Southern pride: Why?

[Maeglin]

@LonesomePolecat

But not primarily out of humanitarian reasons. They abolished slavery primarily because it was no longer profitable, and because most northerners did not want blacks living among them. And anyone who claims to see any important moral difference between working a black kid to death in a sugar cane field and working a white kid to death in a coal mine is morally deranged.

This is highly illogical. If slavery had no longer been profitable, it would have gone the way of the horse and buggy. The institution would have taken care of itself.

Furthermore, anyone who fails to see the difference between a poorly treated slave and a poorly treated free man is probably guilty of a reductio ad absurdum. I am agnostic on his degree of moral derangement.

[BrainGlutton]

@Argent Towers

The real American divide is ECONOMIC, not racial.

A partial truth, Argent. The real divide is class – which depends on several factors, of which income is only the most important.

From Class: A Guide to the American Status System, by Paul Fussell:

My researches have persuaded me that there are nine classes in this country, as follows:

Top out-of-sight
Upper
Upper middle

Middle
High proletarian
Mid-proletarian
Low proletarian

Destitute
Bottom out-of-sight

One thing to get clear at the outset is this: it’s not riches alone that define these clases. . . . “Economically, no doubt, there are only two classes, the rich and the poor,” says George Orwell, “but socially there is a whole hierarchy of classes, and the manners and traditions learned by each class in childhood are not only very different but – this is the essential point – generally persist from birth to death. . . . It is . . . very difficult to escape, culturally, from the class into which you have been born.” When John Fitzgerald Kennedy, watching Richard Nixon on television, turned to his friends and, horror-struck, said, “The guy has no class,” he was not talking about money.

From The Next American Nation, by Michael Lind:

Understanding the white overclass requires revising the most common misconceptions about class. The discussion of social class has been confused for generations by Marxist thinkers, who made the mistake of completely identifying class with economic function. Like the Marxists, old-fashioned American liberal pluralists tend to misunderstand class. What they refer to as class is typically not a social class at all, but a mere occupational or income category, such as service-sector workers or millionaires. Meanwhile, the New Left which came to prominence in the sixties has tended to drop the idea of class altogether, in favor of race and gender. . . . In recent years, conservative ideologues have added further confusion by defining political factions and lifestyle subcultures as classes. . . .

In order to think about class in twenty-first century America, we must first clear our minds of these Marxist, liberal, New Left, and conservative definitions of class, and return to the older notion of class found in classical and European political thought from Aristotle to Montesquieu.

A class is a group of families, united by intermarriage and a common subculture, whose members tend to predominate in certain professions and political offices, generation after generation. Note that the class – the group of similar families – has an existence independent of the offices which its members tend to hold. Indeed, we cannot talk intelligently about class unless we make a distinction between a social class and a mere institutional elite. Those who talk about “the political class” or, with C. Wright Mills, about “the power elite,” are confusing two very different things. Every modern society, even the most perfectly egalitarian, will have an institutional elite – top civilian politicians, military officers, judges, diplomats, financial and industrial executives, publishers, editors and leading intellectuals, clerical leaders, and so on. The subject of class is raised only when you examine the social origins of the particular individuals who hold office in the institutional elite or elites. Learning the organization of judicial offices in a country tells you nothing about class. However, if you find out that most of the judges tend to come from old-money families in a particular region of that country, and that most attended one of half a dozen schools, then you have learned something important about that country’s class system.

The United States at the end of the twentieth century has both an institutional elite and a dominant social class. The institutional elite is composed of upper-level officials in the federal and state governments, plus executives and professionals in the concentrated private sector and foundation and university executives (low-level government officials and small business owners are not part of the institutional elite). Almost all of the members of the American institutional elite also happen to be members of a single social class: the white overclass. To put it another way, the labor pool from which most elite positions are filled is the white overclass. The overlap is not complete. Though most members of the institutional elite belong to the white overclass, most members of the white overclass are not part of the institutional elite (since the overclass greatly outnumbers the elite); and – though this is uncommon – a person can become a high-ranking politician, military officer, judge, CEO, foundation president, or university president in the United States without having been born into the white overclass. It is possible to imagine a United States in which most members of the institutional elite did not have similar class origins. But that is not the country in which we live.

. . . The white overclass is the child of the former Northeastern Protestant establishment, produced by marriage (not only figurative but literal) with the upwardly mobile descendants of turn-of-the-century European immigrants and white Southerners and Westerners. Unlike the Northeastern establishment . . . this relatively new and still evolving political and social oligarchy is not identified with any particular region of the country (though it is concentrated in East and West Coast metropolitan regions). Nor does the white overclass dominate other sections through local, surrogate establishments, as the Northeastern establishment once did. Rather, overclass Americans are found in the higher suburbs of every major metropolitan area, North and South, coastal and inland. Unlike the sectional elites of the past, members of the white overclass are not even identified with the regions in which they happen (temporarily) to live. The white overclass, homogeneous and nomadic, is the first truly national upper class in American history.

The white overclass is the product, not merely of the amalgamation of Anglo- and Euro-Americans, but of the fusion of the rentier and managerial-professional classes. This blurring of the upper and upper-middle strata is a relatively new development in the United States. In earlier generations, there were distinct landowning and rentier classes, with their own lifestyles and institutions – cotillions, seasons spent in the country, and the like. The elaborate rituals that governed upper-class life, such as dressing for dinner, were designed to conspicuously display wealth, including a wealth of leisure time. That was a long time ago. There is a class, or rather a category, of the clebrity rich, and there are still pockets of old-fashioned rentiers in the U.S. – in Virginia, there are still planters who do not work and who hunt foxes with hounds – but these subcultures are detached from the summits of power. Members of the upper class who want to make a mark in the world tend to adopt the style of life and dress and speech of the managerial-professional elite. Even though they do not have to, most members of the small hereditary upper class go to college and get executive or professional jobs, and work, or at least pretend to. Instead of serving as a model for well-to-do executives and lawyers and investment bankers, the hereditary segment of the American overclass conforms to the segment immediately below it, the credentialed upper middle class.

. . . The composition of student bodies at Ivy League schools is a good surrogate for the composition of the white overclass. If you factor out black and Hispanic students admitted under affirmative action programs, you are left with a student body that is disproportionately of British or German-Scandinavian Protestant and European Jewish descent. There are relatively few evangelical Protestants and Catholics in the overclass, despite their significant numbers in the general population. If you are Episcopalian or Jewish, have a graduate or professional degree from an expensive university, work in a large downtown office building in an East or West Coast metropolis, watch MacNeil/Lehrer on PBS, and are saving for a vacation in London or Paris, you are a card-carrying member of the white overclass, even if your salary is not very impressive. If you are Methodist, Baptist or Catholic, have a B.A. from a state university, work in or for a small business or for a career government service, watch the Nashville Network on cable, and are saving for a vacation in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Branson, Missouri, or Orlando, Florida (Disneyworld), you are probably not a member of the white overclass – no matter how much money you make.

Although there are residual religious and ethnic differences among members of the white overclass, these are minor compared to what they have in common. There is, for example, a common white overclass accent, which is more or less identical in corporate boardrooms from one end of the continent to another – the “NBC standard,” which is the equivalent of BBC English or Britain’s Received Pronunciation (RP). As formerly distinct local elites have fused into a single national ruling class equally at home in New York and Texas and California, this accent has become the badge of elite status. In order to advance in overclass circles in America, a white American has to suppress any regional or ethnic dialect, whether it be a Southern drawl or a Boston honk or Brooklynese, and learn to speak this flat, clipped, rather nasal version of English. . . .

. . . The overclass eats pate and imported cheeses; the middle class eats peanut butter and Velveeta. The overclass sips wine; the middle class drinks beer. The overclass plays squash and tennis; the middle class plays pool and bowls (both golf, but the middle class does so at second-tier country clubs and public courses). The overclass jogs; the middle class does not. . . . These are cliches, but they are a better guide to the real class structure in the United States than income categories in the census or pseudoscientific sociological measures like the SES (socioeconomic survey).

Race remains a factor in all this. The richest nonwhites – celebrity athletes, entertainers and artists – are not in the overclass at all. The best-connected, such as Justice Clarence Thomas and Governor Bill Richardson, are in it only conditionally and provisionally. Jews, however rich, as recently as the 1960s were thoroughly shut out of it, but by now they have more or less completely Arrived, except WRT admission to certain “exclusive” country clubs.

[Maeglin]

@BrainGlutton

A partial truth, Argent. The real divide is class – which depends on several factors, of which income is only the most important.

From The Next American Nation, by Michael Lind:

Snip

I feel much stupider for having read that.

[BrainGlutton]

@Maeglin

I feel much stupider for having read that.

That’s a start. Now go read the whole book. You might wind up stupid enough to run for office on the Constitution Party ticket!

[Siam_Sam]

@MGibson

Given the number of southerners who enlist in the U.S. military I’d have to argue that they don’t seem to think of themselves as being the other country.

Marc

Enlisting in the military is often a means of escaping economic hardship and social disadvantages at home. I remember when I lived in New Mexico, Indians seemed to enlist in droves.

[What_Exit]

@Siam Sam

Enlisting in the military is often a means of escaping economic hardship and social disadvantages at home. I remember when I lived in New Mexico, Indians seemed to enlist in droves.

When I was in the service Southerners out numbered Northerners or Westerners or Midwesterners. As there is no shortage of people living in poverty in these other areas, probably more in the North East than in the South, I think there has to be more to the answer than just poverty.

I have seen a few articles supporting that the Army draws a higher percentage of recruits from the south.

I think **MGibson ** has a legit point.

Jim

[Siam_Sam]

@What Exit?

When I was in the service Southerners out numbered Northerners or Westerners or Midwesterners. As there is no shortage of people living in poverty in these other areas, probably more in the North East than in the South, I think there has to be more to the answer than just poverty.

I have seen a few articles supporting that the Army draws a higher percentage of recruits from the south.

I think **MGibson ** has a legit point.

Jim

I’ve always thought of the South as the poorest region. I believe it’s Mississippi that’s the poorest state even.

[What_Exit]

@Siam Sam

I’ve always thought of the South as the poorest region. I believe it’s Mississippi that’s the poorest state even.

Per Capita yes, but despite being the wealthiest or second wealthiest per capita state, New Jersey has a huge poverty population, as does New York and other North East states. The population up in this area is very high and very dense.

You would have to look for an actual breakdown of numbers below the poverty line. I think it would show more in the North than the South.

[VarlosZ]

Sorry to backtrack to the question in the OP, but there’s a point which (as far as I can tell) hasn’t been made but should. If you don’t “get” southern pride, how is it that you do (presumably) get American Pride? The former cultural and geographical area is no more or less arbitrary a thing to feel pride in than the former.

[Siam_Sam]

@What Exit?

Per Capita yes, but despite being the wealthiest or second wealthiest per capita state, New Jersey has a huge poverty population, as does New York and other North East states. The population up in this area is very high and very dense.

You would have to look for an actual breakdown of numbers below the poverty line. I think it would show more in the North than the South.

Could it be that even remaining in poverty, there’s at least the prospect of something better in those other areas? I’m asking, not saying. But it seems like the poor people who resort to the military – I’m talking ones who join for other than pariotic reasons – do so because there simply were no other choices around.

[Spoke]

@VarlosZ

Sorry to backtrack to the question in the OP, but there’s a point which (as far as I can tell) hasn’t been made but should. If you don’t “get” southern pride, how is it that you do (presumably) get American Pride? The former cultural and geographical area is no more or less arbitrary a thing to feel pride in than the former.

Oh, she doesn’t get American pride either, VarlosZ, or so she has said.

Odd, though, that the OP focused only on questioning Southern pride, of all the forms of group pride she apparently doesn’t get. She seems to reserve some special venom for the South.

[What_Exit]

@Siam Sam

Could it be that even remaining in poverty, there’s at least the prospect of something better in those other areas? I’m asking, not saying. But it seems like the poor people who resort to the military – I’m talking ones who join for other than pariotic reasons – do so because there simply were no other choices around.

I don’t know for sure, but as I lost two cousins to inner city despair, I would say that poverty looks pretty desperate in the North East. I don’t know poverty in the south even second hand, so it is hard for me to say. I just can’t see a difference.

I grew up lower middle class and when I couldn’t get myself through college, I joined the military for both Patriotism and a chance to put myself through school. Most of my other friends in my situation just made their way, not wanting to join the military. Maybe the Vietnam War was still too fresh, but that would have been true for southerners too.

Jim

[Spoke]

There is a martial tradition in the South. I had several friends in high school who eagerly pursued military careers, and poverty had nothing to do with it. They came from middle class families.

[What_Exit]

@spoke-

There is a martial tradition in the South. I had several friends in high school who eagerly pursued military careers, and poverty had nothing to do with it. They came from middle class families.

That is the impression I got from both my service time and various news articles. I wonder if there are any scientific polls or studies available on-line for this.

[Little_Nemo]

Given the number of southerners who enlist in the U.S. military I’d have to argue that they don’t seem to think of themselves as being the other country.

You see a lot of southerners celebrating their victory at Gettysburg? Or building monuments for their generals like Grant and Sherman? Or wanting to wear the blue uniforms of their side at re-enactments?

[Sampiro]

@Little Nemo

You see a lot of southerners celebrating their victory at Gettysburg? Or building monuments for their generals like Grant and Sherman? Or wanting to wear the blue uniforms of their side at re-enactments?

I don’t know about Gettysburg, but there are reenactors of Southern Union regiments (that particular one is the 1st Alabama United States Cavalry, who were deployed in the Army of the Tennessee). I know of at least one black (female) reenactor who is in real life highly educated but serves as a “nurse” in a Confederate regiment that her (white) real-life husband serves in.
As somebody mentioned above (too lazy to re-read to find out who), Tennessee had many Unionists during the war. I’ve researched the campaigns there a good bit while doing genealogy projects and my ancestors who were in Wheeler’s cavalry encountered as much resistance from the local farmers as from the Union troops during their raid. (Hell, Tennesseean Andrew Johnson was the pro-Union governor, father and father-in-law of high ranking Union officers, and served as Lincoln’s second VP and was elected to the Senate even after being impeached as president). There are several families there very proud of their “Tory”* ancestry.

*Though mainly associated with the Revolution (outside of England of course) the word Tory was used during the Civil War for pro-Union southerners.

[BrainGlutton]

I agree with George Carlin: Civil War re-enactors should use live ammunition and clean up the gene pool!

[Sampiro]

@BrainGlutton

I agree with George Carlin: Civil War re-enactors should use live ammunition and clean up the gene pool!

Off-top a bit, but: I used to think it would be interesting, but in the first place it’s expensive as all hell. SCA the ersatz CSA ain’t- these people are hardcore in their requirements (you’re allowed to have plastic lenses but only in period eyeglass frames, for example).

Then there really is a lot of white supremacy/reenactment overlap [not all certainly, but a lot- the black lady I mentioned above was forbidden entry to a couple of groups for example).

What really bugged me though was that as sticklers as so many are for detail (some groups don’t even allow the hardtack and parched corn you carry to be baked in an electric oven- that type of minutiae) I got onto the field to watch a reenactment (a troupe from Michigan came down and another from Ohio- not sure why they’re into it) and couldn’t believe the reenactors. I’ve lost weight since then but at the time I was about 50 lbs overweight, and so help me I was one of the smallest guys there! :rolleyes:

Now I’ve nothing against fat people obviously, but… read letters from any Confederate soldier and they’re going to mention being hungry. They had two words for fat Confederates, the first being “nonexistent” and the second being “Senator”- these guys looked like scarecrows, and yet these people who spend thousands of dollars on the right guns and ammo boxes and butternut wool and the like don’t lay off the twinkies and Budweiser to really look authentic.

That’s when I decided I’ll just stick to museums, reading, maybe going a couple of days without eating and firing black powder pistols when I need to “get the feel” in the future.

[Little_Nemo]

As somebody mentioned above (too lazy to re-read to find out who), Tennessee had many Unionists during the war. I’ve researched the campaigns there a good bit while doing genealogy projects and my ancestors who were in Wheeler’s cavalry encountered as much resistance from the local farmers as from the Union troops during their raid. (Hell, Tennesseean Andrew Johnson was the pro-Union governor, father and father-in-law of high ranking Union officers, and served as Lincoln’s second VP and was elected to the Senate even after being impeached as president). There are several families there very proud of their “Tory”* ancestry.

The people in the Appalachian mountains were generally unionist. The only place where they were able to act upon this was in Virginia and Kentucky where the Appalachians were adjacent to northern states. But the mountains remained a pro-union stronghold down through Tennessee and into Alabama.

[Zoe]

Little Nemo: We don’t celebrate the Trail of Tears or Bear River or Sand Creek.

Good for you! Southerners don’t “celebrate” the Civil War either. Is that what you are thinking? Why would we celebrate something that lilled 300,000 of our men, starved our people and destroyed everything that our ancestors had – a war fought for senseless reasons?

We have reenactments of battles. The battlegrounds are right here. So are some of the very trees. The lay of the land is the same. And in many cases, the family names remain. It is also a good way to learn or teach history, meet friends, explore an interest.

Having reenactments is not uncommon. There are reenactments of life at a fort, life on a farm, life in the MIddle Ages. I wouldn’t call them celebrations either.

And there is also an observance at least once a year of the Trail of Tears through this part of the country (Middle Tennessee). I don’t know what is held along other parts of the Trail. This observance involves thousands of people and it gets bigger every year.

Little Nemo: I guess I’d be happier if more southerners remembered that their country won the civil war and it was the other side that lost.

Little Nemo, I think that you are just guessing at what is on Southerners’ minds. Keep in mind that about a third of those Southerners are black. Then you have cities like Nashville that are the same size as Denver. We voted Blue – not Red. Nashville voted for Kerry. And Gore. So did many other Southern cities. The South was not bright Red like the Midwest. We were shades of Purple.

In all of my life I have had ONE TEACHER who said that she was not glad that the South lost the Civil War. That’s it. Out of all the people I have known. One person. In sixty-four years. Now, be happy.

Tom: I don’t know anyone who moved South “for the culture” although some who have moved South have enjoyed and embraced the culture once they arrived.

Then I think your understanding of what is available in the South and why people move to the South are very limited. I take it that that is more likely than a short-sighted view of what culture means.