People hating other people, penetrating the infrastructure of society, and utilizing that secret network of hatred to terrify and oppress the objects of their hatred seems pretty darned unique to the South inside the United States, in my opinion. And while it might not be so fashionable to don the sheets, I don’t think that attitude or methodology has receded a heck of a lot, judging by the selective disenfranchisement in Florida, Trent Lott’s recent comments, and the 34 church and mosque burnings in South Carolina alone between 1991 and 1996. Two out of the three of those incidents can be directly attributed to conservatism. I suppose you can argue that liberal atheists might be behind the burning of black churches.
Ugh. My bad. That second to last line should read "Two out of the three of those incidents can be directly associated with conservatism.
There is a big difference.
Conservatives in the South had the power to keep down a race of people for a century after the end of slavery. Today’s white supramacists could be better referred to as reactionaries, but prior to the 1970’s, there was a tradition of racial separation throughout the South.
Gotta be the educational system, even for the liberals. If you’d learend yer cyferin’ right, you’d know that 7+2=9, not 11.
John Mace:
:smack:God, I hate it when that happens! (And I was a teacher!):o
My grandfather was 9th generation; I am 11th.
At no time in my post did I excuse any of the racisim that is found anywhere, including the South. My point was that there are more liberals in the South than some of you suggest.
I am well aware of church burnings in the South. Some of them have been not so far from me. All it takes is a handful of white scum to set those fires. But why do you ignore, for example, the hundreds of thousands of Southern whites who teach in predominately African-American schools? And another example:
These are the Southerners that I identify with and support.
Good call, Zoe. I cited the Southern Poverty Law Center in my other GD thread, Why Does the South Have to Dominate America?, as a good example of Southern liberals in action.
I started both these threads not out of antipathy toward the South (I have chosen to live in the South, and there’s much that I like about it here), but because the current extreme right-wing domination of America disturbs me and it seems to draw much of its base from the South. Michael Lind’s book Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics analyses this issue. If we could help to support Southern liberals as Zoe indicated, that would be great.
Jomo, just this week our governor, who is amazing in his leadership, allowed a bill from the state legislature to become law without his signature. Our legislature voted overwhelmingly to make a “Pro Life” license plate available with part of the funds going to pro-life organizations. That in itself would not bother me. But none of these funds, as far as I know, will be going to organizations against the death penalty. That doesn’t seem right. Further, the legislature voted down the option of having Pro-Choice tags.
Thanks for the heads up on the Lind book!
ftg gets it in one:
My take after way too many years in the region. Southerners have not liked certain changes: abolishing slavery, integration, voting rights, etc. Changes in this area are viewed as “progress”. It’s a short jump to being against all progress, presto: conservatives.
ONe of the things I noticed when my family moved South when I was a kid that the majority of the kids in school actively resented having to learn … ANYTHING. In schools in the midwest and the noertheast there were always a cadre of kids in the back who hated having to learn, but in the South this was the NORM.
Racism, anti-intellectualism and religious bigotry – the delicious mixture of uglinesses that defines southern conservatism.
Evil captor, I know a lot of southeners who don’t fit your description. Isn’t lumping southerners together like that a form of prejudice?
I didn’t say all southerners were like that, I said all CONSERVATIVE southerners are like that. And to be fair, there’s a small minority of conservative southerners that are not motivated by bigotry and racism. But the vast majority of them are. That’s not prejudice. I’ve lived in the South all of my adult life. I know what I’m talking about. You leave the big cities and you’ll find yourself neck deep in the stuff in no time. And it stinks to high heaven, so there’s no chance you can miss it.
I’ll never forget the day I was talking with an employer, which headed a relatively liberal organization based in Atlanta, and he told me casually that “The niggers are taking over.”
The shit runs deep in the South, my friend.
What bothers me is the sudden shift en masse of all conservative Democrats in the (once-“solid”) South to the Republican Party. The timing was the thing: they all went Republican right after the Democrats passed the civil rights laws. That bothers me. Now the South is practically “solid” again: Republican solid. Sure looks like racial politics overriding the situation. Liberal Democrats do exist in the South, but they’re not getting elected.
Jomo Mojo, if you like Michael Lind you might also want to read his book Up From Conservatism: Why the Right is Wrong for America, especially Chapter 5, “Whistling Dixie,” which recounts how the American party system was turned inside-out, the Democrats becoming the party of civil rights, and the Republican Party – founded by Lincoln – finding its new power base among Southern conservatives and white supremacists.
Insofar as Southern conservatism is a problem, the best way Southern liberals can fight it is to fight for electoral reforms such as proportional representation, which empower minorities – of race or of opinion – wherever they are used. That means, even if liberals are a minority in a particular town, they will still get some representation on the town council, etc. PR also opens the way to third-party movements – including the Knights Party and the Southern Independence Party and such, but also including the Greens and Socialists. Check out the website of the Center for Voting & Democracy at www.fairvote.org .
Actually, folks, it seems the South will be getting less conservative anyway–at least in terms of electoral politics above the local level.
African Americans and Latino Americans are becoming larger and larger percentages of eligible voters in the entire region under discussion, including Texas.
The moderating effect has already begun. No, we’re not gonna see a Ted Kennedy from Mississippi any time soon, but John Edwards is hardly Jesse Helms.
Look for the South to join the mainstream on anti-poverty, social spending type issues. Wedge issues without any strong racial/ethnic correlate (abortion, gay rights) will tag along, though more slowly. Support for the military, and a “muscular” foreign policy, will probably continue to be a hallmark of the region for generations to come.
(BTW, I’d expect some of the more leftish areas of the non-South to correspondingly drift toward the center, as white southern families uproot themselves and resettle elsewhere. On all but a very few issues, the USA is oozing toward the middleground, where quasi-moderate Republicans battle quasi-centrist Democrats to the death–making more and more out of less and less. IMHO.)
So one school is a large enough statistical sample to understand all the schools in a dozen or so states surrounding it? Is it fair to judge a school in New Hampshire by a school in Queens, New York? Are the norms of teens in Newark the same as those in Newport? I live in the south, and I was surrounded by bright and ambitious students at the public school I went to. Should I assume that every school in the south was like that?
In all fairness there was also a massive population shift from the North to the South at around the same time which brought many Republicans (and Democrats as well ) to the commercial centers all over the south. A good percentage of the Republicans I know grew up somewhere else. I do however agree with you to some degree.
I’m reading these posts, many bring smiles, some are just outright funny. My first question is what exactly do you term ‘the South’?
I’ve lived in the South all my life, and yes, we definitely have our share of racism, prejudice, all those things, but not much more than any other region. Just different races in different places.
With the on-slaught of Northerners moving South, how do you know it’s the true ‘Southerner’ that is conservative or liberal? Are you talking historical or now?
No, we didn’t own slaves. You’d be surprised at the number of Southerners that never did.
I could never understand why people would live somewhere that they hate. Why live a miserable life and make those all around you miserable too. The world is a big place.
Well, how about the states that were in the Confederacy, for starters…
**Who cares? It could be the No True Scotsman. All I know is that the extremist right-wingers who have taken over the country get a disproportionate amount of their support from the South. According to Michael Lind’s book.
How many of these allegedly influential Northern conservatives have recently arrived down here? This is a novel explanation for patterns that go back before the Second World War. Are you guys really asserting that it was the influx of Northerner conservatives that turned the South conservative in defiance of established political culture there?
Both, as my OP suggested. I’m asking about the historical reasons and the present-day reasons for why it turned out this way.
Jomo Mojo wrote:
It’s not that simple. Some Southern Democrats have switched to the Republican Party. On the other hand, it’s hard to ignore the influence of transplanted Northerners.
Look at Atlanta. You see many references to the Republican “donut” here. Central Atlanta is mostly Democratic, but the suburbs are largely Republican. If you’ve spent any time in Atlanta’s suburbs, you will quickly learn that they are largely populated by Northern transplants. And if you’ve spent any time around Northern transplants in the South, you will quickly learn that they are mostly Republican.
Why? My best guess would be that most of these transplants are white-collar workers, and that white-collar workers tend to be a conservative group.
Also, I’m guessing that many Northerners have a preconceived notion of the South as a conservative place, and consequently conservative Northerners may be more likely than liberal Northerners to want to move here. So there may be some self-selection at work (making the notion of the South as a conservative enclave a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, at least as far as transplants are concerned).
Newt Gingrich, it should be noted, is Pennsylvanian by birth.
Jomo Mojo also wrote:
Well, no.
The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. The broad-based shift in the South from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party didn’t come until much later. Politics in the South were mostly Democratic at least until the 80’s. The big shift in Georgia really didn’t happen until the 90’s, and manifested itself with a number of politicians switching parties in '94. That shift coincided not with the enactment of Civil Rights legislation, but with the massive influx of Northern transplants into Georgia. Georgia only just elected its first Republican governor since Reconstruction.
Again, the transplants are only part of it. Racial politics do play a part as well, as evidenced by the Confederate flag debates (with the Republicans flirting with the “fergit Hell” crowd). No question that Republicans have courted racists. However, the Republican Party of the South includes not just racists in its tent, but white-collar economic conservatives and hard-right religionists. Members of these groups may or may not harbor racist feelings, but their conservatism does not rest on racism.
It is dangerous to paint Southern conservatives in broad strokes.
(These, by the way, are the observations of a Southern liberal.)
Two high schools in the South, we moved around a lot. And frankly, the same anti-intellectualism everywhere in the South since then. I will grant you that it has been a while since I was in high school, but the difference was STILL remarkable. Iowa and Minnesota seemed like civilization. Mississippi and Georgia … NOT like civilization.
Why do I stay? Well, it’s obvious the dumbass fuckers down here need my help. Plus I’m Southern by birth and both sides of my family go back generations. Just helpin the homies is all.