Adam Nossiter has an article in yesterday’s New York Times on the American South’s reaction to Obama’s candidacy and election. The gist of the piece is that southern whites, who are backward anyway, are afraid of blacks, so it’s a good thing those states don’t matter in elections anymore.
Of course much of what Nossiter says (and insinuates) is correct. Maybe it’s a cheap shot to mention that the people interviewed are standing ‘in the parking lot of the Shop and Save’ or had to talk ‘over the country music on the radio’ in a barber shop ‘decorated with hunting and fishing trophies’. Maybe it’s a little over the top to call Alabama ’shackled to the chains of yesterday’ (quoting a U of Alabama professor). And maybe it’s because I live in a university town, but I have trouble believing that the majority of southerners are as bothered by Obama’s ethnicity as the people Nossiter interviews. But even so, I can’t deny that Nossiter did interview real people, who did say very backward things about Obama (e.g. ‘I think any time you have someone elected president of the United States with a Muslim name, whether they are white or black, there are some very unsettling things’). Unfortunately, it’s a good deal easier to find people who will say that sort of thing down here than it is in other parts of the country.
As disappointed as I am with the southerners whose views are represented in the article (what happened to the South of I’ll Take My Stand, anyway?), I remain equally disappointed with the reaction to those views. What’s on display in Nossiter’s article is the same old culture war stance that makes some southerners (and, more broadly, many evangelicals nationwide) so ineffective and backward. The go-to political move in recent American political discourse seems to be to present a particular group as the Impediment to what really needs to happen, which in turn justifies a good deal more than seems appropriate for a ‘civil public square’ (such as Nossiter’s barely veiled mocking of southern culture, or certain evangelicals’ tendency to label their foes as antichrists or tools of Satan, etc.). It’s true that the South needs to grow up in certain ways, but the way to achieve that end is not to create a culture war machine and point it in the general direction of the Tennessee River. The old attitude of ‘first take the log out of your own eye, and then…’ would be beneficial for all parties.
I would expect Bill O’Reilly or the Family Research Council (have you seen the ‘letter from 2012′ the FRC recently released? Disgusting.) to resort to the tactics of the culture war. But for one reason or another, I’d come to expect a little more class from the Times. It’s not that their data is wrong (people really think those things) or their assessment is off (the South really will matter less in politics, and maybe that’s a good thing until we can get our act together). But what’s on display in Nossiter’s article is the socially acceptable equivalent of the fear-mongering that Sarah Palin and groups like the FRC deploy against their culture enemies. That’s not charity and it’s not good politics.
If we rejoice, with Nossiter’s article, that the South is finally obsolete enough to leave behind, it’s possible that only Southerners will feel the ill effects. But that’s no way to treat your neighbors. Critique is one thing, but selecting a particular region, ideological group, ethnic group or social class as the big bad wolf doesn’t accomplish anything, except sell newspapers.
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13 November, 2008 at 11:26 am
It is, of course, to Nossiter’s benefit that the South of “I’ll Take My Stand” is gone – or almost. I’d like to think that as long as that book remains in print there is the off-chance that people will stumble across it.
The heavy irony is that the South became the party of Lincoln, to an extreme error. I don’t know of any other group who has maintained its post-September 11 pro-war mentality better than Southerners and I’m still shocked that we all torn up over a handful of buildings that got knocked over in New York. I don’t mean to be insensitive but it is fairly awful that the supporters of secession became the supporters of union even of empire.
But Nossiter gets what he wants. He goes after the riffraff in the parking lot of a Shop and Save for sellable quotations. Certainly there a number of people that think that way, but if you go into the parking lot of decrepit strip malls anywhere in the country and ask for political science you’re going to get it on the cheap. Elections are now about expenses – how expensive are your political views? – and not necessarily how correct. Of course, this cuts both sides.