Posted by Sir Four at 3:25pm Oct 25 '09This isn't really where I wanted to go with this thread. I'm more interested in the future political implications of one region of the country diverging so far from the rest in its views.
But, well... race, race, race. Okay...
It's been suggested in this thread that talking frankly and honestly about race in the South--discussing how race plays into Southern politics--equates to Northern arrogance or putting people down. No. This is not true. Nor is it true that racial-political feelings are uniformly distributed around the country--a nice PC thought, but a false one.
I'll put some things out there, and I hope people might respond factually rather than emotionally.
Before the civil rights era, the Republican base was in the North; the Democrats, the South. Republicans were the slave-freers and reconstructionists. The Democrats, for their part, were a bunch of goddamn racists who ran on keeping the black man down (see the Redemption and the Solid South). This would change, however.
In the 50s and 60s, Democrats began to embrace civil rights for blacks. Many in the South were not happy with this. Strom Thurmond, a Democrat, split with his party and ran for president on an explicitly segregationist platform: "I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches."
He won four Southern states: Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi. Eventually, Thurmond would find a comfortable home in the Republican party.
George Wallace, politician from Alabama, initially tried to run for governor without being a complete racist. Having lost in his first attempt, he said: "You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor."
Wallace ran again and this time won the first of three terms as governor. In his inaugural, he famously declared: "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
It was, of course, the Supreme Court that ruled against school segregation. This is what school segregation in the US looked like prior to Brown v. Board:
Another interesting thing to look at is interracial marriage bans. Of course, a Supreme Court ruling stuck those down, too. Here's a map showing where those bans were prior to this ruling:
Sorry, this post is getting long.
After Johnson signed civil rights legislation into law, Republicans settled on a "southern strategy" that began with Nixon and would continue through Reagan. Lee Atwater, the Karl Rove of his day, had this to say:
^^^ This is the key to everything--what Lee Atwater calls "abstract." This is the point where politics in the South become less explicit about race and more tangential to it. This is where "code words" and phrases start coming into play.
By the 80s, you never heard a politician get explicit about race. What you heard about was, for example, "states rights." It sounds innocuous, but the term was born straight out of the Southern states resisting federal meddling in how they handled their blacks. You heard about "welfare mothers." In this case "welfare mothers" was a substitute for "lazy black women in the ghetto." You heard about "activist judges"--the honest definition of an "activist judge" is any judge who rules that a hated minority must be treated with equality. You heard about being "tough on crime" which was code for tossing black males into prison and throwing away the key.
And race continues to be subtly referenced in advertising... in the 80s, the Willie Horton ad (Atwater vowed to "make Willie Horton [Dukakis's] running mate"), in the 90s with Jesse Helms' "white hands" ad ("they gave your job to a minority"), and in the 00s with the white girl saying "call me" to Harold Ford.
And maybe someone can tell me what Sarah Palin means when she talks about "real America." Maybe someone can tell me what Glenn Beck means when he says "Obama hates the white culture." Maybe someone can tell me what the teabaggers mean when they say "We need to take our country back."
At least Pat Buchanan, that old racist, is honest enough to answer that last one: "America was once their country," Buchanan recently said of working-class whites. "They sense they are losing it. And they are right."
I'm not claiming racism is exclusive to the South. But to ignore history and refuse to examine how race has shaped attitudes and political leanings is ludicrous. Racism itself has become far more abstract than it once was, but that doesn't mean it isn't woven into the political fabric of, well, much of white America (racial code words play to people in every state), but especially Southern white America. It's not "arrogant" to acknowledge this. I'm not somehow bragging that NJ never had an interracial marriage ban on the books, for example. I wasn't alive back then and can take no credit for anything that happened. Likewise the Texans of 4K are not personally responsible for anything. There is no need for offense. But let's be honest.
But, well... race, race, race. Okay...
It's been suggested in this thread that talking frankly and honestly about race in the South--discussing how race plays into Southern politics--equates to Northern arrogance or putting people down. No. This is not true. Nor is it true that racial-political feelings are uniformly distributed around the country--a nice PC thought, but a false one.
I'll put some things out there, and I hope people might respond factually rather than emotionally.
Before the civil rights era, the Republican base was in the North; the Democrats, the South. Republicans were the slave-freers and reconstructionists. The Democrats, for their part, were a bunch of goddamn racists who ran on keeping the black man down (see the Redemption and the Solid South). This would change, however.
In the 50s and 60s, Democrats began to embrace civil rights for blacks. Many in the South were not happy with this. Strom Thurmond, a Democrat, split with his party and ran for president on an explicitly segregationist platform: "I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches."
He won four Southern states: Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi. Eventually, Thurmond would find a comfortable home in the Republican party.
George Wallace, politician from Alabama, initially tried to run for governor without being a complete racist. Having lost in his first attempt, he said: "You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor."
Wallace ran again and this time won the first of three terms as governor. In his inaugural, he famously declared: "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
It was, of course, the Supreme Court that ruled against school segregation. This is what school segregation in the US looked like prior to Brown v. Board:
Another interesting thing to look at is interracial marriage bans. Of course, a Supreme Court ruling stuck those down, too. Here's a map showing where those bans were prior to this ruling:
Sorry, this post is getting long.
After Johnson signed civil rights legislation into law, Republicans settled on a "southern strategy" that began with Nixon and would continue through Reagan. Lee Atwater, the Karl Rove of his day, had this to say:
You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"--that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
^^^ This is the key to everything--what Lee Atwater calls "abstract." This is the point where politics in the South become less explicit about race and more tangential to it. This is where "code words" and phrases start coming into play.
By the 80s, you never heard a politician get explicit about race. What you heard about was, for example, "states rights." It sounds innocuous, but the term was born straight out of the Southern states resisting federal meddling in how they handled their blacks. You heard about "welfare mothers." In this case "welfare mothers" was a substitute for "lazy black women in the ghetto." You heard about "activist judges"--the honest definition of an "activist judge" is any judge who rules that a hated minority must be treated with equality. You heard about being "tough on crime" which was code for tossing black males into prison and throwing away the key.
And race continues to be subtly referenced in advertising... in the 80s, the Willie Horton ad (Atwater vowed to "make Willie Horton [Dukakis's] running mate"), in the 90s with Jesse Helms' "white hands" ad ("they gave your job to a minority"), and in the 00s with the white girl saying "call me" to Harold Ford.
And maybe someone can tell me what Sarah Palin means when she talks about "real America." Maybe someone can tell me what Glenn Beck means when he says "Obama hates the white culture." Maybe someone can tell me what the teabaggers mean when they say "We need to take our country back."
At least Pat Buchanan, that old racist, is honest enough to answer that last one: "America was once their country," Buchanan recently said of working-class whites. "They sense they are losing it. And they are right."
I'm not claiming racism is exclusive to the South. But to ignore history and refuse to examine how race has shaped attitudes and political leanings is ludicrous. Racism itself has become far more abstract than it once was, but that doesn't mean it isn't woven into the political fabric of, well, much of white America (racial code words play to people in every state), but especially Southern white America. It's not "arrogant" to acknowledge this. I'm not somehow bragging that NJ never had an interracial marriage ban on the books, for example. I wasn't alive back then and can take no credit for anything that happened. Likewise the Texans of 4K are not personally responsible for anything. There is no need for offense. But let's be honest.
added on 3:32pm Oct 25 '09:
A note on the second map: June 12, 1967 was when interracial marriage bans were declared unconstitutional. Basically, "activist judges" interfered with "states' rights" by forcing the South to comply.
The South and Race - Sir Four