Is there literally something wrong with the South?

Acid_Lamp · October 10, 2010, 11:44am

snip

Not really, because some of those things are extremely intermingled with cultural practices that certainly ARE a matter of choice. The one biggest problem with the south is the poor quality of and low value of education outside of the major metropolitan areas.

Try2B_Comprehensive · October 10, 2010, 12:07pm

That is a funny question to be asked by a guy named Evil Captor, you know that?

Slithy_Tove · October 10, 2010, 12:24pm

It’s just like the rest of the US, only a little bit more so.

Captain_Midnight · October 10, 2010, 1:29pm

Tennessee every 20 years or so has to clean out the crooks in Nashville. There was a crooked governor named Ray Blanton who was selling pardons, and he was so hated, more or less the state overthrew it’s own government and constitution for the moment and brought in the new governor Lamar Alexander.

(Note: Lamar Alexander is a good guy and a very, very competant leader. He would of made a much better leader than George W. Bush.)

Then, several years ago, there was a federal sting operation, targeting state senators and representives for taking bribes for floor votes. One guy they thankfully snared was a John Ford, a state senator from my hometown of Memphis and the uncle of Harold Ford Jr. Several others were indicted and sent to prison, mostly democrats, but only one republican.

Tennessee has three sections, west, middle and eastern. East Tennessee is the Republican part of the state, while the West is the democratic, while Middle Tennessee is the swing vote. The election this year is between a Republican from Knoxville, and the son of a former governor, who looked a lot like Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard. I’d vote for Boss Jr. only because I would be concerned that the Republican from East Tennessee would relocate the Medical school to Knoxville, which would hurt the state’s economy.

John_Mace · October 10, 2010, 2:19pm

Not that I’m sure those things are untrue, but some cites would be useful.

And, for a place with something “wrong”, it does seem to be drawing people away from the north (as is the west). So, something must be “right”.

Skald_the_Rhymer · October 10, 2010, 2:36pm

We have far less stupid gun laws that New York has. And I suspect that, while there’s more open racism hereabouts, that doesn’t mean there’s less racism in other areas. And frankly I prefer the company of racists who don’t faff about to the company of those that hide their feelings.

Skald_the_Rhymer · October 10, 2010, 2:37pm

:mad:

pravnik · October 10, 2010, 2:48pm

Seriously. Hookworm infestations retarded the economic growth of the South for decades.

Great Radiolab podcast about hookworm eradication in the South.

Try2B_Comprehensive · October 10, 2010, 2:55pm

Wow. That sounds familiar but I can’t name it. Shale, right? Got a linky?

Gil-Martin · October 10, 2010, 4:40pm

I’m currently living in the South (as a transplanted Yankee), and much of what you say seems accurate except for the comment about crime. Generally speaking, I feel safer walking about at night in the various areas of the South I’m familiar with (mostly Arkansas and Tennessee) than I ever did in the North. Like at least one other person in this thread, I’d be interested in seeing a cite for your claim.

Regarding the overall question–is there something wrong with the South–I’d have to say yes. But then there’s something wrong with every place by the lights of somebody or other. For me, I dislike all the deep-fried food, I disagree with many of my neighbors’ religious ideas (but I’m not a Baptist or Pentecostal), and I find the annual icestorm with which I must contend during my month or two of winter every year a real pain in the ass. So those are the things that are wrong with the South for me.

And yeah, we have a particularly ugly history. And yeah, we have political corruption and craziness. But I’m not sure we have monopolies on these things.

Oh yeah, and the mosquitoes. They’re pretty bad where I live, here between the rice field and the swamp. But I think my favorite northern state, Minnesota, has them worse.

Generally speaking, I like it here.

Gil-Martin · October 10, 2010, 4:41pm

And it’s all that sugar in the tea that makes it good.

Inner_Stickler · October 10, 2010, 4:50pm

Mmmm, diabeTEAS.

BrainGlutton · October 10, 2010, 5:03pm

David Hackett Fischer, in Albion’s Seed, developed a theory of regional sociopolitical cultures. It is discussed in Vietnam: The Necessary War, by Michael Lind, Chapter 4, “The Fall of Washington”:

The real reason for the persistence of sectionalism in U.S. foreign policy can be found in the ethnoregional theory of American politics, which has been developed by the historians David Hackett Fischer, Daniel Elazar, D.W. Meinig, Kevin Phillips, and others. The ethnoregional theory holds that in the United States powerful ethnic and regional subcultures are more important and enduring than political parties and ideologies. The labels “Democrat” and “Republican” differ in their meaning from generation to generation; regional subcultures such as those of New England and the Tidewater South change much more slowly.

The greatest insight of ethnoregional theorists is that immigrants in the United States do not assimilate to a uniform American national culture; rather, they assimilate to one of a small number of preexisting regional cultures. The historian Wilbur Zelinsky has defined a thesis he calls the Doctrine of Effective First Settlement that holds: “Whenever an empty territory undergoes settlement, or an earlier population is dislodged by invaders, the specific characteristics of the first group able to affect a viable, self-perpetuating society are of crucial significance for the later social and cultural geography of the area, no matter how tiny the initial band of settlers may have been.” . . .

Historians differ on the question of how many of these enduring regional cultures there are in the United States. Most agree on three: a Yankee culture that spread westward overland from New England; a Quaker culture operating in Pennsylvania; and a Cavalier culture originating in the coastal South. Most, but not all, identify a fourth regional culture, that of the Scots-Irish Highland South from Appalachia to the Ozarks and Texas. In his magisterial Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989), David Hackett Fischer argues persuasively that these four “hearth cultures” originated in different regions of early modern Britain and were transplanted to North America by four waves of immigrants. In the first wave (1629-40), Puritans from the eastern counties of England settled New England. The second wave (1642-75) brought anti-Puritan, royalist Cavaliers from the south of England to Virginia. Quakers from the North Midlands of England colonized Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley after emigrating during the third wave (1675-1715). The fourth and final major Anglo-American migration, which lasted from 1717 to 1775, transplanted so-called Scots-Irish from northern England, lowland Scotland, and the north of Ireland (Ulster).

In addition to having distinctive folkways and dialects of English, these four groups of British-American immigrants had their own unique variants of a common individualistic and liberal British political culture. Fischer describes the New England Puritan ideal as “ordered freedom,” the Quaker ideal as “reciprocal freedom,” the Scots-Irish ideal as “natural freedom,” and the coastal southern ideal as “hegemonic freedom” (deference to traditional elites). Another historian, Daniel J. Elazar, calls the New England tradition the “moralistic” culture, the midatlantic region the “individualistic” culture, and the coastal southern tradition the “traditional” culture. . . .

The ethnoregional theory provides the answer to the mystery of American sectional differences with respect to war. Regional disagreements about war are part of a larger pattern of regional disagreement about the legitimacy of all forms of violence. “Historians of Southern mores are agreed that violence as an aspect of Southern life clearly distinguished the region from the rest of the country,” writes historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown. Of the southerner, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that “the energy which his [northern] neighbor devotes to gain turns with him to a passionate love of field sports and military exercises; he delights in violent bodily exertion, he is familiar with the use of arms, and is accustomed from a very early age to expose his life in single combat.” Southern states lead the nation not only in military academies but in homicide rates and death penalty laws and in low penalties for domestic violence. Northern states have the lowest homicide rates and the greatest number of statutes requiring a citizen to retreat before attacking an assailant or intruder in his home.

These regional differences reflect the difference in moral systems between the post-Calvinist Puritanism of Greater New England, which shuns violence as a means for resolving disputes, and the cultures of honor of the Scots-Irish Highland South and the Anglo-American Tidewater South. The two southern cultures are quite different, but compared to Greater New Englanders, both Highland and Tidewater southerners look with greater approval on violent retaliation for insults. But southerners are not indiscriminately violent. The difference between northern and southern homicide rates is accounted for almost entirely by violent responses of southerners to personal offenses: arguments, insults to women, lovers’ quarrels, and disputes within the family. The researchers Richard E. Nisbet and Dov Cohen discovered that, at the same university, white southern students were more likely to respond aggressively than white northern students to the same set of insults and provocations. The same researchers have pointed out the similarities between the culture of honor of white southerners and that of inner-city black Americans, most of whom are descendants of southern migrants.

BrainGlutton · October 10, 2010, 5:09pm

From “A Nice Cup of Tea,” by George Orwell (1946):

Lastly, tea–unless one is drinking it in the Russian style–should be drunk WITHOUT SUGAR. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.

Some people would answer that they don’t like tea in itself, that they only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.

Of course, iced tea, drunk by itself or as accompaniment to a meal, is rooted in a completely different climate/culture. But, for my part, I have tried Orwell’s advice and found that I like even iced tea better unsweetened.

I’ve also learned to love coffee unsweetened. And I never put cream in it anyway, so I’m just tasting pure coffee.

DanBlather · October 10, 2010, 5:09pm

State per capita income, bottom 10:

Violent crime rate (same source) worse 10:

Highest infant moratlity (same source):

Traffic fatalities, worse 10:

UltraVires · October 10, 2010, 5:30pm

If wrong=conservative, then I would agree. But I think it is more of an issue of urban/rural vs. north/south.

A few states come to mind that would be redder than the reddest state if it were not for the urban areas: New York, Pennsylvania, California. Were it not for NYC, Philly, and the LA area respectively, you could count on those states being locks for the GOP.

The only difference between those states and the south is that most southern states don’t have that huge urban area to counteract the rural vote.

BrainGlutton · October 10, 2010, 5:44pm

Another factor was the hot, humid climate, before universal electrification and air-conditioning.

From The City in Mind, by James Howard Kunstler, chapter on Atlanta:

In Atlanta, the heat and humidity for a significant part of the year can be debilitating. Before air-conditioning, people got used to it with modifications in their behavior, namely, doing as little as possible. This held for people of all social ranks and was, in fact, a traditional feature of southern culture. People compelled to do hard physical labor would do as little as possible as slowly as possible, but so too would insurance claims adjusters and bank presidents cooped up in offices. Since doing as little as possible tends to produce less of value to human society, it would be fair to say that the climate of the southeastern United States was not naturally hospitable to advanced civilization. Air-conditioning, or “comfort cooling,” as the industry likes to describe its product, made modern life possible in that part of the country.

Gil-Martin · October 10, 2010, 5:44pm

DanBlather: Thanks for the link. Some of the states that are and are not included in that top ten list for violent crime surprise me. Evidently some of my assumptions about my country need reexamination.

BrainGlutton (and his friend George): I often drink certain kinds of hot tea sans sugar, but iced tea, like hot coffee, must be consumed with tons and tons of sugar. With the former drink, I also do the lemon thing–I hope that’s okay. Nevertheless, I thank you for the advice and the Orwell link.

Sailboat · October 10, 2010, 7:09pm

What are you getting at with “imposed” economic constraints? The 13th Amendment?

I, for one, am deeply grateful that pre-Civil-War health services are gone. shudder

Spoke · October 10, 2010, 7:23pm

Now that one intrigues me. I wonder what accounts for that? It’s not poor roads. The roads here are as good or better than elsewhere in the country.

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Is there literally something wrong with the South?

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