‘Southern Cultural Nationalism’ and
Southern Liberals
I went to a journalism seminar at the University of Georgia
(UGA) campus in Athens, Georgia, USA, which was announced in the
local alternative weekly The Flagpole
as ‘For the Love of the South.” Yup. As a cranky Yankee, I had to see what
‘southern’ journalists had to say about their region, because no one ‘up north’
is talking about how they ‘love’ the north. The panel consisted of editors from the 'Flagpole,’ ‘The Bitter Southerner - Great Stories from the South;’ the ‘Oxford American – A Magazine of the South;’
the NY Times Atlanta bureau and ‘Scalawag – Reckoning with the South;’ along with one member of the
journalism faculty at UGA.
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| The South is Easy to Find |
If you pay attention you discover that the ‘south’ is
saturated with an obsession about itself as a region, and this does not compare
to anything in the north. The reporter from the NY Times brought this up in the
panel discussion. The exception might be
the tub-thumpers of New York City,
though they never identify with ‘the north,’ only their own city. The conservatives in ‘the west’ attempt to
carve out some kind of identity, but the Pacific Coast
states blunt their regionalism.
The South is Everywhere
I went to a fashion show at UGA and cups were handed out
that said ‘Stay Southern.’ I’ve never
seen a cup like that in Minnesota. One local Athens
rock venue is called ‘The Georgia
Theater.” If it were in Minneapolis, we’d laugh
at the dullness of the title “Minnesota Theater” as the name of a rock music
venue. Minneapolis’
own tongue-in-cheek outdoor store “Midwest Mountaineering” doesn’t even know
that Minnesota is not in the ‘Midwest’ but is actually in the north and obviously has no mountains. If you go to a music show in Athens where
roots, folk or country music are played, you will inevitably hear one or two
damn songs about “being born in Kentucky” or Tennessee or some other southern
state. You rarely hear Minnesota or Iowa
bands yowling about their region or even state.
The Weather Channel, headquartered in Atlanta,
refers to the area between the Dakotas and Pennsylvania
as ‘the Midwest’ not ‘the north.’ They never
call New England ‘the north’
but maybe the north-east and definitely New England.
They never fail to include Georgia in ‘the
south’ or at least the ‘south-east.’ This geographic misdirection is rampant, essentially
disappearing ‘the north’ as a place. The
2018 Minneapolis city campaign to re-christen Minnesota ‘The Bold
North' during the recent Super Bowl is indicative of the lack of northern
regionalism or nationalism.
There is no ‘northern rock’ genre to compare with
‘southern rock.’ There is ‘southern
gothic’ as a type of U.S.
literature, but nothing of the reverse. Country
music itself is self-consciously based in the south, though it certainly flows
into rural areas throughout the country.
There is no ‘northern’ equivalent.
We have the ‘Southern Baptist
Convention” but not the northern version.
There is a 'southern strategy' which has been successful. I could go on, but you see the point.
All of this expresses a smothering southern regional or ‘national’
consciousness, in this case cultural. Is
this basically progressive or reactionary?
I think the latter.
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| Funny and Symptomatic |
The Panel
The speakers on the panel, especially the editor of Scalawag, made brief obligatory nods to
‘racial and class’ problems in the south.
But then they went on to one of their central topics, the stereotypes and
misconceptions about the south. They insisted there is a ‘modern south’ now,
full of ‘diversity,’ localism, cross-culturalism and pleasantries, incorporating
migrants, hip-hop and women. Great
southern food like okra (?), great music, beautiful landscapes and craft cocktails! I like music or fiction artists from the south
as much as the next person and the land can certainly be outstanding. But the subtext of what they were saying is
that the ‘new South,’ as inaugurated by the presidency of neo-liberals like Jimmy
Carter and later, Bill Clinton, exists and seemingly has little to do with the
‘old one.’ Interestingly, the concept of the 'new south' was first introduced in 1877... so the 'new south' is not so new. (Scalawag is headquartered in Durham, North Carolina; the Bitter Southerner in a suburb south of
Atlanta; the Oxford American in Little
Rock, Arkansas.) It seems problems are in the past. But is the ‘new’ south really that new?
Is the South Oppressed?
For instance, is the south as a whole an oppressed
region, hence logically responding to oppression with expressions of national
or regional defiance? No, unless you
confuse some idiotic northerners making fun of ‘rednecks’ as ‘oppression.’ This
is not an expression of the ‘black belt’ or even Appalachia.
Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the oil patch
and other centers of capital are scattered throughout the country. They manage to oppress every single geography
and rural area in different ways. The
southern capitalists are centered in Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami and Charlotte.
The most powerful and right-wing are in
Texas, the
center of oil and gas corporations. Many
low-quality fast-food chains originate from the south, including the most
popular diabetic beverage of all time, Coca-Cola (Atlanta).
Ted Turner’s media empire started in Atlanta and Delta, UPS, Home Depot,
AFLAC, The Southern Energy Co. and Suntrust are headquartered there too. Charlotte is the home to top national
financial corporations like Lending Tree, Bank of America and BBT and others like
Lowes and Duke Energy. Miami has
American Airlines, Office Depot, Wackenhut and Motorola. Even partially ruined New Orleans hosts corporations like Entergy
and Centurylink. Wichita, Kansas
is home to Koch Industries. The vast majority of U.S. military bases are located in
the south. Many automobile manufacturers
moved their plants from the north to the south to get cheaper wages, or came
from overseas to do the same. Its
factory chicken industry dominates the country.
It is the last bastion of coal. It
is a powerful sector of the U.S.
capitalist class, not some backward bunch of plantation owners living without
air-conditioning while watching sharecroppers bringing in the cotton.
And yet, tax revenues flow from mostly northern
states to mostly southern states, as part of the currency union that is the U.S.A.
Mississippi Godamn, II
It is not an oppressed region, but its regional working
class is the most oppressed in the U.S., as determined by every
statistical measure you can name. Disposable
income, poverty-rates, health coverage, under-age pregnancy, unionism, abortion rights, education,
literacy, collectivity, voting rights, life expectancy, workplace safety, pollution,
homicides, voter turnout, public benefits, privatization, Medicaid, minimum wage laws etc. Mississippi
is at the bottom of the state stack and this affects the black population of
that state the most. Louisiana has the
most prisoners per population of any state in the union, with Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Alabama
not far behind. New Orleans parish and its archaic 'habitual offender' law, along with plea bargaining, is one of the main reasons. So they sell ‘southern
nationalism’ to white workers, as if waving a virtual rebel flag at northerners
will solve these problems. The basic
truth is that these problems are also their problems, white workers' problems.
Did this panel of journalists mention so-called ‘right-to-work’
laws? Did they mention the word
‘Republican’ once? Did they mention the
role of fundamentalist religion? Did
they mention the long list of low quality-of-life indicators for the southern
population and southern states? Did they
mention the low minimum wages in the south?
Did they mention the modern neo-Confederates? Not at all.
Did they mention mass incarceration?
Once in passing, by the editor of the Scalawag. There was a polite
hush over specific southern problems.
All evidently to be combated by ‘increasing diversity,’ the all-purpose liberal
panacea and also the ostensible goal of many corporate HR departments. They concluded that the upscale Gun & Garden magazine could do with
some diversity, even though most rich white people in the south probably don’t
want to look at anyone but their own.
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| VW Chooses Non-Union |
Unions and the South
One person who recognized that there was still a
continuing real ‘battle’ in the south was the UGA professor. And that is exactly it. To improve the U.S. for the working class,
especially black and Latino people who are the most exploited, unions and
progressive community organizations have to win the fight in the south – not
ignore it. That was the 1940s program of
the AFL-CIO – to organize the south, and it is still absolutely necessary. As an example, a Caterpillar plant was just
re-located to Athens, Georgia
from Illinois,
making small-track bulldozers and excavators, but with a far cheaper workforce
due to the absence of a union.
For northern workers, southern ‘right-to-work-for-less’
laws are the Dred Scott laws of modern wage slavery. Dred Scott was a slave who lived for a time at
Fort Snelling in Minnesota, and also in Wisconsin and Illinois
with his slave master. According to an
1857 U.S.
Supreme Court decision when he sued for his freedom, he was still a slave even
though these northern states did not have legal slavery. This became the basis of the fugitive slave
laws, which is why you had to get to Canada to really get away. As the battle in Wisconsin showed, these anti-union laws move up the Mississippi. They rob the north of work by enabling
plant foreclosures. Delta Airlines,
based in Atlanta,
merged with Minneapolis-based Northwest Airlines in 2008 and in the process,
decertified the Machinists and other unions that had existed at Northwest. The unions are now trying to re-unionize Delta now. The problem is not just cheap labor in China or Mexico, it is in our own southern-accented
‘maquiladora’ zone, running a race to the bottom. This middle-class panel did not see
fit to address this key issue.
A small union was recently organized on the UGA
campus, the “United Workers of Georgia,
Local 3265.” They attempted to run an ad on a local radio station, which
refused their ad because a union ‘was not consistent with free market
principles.’ This is a state campus, so
the ability to organize is easier than in the directly capitalist workplaces,
but still very difficult They have no contract of course. That is what
the low-paid workers of the south face.
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| Oxford, MS Town Square - Faulkner Land |
Shadow of the Civil War
The real issue is that southern regional / national
consciousness was based on the agrarian and plantation economy of indebted
servitude, then slavery - first white, then black. This clash of economic systems with a more industrialized
north populated by free farmers led to the Civil War. As noted in the book, “Why the South Lost
the Civil War” the south lost primarily because of the failure of this southern
nationalism. As books like “Peoples’
History of the Civil War,” “Guerillas, Unionists and Violence on the
Confederate Home Front” and “The Civil War in Florida” all note,
non-plantation regions in nearly every southern state resisted secession and opposed the war.
Yet ‘southern nationalism’ still continues,
attempting to bind especially white southern workers to white southern
capitalists. And it extends across the
whole political and social culture of the south. It is most strongly seen in the openly racist
defense of Confederate monuments, leaders or the Confederate battle flag by fascist and
alt-right groups.
Politically it is seen in the practices and rhetoric
of the present Republican Party, which is strongest in the south, controlling
every state. It is accompanied by the
fundamentalist propaganda of the Southern Baptist Convention and the strong celebrations
of militarism in southern states (even at Atlanta’s
Hartsfield airport), especially around the civic religion of college football. The continuing efforts of the oil, gas and
coal industries, along with auto, to demonize unions and mask the effects of global
warming (even as it floods the south) are part of the same right-wing assault. It is coming not just from Wall Street but
the resurgent southern capitalists. Wall
Street in fact is in league with them, as it was prior to the Civil War. Slavery was actually a large part of the northern capitalist class's strategy for profits. Now the federal government is once again held
by the virtual party of the south.
Ironically, the same Supreme Court that criminally ruled on Dred Scott will
probably soon rule that paying dues to a union in a union-represented ‘agency’
shop is illegal in government workplaces. This will help spread southern
anti-unionism nationwide. The case is
“Janus v. AFSCME Council 31.” You want a union, pretty soon you’ll have to
escape to Canada.
One Big Happy Southern Family
The southern capitalists have succeeded in their
strategy to split southern white workers from the black and Latino working
class by claiming that ‘we are all southerners,’ binding lord and vassal together.
This ‘rebel’ tactic works, especially when combined with intimidation of all kinds. This can be seen in the recent
anti-union votes at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee and the Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi. Imagine that. The majority voted for a German or Japanese company over an evidently 'foreign' U.S. based union, the UAW! The UAW was faced with incredible intimidation, threats to close the plants and an almost community-wide hostility on the part of businesses and politicians. This is the root of the subservience
of southerners to their ostensible ‘betters’ - threats. Even small farmers in the south buy into this
fable, though corporate farming is pushing them off the land too, as it did to black
farmers already.
How does liberal southern cultural nationalism play
into this scenario? From what I can see,
it dovetails, as they all embrace the concept of ‘the wonderful south’ in
varying degrees. The fact of the matter
is that in every capitalist country, there are regions that are the most
benighted. In the U.S. the South is it. Combined and uneven development is essential to capitalist
economics and this country is no exception.
The Magazines
The Oxford
American is a mostly apolitical cultural and academic journal that styles
itself the New Yorker of the south.
(Though the New Yorker was never a
symbol of the north.) At one point the
editor of the Bitter Southerner sounded
like he said that the average income of their supporters was $335K a year,
which created a buzz onstage. When I
brought up the term ‘southern cultural nationalism’ to the panel in the short question
and answer period, the editor of the Bitter
Southerner threatened to semi-humorously come down and ‘shake’ me. Striking
a nerve is always entertaining.
Scalawag seems to
be the most left in its approach to political issues in the south, mentioning in
their most recent issue capitalism and the ‘Trillbilly Workers Party,’ a leftist
podcast out of Appalachia. In one podcast the Trillbillies take
right-wing ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ author T.D. Vance apart. The term ‘scalawag’ was applied to
southerners who supported Reconstruction and the post-Civil War Republican
Party, so the title is progressive. The
editor returned from the north to the south to ‘reclaim’ the south, as her
relatives were part of the mass exodus to the north in the 1920s-1930s. But you’d never guess that from the
presentation - instead the editor wanted the south to be a ‘re-imagined place.’
But what that means is left unimagined. The
Flagpole heroically soldiers on as an alternative weekly based on
advertising - making food, drink, music and mild liberal politics its
mainstays. The Bitter Southerner seems more like a high-end lifestyle magazine for
educated southerners, which the editor said earns most of its money from sales
of T-shirts and coffee mugs (!) We all
know about the NY Times, and it
mostly covers hard news like the Florida
school shooting.
What would be really progressive is to challenge
southern regionalism as an idea, because it stretches across the political spectrum,
but is a mainstay of the southern capitalist class and its far-right allies. Tub thumping of any kind – whether
‘patriotic’ Americanism, southern or ‘western regionalism;’ city boosterism
(Babbitt-style), ‘love my state’ mania or football team loyalty – are all crude
and divisive geographic perspectives that ignore our potential collective unity
as proletarians across all these borders.
Yes, of different places and locales, of different ethnicities and
genders, of different national origins or sexualities, of different levels of
oppression, but still potentially united as people with the same economic and social goals.
Besides the civil war books mentioned above that are
all reviewed below, other relevant reviews are:
“Hillbilly Elegy,” “White Trash,” Jacobin’s ‘Civil War’
issue, “The New Jim Crow” and “Slavery by Another Name.” Use blog search box, upper left.
Athens, GA
March 1, 2018
