The South Is Really Getting Scary
Posted on April 24th, 2014 in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
Do you ever feel alienated from large parts of the country? Reading about how radically conservative the South is becoming, I do. In Georgia yesterday, the governor signed into law a bill allowing people to carry guns into schools and airports. The governor of Mississippi just signed a law banning abortions after 20 weeks, with no exception for rape or incest. But truth be told, the law probably won’t make a huge difference: There’s only one abortion clinic in Mississippi anyway. Across the South, most Southerners “loathe” Obamacare, even as they think that their state’s health care exchange is working well. And all the time, the South is only becoming more racist; there’s barely a white person in the region who can bring him or herself to say a kind word about President Obama. The whole area is starting to feel like Dallas on November 21st, 1963—a place defined by fear and hate.
This is, funnily enough, not a good thing for the Republican Party, as there aren’t enough Southern racists to elect a president, but there are enough to stop a Republican moderate from getting the GOP nomination. But that’s bad for the country. The Republican Party should be a healthy political force, rather than a toxic one.
I’ve searched for some good explanations why the South has become even more conservative during the past, say, six years. My suspicion is that it’s a reaction against having an African-American president, but it must be more than that, too. Or is that last part just wishful thinking?
4 Responses
4/24/2014 1:21 pm
I think it’s more complicated than that and the picture is not so, um, black and white. In fact, many areas of the south have actually become more liberal (a bit at least). For example, Obama won North Carolina and Virginia, and the latter is just about a blue state now, or at least the bluest of purple states right now. Kentucky has a Democratic governor and is probably the state that has been most successful in implemeting Obamacare. Nunn has a decent chance to win the Senate seat in Georgia and McConnell is in trouble in Kentucky. The growth of suburbia — Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, northern VA — has helped moderate politics.
Perhaps part of what is happening is that you’re seeing a digging in type reaction by conservatives. Having an African American president is part of it to be sure, but in some ways even that is just another sign of the apocalypse, of how the world has changed for these people. It’s also the decline of the rural South (I think it was Shelby Foote who once said “Atlanta is what 500,000 southerners died trying to prevent in the Civil War”), loss of jobs for non-college educated rural males, Hispanic immigration, changing morals (gay marriage!) and so forth. And because the region is still pretty conservative compared to the rest of the country, when the Tea Party takes over the Republican party, that candidate goes on to win (see, for example, North Carolina). So the moderating politics, the cultural shift, changing nature of the region and more nuanced story often don’t show up in who gets elected. At least not yet.
Feeling alienated though? Go visit Charleston, which has a food scene to rival SF and a DIY steampunk craft culture to rival Brooklyn. Or visit New Orleans or Nashville, still the two most exciting music cities in the country. Or read The Oxford American and Garden and Gun magazines and get a different sense of the region. You’ll be pleasantly surprised
4/24/2014 1:29 pm
I love Charleston…but the University of Charleston is just now embroiled in an uproar because it asked freshmen to read a book by a lesbian, with state pols threatening to cut funding. And if you go to the lovely plantations on the outskirts of town, you’ll find that the word “slavery” doesn’t come up much. So there are some issues there.
New Orleans doesn’t count as the South.
Niether does the Oxford American; that’s like saying Austin is representative of Texas.
Finally, I wouldn’t say that North Carolina is practically blue, nor Virginia, for that matter, though perhaps more than NC.
But I do think you’re right in your second paragraph; there’s obviously a lot of cultural and economic change happening that is deeply threatening. But the biggest change, of course, is the color of the president’s skin.
4/24/2014 2:01 pm
One of the reasons I pointed to Charleston is precisely because of the current brouhaha. My point is that it is a complex region, and that complexity is often lost or missed. (Particularly in the NYT — they’ve always had a hard time writing well about the South, especially after Rick Bragg left. But that’s another story.) After all, as you know, NYC has had many moments of vicious racism over the last twenty or thirty years so. But no one would say that NYC is racist itself, the story is obviously complicated.
A couple more points. To say New Orleans doesn’t count as the South tells me you need to learn more about the South. It was a critical slave trading city, the home to many important, Confederate leaders, and a vital port for the Confederacy, the loss of which was one of the crucial moments in the Civil War . A long time ago you say? Take a walk through the Garden District and tell me that’s not the South. The main point is “The South” is not one entity. Ignore for a moment, “new south” type places like the Northern Virginia suburbs: the traditional South consists of Appalachia, the low country of South Carolina, the delta, horse country of Kentucky, Memphis — I can go on, but you get my drift. It’s a diverse and complex region.
And The Oxford American may not represent “The South” but it certainly describes and expresses a part of it. You can’t talk about the South without talking about the music, literary tradition, outsider art, and food, which is what that magazine is about.
As for Austin, I’m not going to touch that one. Texas is southern but it’s also western. It’s a whole separate beast.
4/24/2014 2:07 pm
I think we’re mostly in agreement, and I know it’s not entirely fair to discount New Orleans because it’s obviously in the South. At the same time, I barely think of New Orleans as an *American* city, much less a southern one. So in my unfairness, I would say that Louisiana is the South, and New Orleans is sui generis.
I always enjoyed reading Rick Bragg in the Times, but then again, I always thought he was making it up half the time.
Which is a Yogi Berra-ism, but I’m sticking by it.