically said “I don’t want to be on record as being oppositional to the 1619 Project because I think it makes good points, and for a journalistic approach is serving a really good purpose” even using the term as viewing it not so much as history but as a “cultural expression.” That’s kind of a nice way of saying they don’t really dispute Wilentz’s assertion that the 1619 Project’s articles contain a few rough historical inaccuracies and make a few claims that really are well outside the historical mainstream. There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying something outside the historical mainstream, history strives to be an objective science but it’s a field where interpretation has to occur, done by humans. That being said when something is very powerfully established with tons of primary source materials (like the motivations for the American Revolution) if you say something that is well outside any of the documentary evidence, and do not have any form of support in terms of verifiable facts…well, that wouldn’t stand up to the rigor of professional historians and probably shouldn’t be taught as history in a school setting. Wilentz made the point that part of his motivation in his objection was the pending development (at the time) of the 1619 school curriculum. Silverstein’s response and Hannah-Jones’ response didn’t even entirely disagree they had made at the very least some assertion from authority that were too strongly worded, albeit they don’t quite agree they got the facts wrong. Hannah-Jones makes the point that the core articles published in the New York Times are journalist’s essays, and the curriculum being developed for schools would be “cleaned up.” Which…if so, fair enough, but it doesn’t really undermine Wilentz’s core point. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2021, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-southern-culture-inherently-racist/950125/66 "2021-09-07T02:57:16Z")
MrDibble wrote: > And … 1985? Current, much? But reach for whatever whataboutery you feel you need to, I’m out. 1985 occurred within my adult lifetime, and southern culture has been around for centuries. Why exclude 1985? If 1985 were a painting, it would go in a “modern art” museum. ---
**Author:** ![ArtBeforeScience](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/73ab20/32.png) [@ArtBeforeScience](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ArtBeforeScience)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-southern-culture-inherently-racist/950125/67 "2021-09-12T14:41:12Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > the curriculum being developed for schools would be “cleaned up.” Good point. They can edit the 1619 project or include a new document called Revision History like in a technical document. If they thoughtfully acknowledge and address the major criticisms, it will make the project stronger. I’m not saying to react to every right-wing troll. But if Ms Hannah-Jones really did go overboard on this one assertion, or one of the other authors did so, why can’t they revise their essay, say it’s a revision, and discreetly link to the original but make it so that most of the time people find the “latest” version? ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2021, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-southern-culture-inherently-racist/950125/68 "2021-09-15T18:04:30Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I am reminded of a friend of my mother’s who is originally from Pittsburgh, and she seemed SO awful to me for a long time, because she was very direct and brusque. She wasn’t necessarily rude, but she wasn’t polite either. Eventually I realized it was just the way she was; she wasn’t intentionally bucking the social norms or trying to be rude or impolite, and she was probably perfectly nice in Pittsburgh. I had the same experience only in reverse. My dad is a jew from Brooklyn, my mom was the offspring of German-Swiss dairy farmers from Wisconsin. When I visited my husband-to-be’s family in North Carolina (his mother was a Tidewater debutante), I could not understand what they meant when they talked. I’m not talking about accents here. Everything the women, especially, said, had a hidden subtext I was just supposed to know. But I hadn’t a clue what it was. When my mother-in-law regaled us with darkie jokes after a few toddies, I knew I was in a foreign land. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-southern-culture-inherently-racist/950125.md?page=3)