“The Southernization of America – A Story of Democracy in the Balance” by F. Gaillard and C. Tucker, 2022
This is another fever dream about the last 50 years since the Carter administration by two southern journalists trying to understand what the fuck happened. They seem surprised! The heinous monsters are many – Segregationist George Wallace; Nixon and his Southern strategy; Californian Ron Reagan and his wars on drugs and welfare queens; Georgian Newt Gingrich and his vile hostility; Texan Bush and his disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Kansas' Koch oil money; the constant bellowing of Rush Limbaugh and lastly, Mar-Lago Boy Trump's raging Christian-nationalist racism. Southern presidents and candidates – Wallace, Carter, Gore, Bush, Clinton – play prominent roles, with Democrats getting off scot-free. If anyone remembers, the Southern slavocracy basically controlled the U.S. Congress for many years before the Civil War. Since then “states rights” have not died. If that seems like a similar situation to now, have a drink. What comes next is darker still.
Gaillard/Tucker's story of the past is purely one of black skin color hatred and violence, the original sins of 'Southernization.' Now Muslims, gays and Mexicans have been added to the list. The authors reference the liberal-left book “Caste” about the color castes larded into the class system in the U.S. but especially obvious in the southern U.S. (Caste is reviewed below.) The gun panics pushed by the NRA are linked to 'crime' – dark-skin crime. Yet darker-skinned people also buy guns for protection, as poverty is directly related to crime.
As you can see, economics has no place in their view. The growing strength of southern Corporations, the southern locus of the fast food and chicken CAFO industries, the anti-unionism of the South, the toxic oil, coal and gas companies HQ'd in Texas, the low-wages and benefits proffered up by “state's rights,” the hard Southern class system – all invisible. The material gains of super-exploitation through racism – what? The intentional split in the working class - unseen. They don't mention increasing proletarianization as industries move south, but they do mention white-collar northerners moving south, such as to Atlanta or Austin.
It's just 'ideas' - personal racism or bigotry that determine 'bad' white people's attitudes. Toss in some demographic changes in the South and viola, parts of the South are becoming 'purplish!' So there is hope! It is the line of the leadership of the Democratic Party. In a way, the centrist, 3rd Way, neoliberal politics of the Democratic Party ITSELF has been pushed heavily by Southerners in league with Wall Street. Not a word about that kind of Southernization in this book. Instead we have a celebration of South Carolina Democrat James Clyburn torpedoing Vermonter Bernie Sanders. Clyburn was first elected to the House 30 years ago and his politics reflect it.
What facts do these southern Democrats have to advance their thesis of Southernization, except the more overt racism spread nationally by the Republican Party, a Party whose main base is in southern and prairie states? Institutional racism is off this list by their design, certainly. The Supreme Court decisions in Gore v. Bush, labor, redistricting and voting rights, abortion, guns, vaccines, affirmative action, the EPA and prayer all reflect conservatism, but especially in its bulwark, the South. That is no secret. There are the retrograde and pedophilic Southern Baptists in love with 'traditionalism.' And the echoes of Jim Crow, the Civil War and slavery in convict leasing, incarceration, voter suppression, police killings, racist violence, Confederate statues and base names - even modern labor slavery. Most of these are unmentioned. They might add the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, a theocratic Christian conservative from Alabama who will be president if both Biden and Harris die in a plane crash. Texas is even going to vote on secession this year, according to reports. I suspect that will be a 'non-binding' resolution but it shows their thinking.
The only benefit of the book is to show what a shit-show Southern politics is, but that has been known for years and years and years. We might say it started in 1619 and became an 'original' part of the archaic 1789 Constitution. The authors' only perspective is picking a side in the rigged 2 rich-party system absent any class struggle. Class struggle and the role of racism to materially super-exploit part of the class while splitting the working class are elementary Marxist truths. The key is joint proletarian action against southern capital first of all. These are over-their-head abstractions for these authors, who only care about standard electoral work. The rationale for this book as something new or even as a contribution to other liberals is thin to non-existent. It's a shallow journalistic take on Southernization, though perhaps for some it's a start.
Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Caste” (Wilkerson); “Southern Cultural Nationalism and Southern Liberals,” “Hillbilly Elegy” (Vance); “White Trash,” “The New Jim Crow” (Alexander); “The Neo-Confederate States,” “Florida Will Sink,” “Why the South Lost the Civil War,” “May Day in the Southern U.S.,” “The North is Not ‘The Midwest,’” “Monroe, Alabama & To Kill a Mockingjay,” “Go Set a Watchman” (H.Lee); “Selma,” “Meridian” (Walker); “A Confederacy of Dunces.”
And I Got It at the Athens, GA Library!
The Cranky Yankee, January 11,2024
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