Lincoln’s big mistake. Imagine the US without the albatross of the South, new or old. After Sherman burned it down, Abe should have let them go their own way. Remember, they invaded the US. They were traitors.
9
Charlotte, while a leading "New South" city, has never been in the "Deep South". The "Deep South" is Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana and maybe South Carolina, and east Texas. North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, southern Maryland and the Virginias, are the "Upper South".
2
Young women: Stay and fight
6
Politically, Florida might as well be Alabama, except that Disney, Universal, and the convention/trade show industry persuade the legislature not to pass boycott-inducing legislation. We seem to have the lowest state expenditures per capita in the country, although I'm not sure if that takes into account the myriad of state and local fees, and of course out-of state people who own houses in Florida pay much higher property taxes than residents.
While the state is somewhat competitive for state and federal elections, only one statewide office (Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services, responsible for marijuana and concealed weapons permits), is held by a Democrat.
1
Long before abortion became legal anywhere intelligent people still managed not to have unplanned pregnancies. Contraception works very well, as do tubal ligation or vasectomy when the family is complete.
I cannot imagine why these regressive laws regarding abortion would discourage anyone from seeking improved income and/or a more affordable life style.
Free choice with regard to abortion may be best, but it is not essential to family planning.
4
Don’t like Louisiana? Don’t like Alabama? Don’t like Georgia or Missouri? Come here to Texas!
.
While the rest of the Conservative States; particularly those in the South - are trying to outdo each other with ever more draconian pro birth laws, Texas’ Legislature is pushing through one of the most forward thinking drug pricing laws in the country - raising the ire of Big Pharma and their lobbyists. I applaud them for that.
4
If you live in a city in the South and forget that it’s the Deep South sometimes, you’re not paying attention to the people around you
7
So like a classic cultural imperialist you want to move from the north to the south and take over their values, considering them totally inferior to yours. And then you're surprised they all don't feel blessed by your presence and wisdom. If you can't tolerate the difference, maybe paying more to live in Bed-Stuy amidst the gentrification is best for you.
9
The primary problem with the north is union infestation which leads to poor public schools, broken local government, impossibly high taxes and unfunded pensions that are often paid to former Yankees who retire south where taxes are lower.
The north will continue to suffer the drain of it's best people as long as Joe Biden's first endorsements come from unionist Andrew Cuomo and the NY Firefighters union.
Meanwhile, welcome to the South.
2
“Poor public schools” ...
??? I live in NY. My kids went to public elementary school in NYC, and public high school in the burbs. My friend lives in SC. He didn’t even consider sending his kids to public school. Another friend lives in FL. Same there - private school. The southern public school system died with Brown v. Board of Education.
10
According to polls, 40% of Alabamians believe a woman should be allowed to have an abortion "for any reason." This is only five points lower than the national percentage who believe the same thing (45%). If Alabama were not so gerrymandered to the benefit of Republicans, the legislature most likely wouldn't have been able to pass this law. They would have had to pay attention to what their own citizens want.
27
Decades ago I attended college in New Orleans, La and Austin, Tx
Among other goals, I wanted to meet and experience Southerners first hand.
I met a wide range of students and members of the general public and had a positive impression of Southerners.
However the general political mood of the South, as expressed by prominent politicians, has moved steadily towards conservative positions contesting and combating the gains made in the 60s for labor unions, civil rights and women's rights
7
Thanks to Trump, we are all the New South now.
Enjoy your progressive enclaves while they last.
10
If no one has brought it up before, Faulkner's quote about the South seems particularly germane. "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
I will move out of GA as soon as possible. AND I will never spend another cent in this state or for any business associated with it. I fought too hard to abortion rights in the early 70s. Apparently, the past is not even past.
19
Recently read a report of a black man whose application for a job as a housing inspector in Georgia was removed from consideration by a town official who said the town wasn't ready for a black public official. A town council member went further and spoke of how God wanted the races to be separated and how his blood boiled when he saw an interracial couple, The "New South," in your dreams.
17
the south is my native land, but just as enough of my nation voted for trump to secure an electoral college victory forcing me to abandon allegiance until decency is restored, the land of my birth is the hands of ignorant theocrats and those members of hte republic party vile enough to cater to them (assured that, like the upper classes in places like saudi , that the law won't apply to their daughters ). I suggest a loud listen to Warren Zevon's "Play it all night long". I can't wait for the day when the decent and rational population lashes back at the theocrats.
16
As a retiree living in NJ, I've been researching areas where my retirement dollars will go the furthest. I'd love to build a sustainable tiny home but finding a place to put down roots is difficult. I absolutely refuse to live in the south. I'm vocal & liberal & couldn't possibly deal with what I've witnessed in southern & even midwestern states. I've never been quiet especially when dealing with injustice.
Seems the men living down south still feel they have the right to suppress & oppress women. What I don't relate to are those women who are ok with this. We earned the right to vote & have a responsibility to learn about the issues plaguing this nation & world & using that right to make decisions by voting not just because their husband said so. When I was in Alabama, women followed the lead of their husband or significant other. Same was true for those in Virginia, NC, SC, Georgia, Fl, Tx, Indiana, Illinois & Tennessee. Obviously this isn't all the women in these states but certainly seems the greater majority have no opinion or voice. So, looks like it's California, the Pacific northwest or staying in the Northeast for me.
I fought for abortion in the 70's & would never have imagined this would be an even more difficult fight 40+ years later. Recent laws enacted at the state level forget that men are equally responsible for every pregnancy. Why are they not held accountable or responsible for their sperm? Why are women vilified when it's their lives truly impacted?
20
I grew up in MA, moved to MO for graduate school, and then to GA for a fellowship, and then to work. I lived in MO for 6 years, and GA for 11. It is different, not just from North vs. South, but from urban to rural. Drive 1 hour from Atlanta, and it’s like you’re in a different country. I loved my native southern friends- you won’t find warmer, more welcoming people anywhere. But the politics were evident, even before 2016. I remember after Sandyhook there was a town in north GA that proposed mandating gun ownership in anticipation for the gun regulations that were surely coming (little did anyone know). The urban/college areas are lovely and cosmopolitan, but at the end of the day, you’re still subject to state laws, and those are set by the rural majority.
18
I live in Chatham County NC which is a traditionally blue county. It's easy to think that NC as a whole is the same but it isn't. Here the educational system has been gutted and kids growing up will get the standard, but subtle, white supremacist litany. For 20 years I lived in New Orleans and felt that it might as well be a separate state. It was good there. If I had the money, I would return to Berkeley in a heartbeat. There I was always emotionally safe. Not here. I never knew that huge populations were not critical thinkers.
15
@Suzanne Wheat
There's no place like California. I returned after a stint in North Carolina and will never leave again.
4
The article concedes that liberal strongholds like New York make it almost impossible for the young people to succeed, so they are forced to migrate to the South in order to prosper. Yet, same young people bring with them the same sets of liberal ideals and attitudes which made New York unaffordable.
Think about it.
3
What makes NY so expensive is that lots of people want to live here. Same with California.
Don’t fall into the Yogi Berra trap - “nobody eats at that restaurant anymore because it’s too crowded.”
6
Southern cities are liberal bastions and everything outside the cities is protectionist and NIMBY suburban. The same suburban people who commute and benefit from the metro areas don’t want to pay to support the social and physical infrastructure those cities need. As the suburbs become more liberal, Republicans in the south are scheming to keep liberal city populations from closing in on their conservative political strongholds. Whether it’s gerrymandering or withholding revenue and development authority from cities, the southern Republican Party is trying everything to hold on to power. They know they can’t hold on forever and they are using every trick in the book to hold back liberal urban influence in the suburbs.
13
"Living in a very liberal city...."
New Orleans? Or perhaps a definition of "liberal" is required.
"You really forget you are in the Deep South..."
In New Orleans? This person truly lives in a bubble.
In some ways the South has changed and in many other ways, it hasn't.
8
It’s always all about staying power, and trust me not just the definition but the relevance of staying power is greater than ever in an economy that’s tallied by numbers from the top down or Wall Street resembling little if anything on Main Street. Whether it’s Brooklyn, Portland, Oakland, Nashville, Birmingham, New Orleans...the list is endless, with every place an impending “explosion” until people in a skewed article like this one who can afford to move encounter an employment pool that’s all too often working more than two jobs just to break even. Mobility only seems part of the solution to a fortunate few, until they genuinely confront the realities of the gig economy that follow them and linger wherever the next sure thing happens.
1
I'm a very liberal person but a carpenter. I first came to Charleston in the late seventies from Bridgeport CT still visit New England regularly. I find ignoramuses everywhere. I haven't heard anybody make sense of voting against your best interests to spite those you don't like yet anywhere. Luckily I'm in the last quarter of my time I think. Ain't getting any better by the looks of it. Vote Democrat for hope!
29
A while back I heard Roy Barnes, the former governor of GA, speak about Southern states repeatedly cutting off their economic noses to spite their faces with their positions on social issues.
Barnes "took one for the team" in GA when he abolished the use of the confederate symbol in the state and was promptly voted out the next election. GA did economically benefit from their leap into the 20th century and never added the confederate symbol back.
He said that Alabama was poised to be the business hub of the South until George Wallace's racist policies scared businesses away. He also spoke about NC's bathroom drama and how it impacted their economics.
So, let the few take their outlier stance in your state but be prepared for all to suffer.
18
I still have relatives in the South, and those that live in the cities really aren't very far apart with regard to core beliefs than a majority of urban dwellers in big cities of the North. The vast rural areas below the Mason Dixon line appear as inhospitable and often as uninviting to an "outsider" as some of the worst sections of Chicago, Detroit, or any other densely populated "depressed" inner city. We might all have varying accents and slang, but at the end of it, poor and uneducated people aren't all that much different regardless of race, color, or creed.
North Dakota might be in the far northern portion of the country, but that doesn't mean that it's current culture isnt just as regressive or possibly even more so than anything seen in AL or MS. Interacial couples appear far more prominent in southern cities than anything I've seen throughout the Midwest. I wonder if the future divide Americans really face is a rural/metro problem rather than any North-South animosity.
I don't know how a woman would really ever enjoy or even be willing to tolerate having to live in a place where the law specifically forbids her the right to terminate a pregnancy that was the result of incest and/or being raped. I could live with one bathroom when the potential price of having three comes with the possibility that I'm forced to give birth to a child whose biological father is a rapist. Some creature comforts simply aren't worth the forfeiture of dignity in my view.
23
@Andy
Women in these states will be in danger of dying due to miscarriage, ectopic pregnancies, cancer etc if the medical procedures that would save their lives could potentially harm an embryo.
Miscarriages, stillbirths, premature births, birth defects - any of these unfortunate outcomes may be investigated. If a bitter ex boyfriend, work frenemy or nosy neighbor wants to cause trouble for a woman will they anonymously notify authorities she terminated a pregnancy -whether she had been pregnant or not?
14
Except for the urban areas mentioned in the article the rest of the South is still controlled by an ultra-conservative white majority that has used their positions and money to maintain a system of government and taxation that supports their control. The private schools that they created to avoid integration are still there and the people who send their children to these schools vote against taxes to support public schools. They also keep the property taxes low starving public services. Poverty in the South is structural. These urban islands are not going to control enough votes to create a "new south."
19
Young women, who will be affected, along with their female children, by these laws, need to do two things:
- Refuse to move from the South.
- Help the older women, like myself, change the laws.
We need to work together, young, middle-aged, and older women, to vote out the hideous men (and their compliant female helpers) who’ve crafted laws that impinge on a woman’s right to reproductive freedom and privacy. There is no other way. If the women in Ireland could change the laws of their country, we can change the laws of ours. And the minds of the men who made those laws.
22
I'm pro-choice and I believe that position must be thought through very carefully. I'm also Catholic. There-in lies the conundrum! But I firmly believe a woman must have complete control over her body. We are not baby-making machines! I often wonder, if a woman discovers she is carrying a severely disabled fetus, if the pro-life gov't will fund all necessary lifelong medical care for this child? There are a myriad of valid reason why a woman chooses abortion. Usually, it's a painful decision and she should be able to make that decision freely and privately. I have limits to what I support. Late term should only be used for a disabled fetus or the life of the mother. When these late-term abortion proposals came to be, I think it threatened and continues to threaten Roe. We really have to stop the extremes or we could lose it all!!
12
Why so much angst? Just use readily available birth control. A need for abortion is often simply the aftermath of an undisciplined life. That, of course, excludes pregnancies resulting from rape and incest.
When did you last see any TV or Hollywood actors mention birth control caution prior to a sexual liaison on film? And why not advertise condoms and the pill via TV and social media. And lets put free condom dispensers in schools and public restrooms. Let school nurses dispense the pill.
8
@Incredulous. Every commonly used birth control method, including tubal ligation, has a failure rate. Tubal removal would probably be 100% though.
8
Young professional women from New York or other places, who decide to relocate to the New South and then have an unwanted pregnancy, will simply buy a plane or train ticket to more enlightened cities. As always, those with money or credit cards will find a way. It's the poor, many from minorities, who in desperation will go to some butcher--and some of them will die.
25
As a native of Louisiana, and a far-flung traveler over a lifetime that included 20 years in the military, I can say with no reservation that the South has not now, and has never, "changed".
And it never will.
These people are dedicated to only one belief- their way of thinking is the only way to believe. Either get on board, or get on getting out. The Civil War will never, EVER, end.
10
@Alan H. Are you under the impression that Northern "progressives" are any different?
5
@Cas. Yes, we need to be more tolerant of intolerance.
As a constitutional republic, we are stuck with the Alabamas, the Georgia’s and the Missouris. Instead of pouting and running into our corners, let’s take them over.
6
I'm sure this post will not get much attention, but I am imploring the writers here and in the NY Times to stop referring to the opposing viewpoints in this national debate as either pro-abortion or anti-abortion.
It should be referred to as pro-choice or anti-choice. Words matter, they affect us subconsciously . Look at the polls regarding Obamacare vs. The Affordable Care Act.
No one I know is pro-abortion and I'm a leftist. What we are is pro-choice, where a woman has the CHOICE to decide her own fate.
40
One out of every three pregnancies in New York City ends in abortion. I am more than happy to let Brooklynites keep those kinds of social values to themselves.
I have found the most tolerant and enjoyable cities to be blue cities in red states; they seem to enjoy the dynamic tension and wisdom from both sides of the aisle. It's hard to hate up close.
New York is so ideologically segregated, especially in the circles of elite journalism / media / finance / etc. that Ginia Bellafante probably runs in. The condescension is evident in this piece.
10
So let me get this straight. Millennials leave NY with its horrible liberal policies and move to places with conservative values which make it a great place to live, and then complain because conservatives live there? "I love how they are caring and compassionate people that make the place more livable, I just wish they weren't caring and compassionate about the most vulnerable in our society. I like not being responsible for my own actions." Maybe they need to adopt the values of the places they move to, instead of trying to turn them into liberal nightmares like where they came from.
8
@MrReasonable
Nothing says 'caring and compassionate' than having one's miscarriage investigated by the police.
8
I suppose the question is, will they tolerate living in a ‘new’ police state?
12
Having lived in Staten Island and metro Atlanta, I've seen racism in both places. It's up north as well, just not as obvious. Having lots of southern friends, I resent the stereotyping of all indigenous southern white folk. There are lots of born and bred southerners who are more open minded than people in my hometown, which by the way, still has racist tendencies. The divide is more urban versus rural/exurban.
10
Life is about being tolerant of the beliefs of others, something that much of the north has never learned. If the north did not have the south to look down on it would no doubt find somebody else in order to continue feeding its elitism. I am always amazed at northeastern prejudice by those who have never been below the mason dixon line. As one born in the north I will take the south any day.
11
Just how many women feel about men dictating laws about women's bodies and lives.
8
Abortion has made babies disposable and insignificant to the pro choice crowd. Is having a baby now inconvenient? Just abort it. Are my rights as a women being negatively impacted if I become pregnant and carry the baby to term? Just abort. Is having a baby not allowing me to control my own body? Just about it. And they treat this baby as an "it" and not as a living breathing human being. These are the questions many pro choice women ask themselves and then make that fatal and very disturbing choice of killing their baby.
As a pro like women this angers me that babies are treated so disrespectfully in the womb. I will never be able to agree with this killing. I am so glad that these southern states had the courage to pass these strict anti abortion bills. I only hope that more states follow suit and we will finally see an end to abortion.
6
Women who are raped have already had their rights trampled. Did you call your legislators to demand women who are raped get the same respect as a fetus?
How is setting up pregnancy prisons a good use of taxpayer funds?
I believe males should have vasectomies to decrease unplanned pregnancies and therefore abortions, too. You would support that bill so males respect their role in pregnancy,too?
My beliefs should be your beliefs, too?
My religion your religion? What I hold sacred I will legislate and you will be imprisoned you if you don’t submit to it?
I thought so.
48
You definitely have a right to your own beliefs and guess what, no one can force you to have an abortion. However, why should you or anyone else decide to FORCE another woman to continue a pregnancy that she doesn’t want? First off, an embryo or fetus is not a living BREATHING human being. It has the potential to become one but in fact, the woman IS the breathing living human being. Why do you have all this feeling for a potential human being and not any for the woman who is pregnant? Why do you feel that you should decide FOR HER? There are a million reasons why a woman might make this choice; health reasons, marital issues, domestic abuse, rape, incest, economic and mental health reasons, etc. My guess is that you live a somewhat comfortable life. I doubt that you are living on the edge of poverty and trying to find your way out. I’m guessing a doctor hasn’t told you that getting pregnant could end your life. I bet you’re not a young single woman just starting out in life. I have worked in women’s health for over 20 years and have seen all that and much more. I am not pro abortion, I am pro choice. That means that I shouldn’t have the right to make that decision for another woman. Nor should anyone else.
38
@KMW. “I only hope that more states follow suit and we will finally see an end to abortion.” I’m afraid your “and” is way overly optimistic. The outlawing of legal abortion does not mean you will see an end to abortion. What you will see is abortion driven out of safe medically-trained hands and safe, medically-appropriate settings.
Have you ever witnessed the aftermath of a botched abortion attempt by an untrained exploiter of desperate women? I have. It is terrifying and panic-inducing. I was blithely anti-abortion too until I was placed in the position of trying to save the life of a woman who had no place to turn except the convenient guy who said he would “help” her. The naiveté that surrounds the subject of abortion would fill all the oceans on earth.
26
This columnist seems to believe it's impossible to be happy living in a state where ones political beliefs are in the minority.
How sad!
Sadder still is that she believes that Birmingham, Charlotte, Austin and New Orleans have only recently become livable since they were "Brooklynized".
It's this kind of ignorant elitism that many Americans of all political stripes, living in all regions of the country, really have grown tired of seeing, especially in the pages of this newspaper.
15
@John yes! Thank you!
3
@John When being in a place where "ones political beliefs are in the minority" puts your life in danger, it is more than sad! The maternal mortality rate in these Southern states is similar to many third-world countries. Outlawing abortions in almost all cases will only increase the number of deaths. Women moved to these places because they were open to living with people of different backgrounds and beliefs, they just didn't think that it might one day cost them their lives.
14
Having lived primarily in Durham my adult life with more recent experience in Winston-Salem I think I can say the following with some accuracy: racism is an American problem, not a Southern one, anti-choice politics are not limited to the South, and that the Brooklynization of Southern cities has deepened economic inequality just as it has in the supposedly more liberal enclaves of the North. Yes, there’s crazy and mean down here but there’s also good. If I leave NC it will be for Canada, not NYC or San Francisco.
2
The key to changing things is for all of these transplants register to vote in these Deep South states and to make their voices heard. Removing from office those who take away our rights is the only way to preserve our freedom. VOTE!
2
The New South? When did the South become new? Some historians, an keep in mind most of them were old white guys, argue that the New South emerged in the 1890s. That would make Jim Crow part of the New South. Jim Crow persisted until well into the late 20th century as law, yet it still persists in the minds of many. So just what is the "New South" from the northern liberal elitist perspective? Just what does north liberal think they are getting into when they move to the New South? Why in the world would they want to live here? During Reconstruction after the Civil War, they were known as "carpetbaggers," because they came with all of their belongings stuffed in a carpetbag, the suitcase of the times. They came to take advantage of the South, still vulnerable from the ravages of war. Today's "carpetbaggers" come to take advantage of reasonable housing costs and cost of living and, although they won't admit it lower taxes. That's OK, I welcome them to the South; it shows that they have come to their senses. Eventually people do. Thank you.
3
How is it that human beings in the North and human beings who are still young are superior human beings?
5
I lived in New Orleans some 45 years ago. It has always been a progressive town. Its' underbelly of "The Big Easy" lent itself to a un official sense of freedom. In many ways the LBGQ world that has survived there always lived under the radar of a much more conservative and yes corrupt political system. Nobody however has sought to end the party. Everybody likes the party that is New Orleans. It's about commerce and sweaty sex and long established family and all the things that make the city so unique. From the conditions, political, economic and cultural of the Ninth Ward before and after Katrina and across the city districts that are well defined and not just by lines on a map. They harbor good and bad from racial discrimination to elitist footholds. And the New Orleans veil of freedom culture permeates through all of it. Still folks have always known where they belong. Now with this new abortion law it will be back to crossing that line and it will be life or death no matter your parish no matter your neighborhood. A sad equality to bond over.
3
I left New York in 2007--after forty years there--and now live in Durham, NC, part of what we call The Bubble, comprised of Durham, Chapel Hill, and to a lesser degree, Raleigh, the state capitol where all kinds of horrible decisions are made. If one stays in The Bubble, it is easy to believe that one is not surrounded by confederate flags, gun-toters and Bible-thumpers of the worst ilk pushing their racism and homophobia. Yes, there are some awful people in New York, but if I had it to do over again, I would never, never, never, never, ever leave. The New South has such a thin veneer that the Old South is just a scratch below the surface.
21
This a version of the deep south as it exists in fancy lifestyle magazines and in Instagram posts geared towards a younger demographic not yet savvy enough to know that the world is much different than what it seems like in pictures. Speaks to a larger issue, which is expectations versus reality. And it's not surprising that folks are getting a rude awakening. Though -- this must be said, the south has offered all that is mentioned in this article for many years. This, coming from a born and raised New Yorker. It's not a surprise many lower-income New York natives moved south years ago. Where do you think all the people who got gentrified out of their historically-black Brooklyn communities like Bed-Stuy went? Trust me, it wasn't Brooklyn Heights.
1
We moved from Appleton, Wi to Austin in 2012. We love Austin but not the politics of the Texas legislature. Things are changing. Beto didn’t defeat Cruz which was unfortunate but his coat tails elected more state Democrats. Almost all the cities in Texas are liberal but the gerrymandering makes it much harder for Democrats to win state elections. Wisconsin certainly has its right wing elements and sometimes they win. We must continue fighting the forces that want to restrict voting, encourage gerrymandering and other dirty tricks. Progress is not always easy. Hopefully the courts will stop these draconian abortion laws and these states will suffer economically as businesses, events pull out.
8
@Michele Missner => Welcome to Texas! We natives don't like the politics of the Texas legislature either.
3
Florida is not much different. Lovely so long as you ignore what they vote for. It’s a battle that has been coming as many move south. I fear as a retired elder who hates the cold, it may be time to move back to where we don’t expect people to clean our houses and keep our lawns but won’t pay for schools for their children or allow them access to Medicaid, etc. Its hard to respect our differences when those differences ignore others human rights.
7
Cities are more progressive than rural areas across the U.S., not just the South. Compare Des Moines with the farm country in Iowa, for example.
8
I lived in the South for graduate school, and I'm looking forward to returning there once I am ready to retire. I've always loved small towns whether in the south or the north. The sense of order, discipline and propriety always appealed: the clean yards, lack of litter and quiet, as people went about their business and lived their lives in a reserved manner. No loud music and loud people.
5
I don't think it's New Yorkers who are moving down there. It's the transients who came here to partake in the gentrification, or contribute to it, then realize NYC is a very difficult and challenging place. So they decide to move back home. And thank god for that!
12
I reside in the RTP area of North Carolina. Only ten to fifteen percent of the region's residents were born and Raised in N.C. My apartment complex my neighbors are from MA,NY,NJ,CT, and CA. We even have a few Canadians.. The fastest growing group are Sotheast Asians and most of not all are in STEM ..
3
A more interesting question is whether the adoption of these laws will affect business investment decisions, as when some businesses decided to boycott Indiana after it passed regressive LGBT laws.
14
I'm BOYCOTTING AL, OH, GA, MO, KY, etc. by not stepping foot in them (including just an airplane layover) and by asking my local and state governments to do the same, and by asking restaurants, markets, stores, etc. that I frequent (and some that I don't, such as when traveling) to refrain from buying goods or foods produced in those states.
Other states and countries can provide these items and better deserve the revenue. And if not, I'll just do without. Small sacrifice to make for women's rights, religious freedom, and
Equal protection for the post-birth majority in America and the world.
28
I grew up in the north but have southern roots. My high school in NJ was 100% white. I've lived all over the country since then, and ended up in a progressive city in the Bible Belt. My kids go to school with kids of all different shades, some from interracial parents. Probably over 20 languages spoken at their school... Still lots of churches and conservative attitudes too. I try to keep an open mind. Yes, some people are much more religious than I am but I can respect that if they are genuine. I just avoid the people who are totally backwards. Someone commented that "liberals need to get out more". I agree! I can see why some southerners push back...those condescending attitudes that blanket-label everyone from one region. It goes both ways.
12
The worst thing to happen to Atlanta was Georgia.
9
The middle class and college-educated women can afford to get an airline or a train ticket or hop in the car for a three hour drive - the lower income women cannot. They are the ones being held hostage by these restrictions, at the same time that the safety net is shrinking.
10
Right, but what will the middle and upper middle class women due when they have certain pregnancy complications needing urgent attention but no local doctor will examine and treat them, for fear that if the woman loses the pregnancy, she or someone else (including government) could accuse and bring criminal charges against the doctor - particularly if the woman is angry at the doctor she could claim the doctor performed an abortion and the. Have him/her locked in jail for 99 years.
13
@GY - The argument about poor is not going to fly with me. I have seen literally thousands of people walk all the way from Central America to the U.S./Mexican border. Why can't the middle class woman and the ultra poor just car pool together?
I just checked Amtrak prices for Seattle to Portland and back which is a little over three hours. A whopping $35 which is the price of 5 six-packs of Coke. Or how many packs of cigarettes? Or how many cups of Starbucks?
Greyhound is charging $25 for the same round-trip.
In both cases, I chose tomorrow as my leave date and two days later as the return.
Austin should not be included in the list of cities that needed to "Brooklynized" in order to be progressive. It always has been. At least in my lifetime, and I'm past 60.
4
The overturn of Roe v Wade is coming to a state near you and very soon. What did everyone think was going to happen after treasonous Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings for Merrick Garland? Republicans certainly love their Constitution when it agrees with what they think - or maybe I merely missed the part where it says 10 months isn't enough time for a President to get a Supreme Court nomination through. And we're one small illness away from Trump installing a THIRD justice onto the Court.
I wonder how smart all those Trump voters in the midwest think they are now.
11
Perhaps if enough young and educated people move to places like Alabama, they can drag the South into the 20th century, and then, eventually, into the 21st.
12
or make a fortune selling sheets.
9
"New" South - HA! It's that OLD South, the misogynist, slave-owning, lynching, prejudicial, hate-mongering South of Lincoln's time re-surfaced under a new Trumplican autocracy which enables their most unAmerican and inhuman traits to become "normal".
The Civil War is over, and YOU lost, for good reason. Gilead should remain fictional but you still choose that dehumanizing, oppressive existence. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT under our Constitution to dictate your unfounded religious beliefs to anyone. ALL AMERICANS have guaranteed rights, especially women.
This is not simply about Roe, it's your zeit geist that is intolerable. The Democrats understand this. I wish everyone did.
18
Lowest in healthcare and education, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana. It's a race to the bottom.
28
@carlg - add highest rates of new HIV infections
5
There is a TREMENDOUS amount of poverty all across the South. Stay up North if you can. At least there is some attempt at a social safety net in the northern States. Down here they let you hang if they can.
10
If it were not for voter suppression and gerrymandering, Georgia, a purple state in-progress, would be the first one in the history of this nation to have an African American woman, Stacy Abrams, as its governor. This says a lot about the effective and amazing activism, coalition-building, and progressive mobilization in the South that I’ve been privileged to bear witness to and to be a part of. Despite Kemp and his cronies doing everything they could, Abrams lost only by a mere per centage point. Had Abrams won the election, this whole conversation would be different, thus the extreme and reactionary legislation now passed in Georgia. Some folks here are paralized by the thought of change, so much that they can't see that it is already here. As an African American female who has lived most of my years in the North, living also in 5 different states, I can tell you that it’s a give-and-take where ever you live and history bears this out. You must know that you’ll have to fight against racial, gender, and sexual inequality as well as dis-ability discrimination and police brutality and the blatant denial of immigrant rights regardless of which quadrant you choose to live in. The really important thing is your participation in our democracy (if you didn’t vote in the last election, please vote in this one) and know that justice and human rights are only possible if you’re actively engaged in the struggle to secure them and the struggle to maintain them.
22
It’s telling that the “new south” propaganda has been pushed by whites almost exclusively.
88
@Chris A lot of blacks are moving there too, Google it, you'll find lots of stories. Not sure about stats. Particularly Atlanta.
12
@Chris Not true. I can think of lots of cool black musicians, chefs, tech people, architects, lawyers, you name it here in Charleston who aren't from Charleston. I grew up here, left to escape the conservatism; came back to enjoy the liberalism. Your comment sounds excatly what a New Yorker who knows nothing first hand of the south would say to sterotype us.
20
What do know abut the South? That eccentricity is tolerated and, even valued, more than in the North. That Southern hospitality is a real thing, and Southerners are more inclined to welcome strangers. That the states of the South have a much higher percentage of blacks than the North, so that blacks and whites interact more on a daily basis. That blacks and whites are both highly religious, and in many towns, everyone is at church on Sunday morning. When it comes to unwanted pregnancies, most involve unmarried women, and many, especially the young, feel deep shame about their extramarital sex. That the South is much less urban than the North and cities like Atlanta and New Orleans are outliers. That pregnant high school girls frequently attend school without shame. That, outside of urban centers, abortion beliefs are ingrained, and abortion is often viewed as a last resort. That abortion -- like everything else in the South -- has a racial context. That there is mutual hostility between the races, and abortion is part of that -- it is as much about white people controlling the lives of blacks as it is about women's rights.
If you're going to condemn a whole region of the country, you might as well know something about it.
9
@michjas Is the shaming supposed to be a good thing? Is there something wrong with premarital sex in the South that makes it evil? "When it comes to unwanted pregnancies, most involve unmarried women, and many, especially the young, feel deep shame about their extramarital sex."
5
Praying for the rapture. More room for science and reason among those of us who remain.
15
Little Five Points, Candler Park, Midtown lofts and high rises, can make you forget that you are in the South, throw in the Hispanic and Vietnamese enclaves on Buford Highway, and you think, “wow, this place is so ‘diverse’.’” Don’t be fooled, all of this is a facade. Only when you see how segregated the city is, how blacks are being pushed out from historic neighborhoods including near MLK’s junior church Ebenezer, aphenomenon started with the Olympics and led by the people who actually control the city and the state’s politics do you realize that, the New South is exactly the same as the old: entrenched racism, bible clutching and gun toting white folks who have no problem being friendly and call you “hon’” as long as you know your “place.” Macon, Millegedville, Savannah, it’s all the same. The South is not merely about geography. The South is Ohio. I live north of Columbus and it is the most southern place I’ve ever lived, minus the weather, the food and “hon”. I have never seen so many confederate flags and many have their Trump/Pence lawn signs still. Less than 100 blacks in the county, some Hispanics and yet Racism and nativism are in the open. No funding for the arts and music in the local schools but plenty for football. Decrepit houses everywhere, half the county on opioids, poverty, no, destitution everywhere but they vote Republican and 73% voted for Trump.
The South is not a place it’s an attitude and a mentality.
16
Stay and fight!
8
Yes! Register to vote and vote in every election.
4
Up here in Blue MN some GOP legislator declared that cities shouldn't have as much influence because it was the rural areas who were the "real" Minnesota. The response was to propose that money from the urban/suburban areas therefore not be used to subsidize the rest of the state. Wouldn't it be great if $$ from blue states could be prevented from subsidizing the red ones - if they don't like our values, then don't take our money.
39
The South has always been a bastion of conservative culture. I grew up in NY but I love South Carolina. It’s a different world entirely where NY style liberalism is all but non-existent. And the expenses are less than half of what they are in NY. That’s why so many New Yorkers are moving there and to other southern destinations. They don’t have an MTA tax or a Paid Family Leave tax or ridiculously high property taxes. When they pickup the garbage they even have a guy that comes after the garbage truck and puts your garbage pail back. Try getting that kind of service in NY. You won’t find it.
27
@Mike LThs New Yorker is staying put. I'd rather have the garden without the gun.
50
@Mike L. Yes, young famies won't need family leave in the South. Huh? What?
25
@Mike L - lol, my "garbage pail"? We have three "garbage pails" to put out each week and the garbage person puts them back where they were found.
No state income tax here which explains why Gates and Bezos live here.
9
Northeasterners, come on down and gentrify! We need your talent, energy and money. It's been great for North Carolina and for Nashville (I've lived my entire life in Tennessee and North Carolina). Come to place where smug liberals won't make you feel like you're committing a crime for bringing resurgence to a city neighborhood, where taxes are relatively low, where people are considerably more polite and the sun shines on skies bluer than at any time in the past 150 years. Come on down!
6
@BarrowK Be careful what you wish for? The smug liberals bring their attitudes with them.
1
I have this fantasy that the entire football team at the University of Alabama transfers to out of state schools and that all of their top high school recruits turn them down. It’s just a fantasy though.
19
Better yet University of AL has a top Women's Gymnastics and Swimming Team. UCLA bound for future athletes instead???
3
The New York Times really needs to retire this tired and factually incorrect trope that all civilization in the “New South” springs from the recent importation of “northern values” and northern migrants. I’m in my mid-50s and the blue urban islands in the south predate my childhood. Blacks and the urban whites who live and work alongside them have made many of these cities Democratic strongholds for generations. The real divide is an urban/rural one, in the north just as much as in the south. And the political difference between New York and Louisiana owes more to the fact that New York City’s population size and financial might exceeds that of rural New York State by a larger factor than New Orleans does rural Louisiana.
21
Alabama and its neighbor states have a historical predilection for Lost Causes. Banning Abortion is a lost cause.
Since the begining of time, females of all species have been getting abortions....by choice. it is the female human species, with that extra level of conscience that induces "guilt", and that will follow her the rest of her life.
The Alabama Abortion Law will end up on the shelf right next to the Scopes Monkey Trial. Alabamans will once again need to respect individual freedoms....if you are against abortion....just dont have one. Purty simply solution that keeps ever one happy. And Alabama avoids a crime wave 16 years from now.
That Handmaids Tale was a stupid movie anyway. A lot of over-hyped nonsense.
Life goes on.
3
the simple solution is simple only if you accept that sombody else's religious beliefs are superior to yours, or none at all, and so they rightly get to make the rules for everyone, hon.
3
@Pottree I am not sure where you got the idea that I'm substituting one set of religious beliefs for another set of religious beliefs. In fact, I seem to be avoiding that completely....other than to point out that the Handmaids Tale is doing that.............hon.
Those who come South and fail to learn about Southern values -- committed to either changing or ignoring them -- learn little about their adopted home. Religion in the South is pervasive, among both blacks and whites. And even ex-slaves like Frederick Douglass saw the church as a force for good from which its pro-slavery attitudes had to be excised.
Evangelicals focus more on action and less on doctrine than most religions. Northerners are obsessed with their reproductive activism, and seem to think, wrongly, that Evangelicals teach nothing but the evils of abortion. Religion in the South is deeply ingrained and religious beliefs go well beyond abortion policy. Frederick Douglass was right to cut out slavery from the rest of the church's teachings.
The South without religion is not the South. And those who attack evangelicals from top to bottom undercut the very identity of Southerners. Douglass understood that during the time of slavery. And those who go South today make a mistake when they attack Southern religion hook , line, and sinker.
Contrary to popular belief, reproductive policy is not the dominant concern of Evangelicals. Those who have moved to the South should understand that and attack what they detest, and otherwise refrain. A popular saying is particularly applicable here -- don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
4
I assure you Austin TX has NOT been "Brooklynized".
Austin has been hip and progressive for over 50-years.
Austin is The Blue Jewel in a Red Sea of Texas.
Of late we've become more urbane and Californicated but never ever Brooklynized.
9
@GTM Keep Austin Weird.
6
I lived in Manhattan for 35 years until I moved to South Carolina 10 years ago. Prior to that, I grew up in Queens and Long Island so I think I know NY as well or better than most. I go back often--stay in LIC or Brooklyn.
In the past few days, I have been lectured to, spoken to as if I personally was responsible for abortion laws--that aren't even in my state, told to move and told that I have a moral imperative to change things. Me, personally--from people who left NY for "cooler" places that they can't really afford.
I moved here because I knew I could have a good life for a lot less money.
It was hard when I first moved here but I met many non-Republicans who are working for change. And don't choose my friends on the basis of politics but intelligence (and most intelligent people are fed up with trump), wit, etc.
Now I question the people who are so eager to cast stones: Typical Facebook post: "May the South be cast into the sea" "I will never go to the South again." "Southerners are stupid."
I get the anger but the radical right is all over the country.
We should all be working for change.
17
Glad to see some things have changed, but the "New South" isn't as new as they would like us to believe. When I lived in Arkansas, 20 years ago, the population was AT LEAST 20 years behind the times. I suspect that hasn't changed, particularly when they keep electing people like self-righteous Tom Cotton, who belongs in another century. You young ones will have to fight hard, and never give in to these hateful dinosaurs. Send them packing.
14
Northerners who come seeking affordable housing in the South and expect to remake the South in their image are terribly naive. Southern hospitality prevents most from saying what they are thinking. But what most Southerners are thinking can be encapsulated in a single word — “carpetbaggers”.
7
To all young professionals living in cities not located in the deep red southern states.... keep moving from where you are to where the die hard bigots and racists live.
The more younger generation professionals who move from northern more liberally inclined cities down into southern metropolitan areas...... the faster the south can be brought into the 21st century and more in line with the majority of US citizens views and approach to life.... and old dated, racism and bias can be diluted.
The younger generation will meet fierce resistance from old white southerners.... but my bet is on the energy and drive of the younger generation for change.
The United States is by it's very history and nature... a very homogenized society...... except for places where fierce pockets of extreme conservative values entrench and try to build a wall around their community with divisive and negative legislation and law enforcement. The more people move around and settle down.. the sooner extremism (on both sides of the political and social structure) is diluted and normalized.
My only caution to the younger generation is: don't completely replace local culture and tradition with your own. Harmonize the old with the new. Respect the traditions and embrace them where they are not clearly based on bias and bigotry.
10
My only suggestion is to get out as fast as you can. The Confederate states’ will continue to pass antiquated and discriminatory laws just as their forefathers did hoping eventually tear this country apart.
9
Wrong. Stay and fight. Register to vote and make a difference.
4
@Indy1
I agree. Next these states will attempt to ban the most effective types of birth control, the morning after pill, possibly OTC pregnancy tests. They is also a christian evangelical movement to allow medical facilities to refuse to honor DNR instructions.
3
New Orleans ,the liberal bastion ,has nearly the highest crime and homicide rate in the country,like the others Philadelphia and Boston. The plague of drugs is unabated.What would you rather live with? In the south ,New Orleans flooded again just last week and hurricanes and tornadoes commonly track through La . and Birmingham and Houston,although Houston is not mentioned.Not ,that Houston ,being the south is majority Hispanic and they do not approve of abortion ,in any respect.Yes the rust belt is wide open ,presently for growth and they don't care your religion ,race or politics ,the concern is the winters.
3
the South is also the US capitol of fried foods, obesity, and diabetes.
4
@Alan Einstoss I would never call New Orleans a liberal bastion. It is Catholic, and still under Napoleonic law, and with a deeply conservative contingent. They drink there in a way the rest of the south does not and they have Mardi Gras (Carnival). It is its own thing. If you know anything about the south - you know the rest of the south is Southern Baptist but New Orleans is French Descent and Catholic, with a solid Cajun and Creole culture.
5
Just attended the BTS concert at the Meadowlands. Plenty of fat there too.
If I get pregnant and imaging shows that the "person" in there is missing both arms, does that person get to collect disability while still in the womb? Do I tax benefits from my unborn children? Can I get a social security number for each egg I have?
9
If you close your eyes and ignore that your new community does not pay for education, health care, public transportation, and blatantly practices racism, and religious bigotry, then it is easy to go ahead and enjoy your life in the little gated cheap apartment complex, your modern shops/foodie, nouveau antebellum life style,
25
Just as women attempt to flee Saudi Arabia, similarly any woman with the means and the common sense will leave these repressive southern states.
12
It’s been ten years away from purple for forty years
6
As someone who emigrated south from NJ 40 years ago, I encourage northerners to continue with their gross generalizations and ignorant misconceptions about the educated South. It's the less of you - arrogant, rude, self-important- that I'll have to deal with on the roads and highways, in my neighborhoods, at my schools.
The life I live here is heaven compared to the rat-race craziness of northern New Jersey. Unfortunately, orthern transplants usually feel compelled to bring that rat-race mentality with them when they move here. By all means, look down your noses at us; we're totally good with it if it means you don't move here.
7
The “New South” is kind of a myth. I don’t be care how many shiny gyms or coffee shops they open in cities down there, you’re still very much in the south.
8
The Civil War was never won.
2
I believe the south has show there is no speration of church and state in it's laws. For me a better climate and cheap housing is not worth living under evangelism as the state religion.
12
Hate to burst your bubble but the evangelicals don’t run my life any more than the Buddhists. If you want repressive, look at Utah and the Morman theocracy.
1
Interesting article and comments. Personally, I have a dear friends from Texas who are very conservative and we know not to “go there with them” ....we’ve challenged them in the past and they have a big wall up! So we avoid the topics of race and politics. They are good people, but sorely misguided and so-so Catholics.
Wouldn’t live in any Southern state! I’ve visited and know enough to stay clear. Look at the economies of Southern states and quality of life and compare to the West Coast states or the Northeast states, and you will know how detrimental Republican economic policies are! Including their draconian “religious” values that will now FORCE women, even young girls raped by their uncles, brothers or dads to carry the fetus to birth!
To those who are pro-birth I ask: YOU want to force a woman to give birth to a child she doesn’t want or cannot care for, right?! Well. it’s ONLY FAIR that YOU FORCE the man who impregnated her to support the child monetarily, for the full eighteen years!
8
@Mari How about adoption? I do support a much stronger social safety net — health care, child care, a living wage, housing assistance, etc. — but I think a lot of these children would be better off if adopted by loving adoptive parents who are financially and emotionally stable. Open adoption arrangements are available so the birth parents can still have some contact if they want.
And exactly how great are living conditions for poor and/or minority communities in the incredibly overpriced enclaves of Seattle, Boulder, and Berkeley? Boulder is the tightest, whitest place I’ve ever been. The only signs of people of color were in the Taco Bell. In NC, both my kids have attended public schools of incredible diversity in every way you can think of diversity. Poverty is a serious issue in all those places. exacerbated by the “creative class,” fiction that celebrates building “luxury apartments” and does nothing to extend affordable housing development.
I am one of the aforementioned Brooklynites who moved down to Austin to escape high rents and have creative freedom to open a small business...2 years later, I can’t get back to NYC fast enough...all the retail infusion in the world won’t change the general mindset of the people who hold guns and god as their guiding principles...mid-century modern furniture is just as desirable in a home with a well stocked gun cabinet...and Keto/Paleo diet foods and organic Sumo oranges are just as easily found in a fridge of someone with Pro-Life magnets on the door...this assumption that Northern liberals bring “cool” consumer culture and change the landscape for the better is a fallacy...there are plenty of yoga centers in the South that have switched out the Sanskrit for god references...I was born and raised in Texas, so I was well aware of the culture and my move wasn’t blind...I had been out of TX and in NYC/SF for almost 30 years combined and traveled extensively, but kept reading what a creative, young city Austin had become...well yes sure, I have access to cute coffee shops and more retail options, but again, that blond wood Scandi chair with a reclaimed leather seat looks just as good in a home that counts itself supporters of the NRA...I am thrilled to live in a 350 sq ft apt in NYC, knowing that businesses there do not need to post a criminal statute on the entrance disallowing guns, as they do in TX...why would you ever need a handgun to grab a carton of milk at the store?
12
Don’t give up on the New South yet. I am a native Southerner and longtime Garden and a Gun subscriber here in Texas. I loath the Republicans running (ruining) my state, but I do believe change is coming. Instead of running scared, I am remaining in the trenches and fighting with all I’ve got. I owe that much to future generations.
161
@Kate So funny Kate! I am not a native Texan, but love this state. However, I think the divisive policies of the democrats are the problems here. I'm not a republican, but it's not a fight. It's not winner take all. Politics is compromise, when it's done correctly it helps all people. There are no trenches.
9
@Moira Rogow. How exactly do you blame the Democrats for these current unconstitutional laws? And what kind of compromises do you feel they offer?
31
I blame Democrats in Congress for never passing a law that makes abortion legal, easy, unrestricted, and available for any reason. Do you instead blame Republicans for not passing such a law?
10
A nice try, but the cities you talk about are already blue. Doug Jones won because of the Roy Moore sleaze factor. His potential right wing replacements are already lining up, including Roy Moore and support is very much there. No, the south is still very entrenched - a pretty sad situation. In spite of the odds, and as depressing as recent events, I will still keep voting and hoping.
115
@Linda
Doug Jones got even luckier than Donald Trump in having an opponent that committed political suicide accidentally. This time around Jones politically is a dead man walking.
2
I live in Charleston SC and the it is urban and has some good features but you are still in the south. culturally it is a different world and one not always in line with my values. in a few years we will return to the north (upper Midwest) where all our children live and though winter will be harder to deal with I will feel much more like I belong. my vote will count. my values will count and I can still eat grits and visit places like Charleston and Asheville etc but not have to live in the south with its right wing ethic.
180
@steve
Asheville, Charleston and Mount Pleasant are great. And I find the physical beauty of the low country to be almost ethereal. But it's still the South.
24
@steve
I am in western SD. It is conservative.
3
Different states/regions are more like different nations. Very little beyond currency, language and a common defense unites us as a nation. Our political and legal systems are broken because we have irreconcilable differences. Abortion is one of many major irreconcilable differences. Perhaps it’s time for a looser affiliation which allows different states to self actualize. I don’t believe blue states really need red states and let’s face it — we don’t really like each other. Why persist in power struggles to force the other side to our way when we could each go our own way?
14
@Frank Salmeri, I agree — I’ve been feeling this way for about 20 years.
2
Is it possible for those heading into the south to make it over into something like what it is only improved? Yes...maybe...in five or six generations. Think the year 2155 or thereabout.
The south has been ruled by an oligarchic ruling class for much of its history, coupled with weak democratic institutions and, likewise, weak public participation in decision making. The harsh reality is that laws were set up to bend power toward the powerful and keep it that way.
In almost every measure of social well being, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana and other southern states come in at the bottom. But, there is a lot more to the picture than draconian restrictions on abortions.
Many southern states have laws allowing "non-judicial eviction" meaning the sheriff can come around and throw you and your possessions out on the curbside without having to get a court order first. Pawn shops, payday loan store fronts and "buy here/finance here" used car lots find their comfort in the south. In some states like Texas, police regularly go out on "go to jail" round ups of people who haven't paid misdemeanor fines (a U.S. constitutional violation by some rulings). Texas cities also jail for an $9 bounced check.
The art and creative hubs like Asheville, NC, Austin, Tx and Charleston, SC, are islands in a sea of repressive laws. The majority in the legislatures think they can get away with drastic imposition on citizen's rights because...they always have. They will keep pushing. Backward.
169
@Doug Terry
It is worse than that - they aren't even islands in NC because the NC legislature gerrymandered the heck out of the districts to the point of being declared unconstitutional.
I live in the NC 9th district - the place that still doesn't have a representative in Congress because of a do-over election stemming from the voting fraud committed by Republican former pastor Mark Harris.
In 2011 the Republican-dominated NC legislature redrew the district, shifting most of Asheville to the 10th district. The new map split Asheville in such a way that in some neighborhoods, one side of the street moved to the 10th while the other side of the street stayed in the 11th[5]. Net result, that creative artsy hub has as little true representation as the 9th district residents of South Charlotte - aka none.
21
@Doug Terry
We don't have, any of us, 5 or 6 generations to do anything. It's now or never, due to climate change.
16
I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else but the South. Driving in snow & ice, tiny apartments, high rent & other expenses would make me loathe the Coastal North or West Coast. We came to Atlanta for jobs, but also the milder climate. Sure, there are more conservatives here, but the ones, especially, that want to help foster children thrive receive, from me, higher esteem than liberals who talk about the disadvantaged, but do nothing.
Why does the film industry have a large presence in Georgia? Tax breaks & gorgeous sites for filming. It irritates me when certain big names in film say, “Let’s get out of Georgia!” There are people in Georgia who depend on the GA film economy. We need a variety of viewpoints in this great state—don’t return to your ritzy coastal enclaves.
25
@Dani
I left NJ in 1970 and completely agree with you. I've lived in Tx, Va., NC, SC, Fl. and I've been in Ga for the past 25 years. I live 40 miles south of Atlanta. My town is a mix of conservative white folks and liberal black folks. Living here has given me an opportunity to mingle with people who come from very different backgrounds, to understand how others think and, as a white person to have a much better understanding and admiration of black culture. I never had that in the north, where people seemed to choose to segregate themselves, racially, politically and economically. I tend to believe that we are living in a temporary period of regression, but there is hope on the horizon. If we can overcome voter suppression and apathy, progress will be coming.
I would not enjoy living anywhere else, and now that I'm retired, I can't afford to live anywhere else.
8
@Dani How is it possible that you haven't seen the many communities outside the South that have none of these problems? Driving in snow & ice, tiny apartments, high rent & other expenses would make me loathe the Coastal North or West Coast.
4
@Dani
I lived north of Atlanta for 2.5 years. Never again will I go back. From bumper stickers showing the confederate flag flying over the white house to stolen political yard signs to the "we're just better" attitude to the "if you get laid off you're worthless" mindset, it was no place for me.
20
Abortion rights have been slowly whittling away and now it has been full speed ahead. These most strict abortion bans should not come as a surprise in the south as the loose liberal pro choice laws have been passed in the northern cities. Little outrage over the passing of liberal abortion laws yet an outcry over the conservative bans. Why? The media.
The media has been quick to report on the southern state bans but the coverage of these liberal laws has been almost non existent. This is not surprising since the media champions liberal causes. This is hypocrisy and both sides should told.
The conservatives are winning in the pro life debate and action has occurred to slow and eliminate abortion in many places. Let's hope this continues at this pace so we can save our babies from extinction.
1
@KMW.
Have you noticed that the earth is already overpopulated, is experiencing drastic climate change and pollution?
You SHOULD worry about extinction - not due to abortion or birth control though.
1
Really great essay by Ginia Bellafante. Well, let us not get too carried away. The South has its "island cities" of culture, embedded in its population that will overturn Roe v. Wade. It's different.
I grew up in a small town in New Jersey, but there was always someone with a telescope in his yard. You could find someone who could tell you about Schopenhauer, for god's sake. It's different in the South, where the cities, like Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh Durham, New Orleans, Austin, Atlanta, DFW, Huntsville... are where you have to live if you want the education.
I learned by cycling the back roads of North Carolina (good, smooth roads, but dangerously narrow) where the roads meet in the country at a "Church Corner", or, "Flat Rock Church Road". It shows the fabric of the culture. Not one for reproductive rights.
New Orleans is that magnificent city that, as my friends point out, is *Catholic*. The people there celebrate, rather than evangelically punish. Go across the toe of the LA boot to MS and you lose the good education that is in St. Tammany Parish. Scientists at the Stennis Space Center commute from St. Tammany with its good schools.
I don't know whether these "island cities" will culturally spill over into the surroundings. They've always been more liberal, one source for the great Southern Novel, where a character could have a good time. The South will tolerate them as inconvenient bunions on its cultural feet. They're its links to the world.
6
I’m a Southerner and a Democrat. One by birth; the other by “raising,” as we say. Until we older white Southerners abandon the myth of The Lost Cause and seek to reconcile historic truths, we will continue to stagnate.
Charlotte, my home, while touting itself as a progressive New South city, has the least economic mobility of any major city in the United States. Translation: if you relocate to Charlotte from the Northeast, your prospects may be promising, especially if you’re white and well educated. If you’re a Charlotte native and African American, however, there is little chance you will ever escape the economic, social, educational, or even the physical boundaries of the particular neighborhood where you live.
I have family who live in both Charleston and Asheville, both bustling, progressive cities. I grew up in Raleigh, also a beacon of education, research, and growth. All these places are less than a half hour drive from communities whose residents harbor every retrograde notion embraced by the far right. These are places dominated by false pride and secret shame. Some white folks loudly defend their “heritage,” even though the associated stories are based on a web of deceit. Their fear of facing the true story of the South is easily stoked by a President who validates them as “fine people.” Until there is truth and reconciliation in America, the South will continue to churn out more grist to feed its warped narrative.
7
I never know exactly what to do with articles such as this. On the one hand, I hate the condescension. On the other hand, I appreciate the attempt to explain the South to Northerners.
The South is not some monolith. It is a variety of different cultures, politics and races. As a native son, I have always been considered a liberal by my Southern friends and relatives. I have always been considered a conservative by my Northern friends (no relatives).
I have lived in Broward County, Florida since my family moved here in '67. As a result, I have lived amongst a majority of transplanted New Yorkers for my entire adult life. I can say with some confidence that I have found them to be just as racist and backward as my most ardent Cracker relatives. In fact, more so in that they are more duplicitous in their racism.
One of my dearest liberal friends, segregated in their university enclave in Central Florida, expressed surprise when I mentioned that I subscribed to the Times. I joked, "Yes, it's important to know what the enemy is thinking." She accepted this statement as fact! That pretty well sums up my experience with my humorless liberal friends.
I think Roger Cohen stated it best in his column today when quoting Plato, "Be kind. Everyone whom you meet is fighting a hard battle." Northerners, Southerners, we are all fighting hard battles and a little kindness (and humor) will aid in our understanding of one another.
8
I’ve often understood jokes difficult to translate across cultures and languages. I’ve rarely gotten the humor in jokes said in languages I can speak but aren’t my native tongue. I dated a man once who grew up in a very different culture even though we share the same language- we had a hard time understanding each other’s joking styles. I wouldn’t have gotten your joke either. It may just be that.
1
As a lifelong Southerner, I will never deflect valid criticism of my region. What’s true is true. But please, be fair. Of the eight states that have passed these heartbeat bills, only half are in the Deep South. Missouri and Kentucky are border states, a mix of South/Midwest and South/North, and the other two are Ohio and Utah.
6
@Karen Hill. Which of these Deep South State does not have a heartbeat law?
Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Although the laws will hurt poor, less educated, very young women who are native to the state, AL's new law is mostly aimed at the women you describe in your article: high flying, educated "Sex and the City" types who need to learn their place.
3
Faulkner nailed it: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Read Cash's Mind of the South, written 100 years at the instigation of Mencken...the cities are oases of enlightenment; the small towns and countryside are else.
4
when the law prohibit a common sense like the freedom of choice, start packing .
4
These draconian laws ensure that women who live in these states will be challenged to find reproductive care. Who would want to work as an OBGyn if you could be prosecuted for providing what is standard care everywhere else?
There will be fewer well trained doctors. The best of the best will not work there and as a result, women will suffer more.
5
I doubt abortion access alone will cause these women to leave. They have stayed up through gerrymandering, anti-LGBT legislation, and the rest of what they claim to oppose. They can fly away to get an abortion if they want and no one will know.
If the southern theocracy continues to erode their own life choices, maybe that would make a difference. Most people don’t leave on theoretical political grounds. They leave because their day-to-day lives are impacted and they see no hope of fixing it.
1
so southern and rural states are merely cheap rent places that exist to be exploited by New Yorkers ?
5
I am unapologetically anti-abortion, pro life whatever term you want to use. I think there have been too many abortions and this is why we have seen these latest abortion restrictions and bans in the south. I may be in the minority of the New York Times readers but not the nation. I will continue speaking up for the life of the unborn as they need defenders.
Please print this comment as all voices must be heard even if they are not popular. Thank you.
6
Your comments on abortion have all been published. You are well recognized as a prolific commenter. But you do not always tell the truth. Fact is, 2/3 of Americans favor keeping abortion legal. Look it up. This is the hard truth. Your side is most definitely in the minority.
9
@CO The truth is much more nuanced. Most Americans - women as well as men- prefer restrictions on abortions, such as limiting them to the first trimester and need for a reason, such as life and health of the mother, and rape or incest. You can look it up.
1
What’s interesting about my southern family is they have become more rabid. I live in nyc and except for my now deceased mother and my husband my immediate family in NC voted for trump. Some were pro choice. Now they are anti choice. Why? Fox News is one of the culprits. Since W and the war on “partial birth abortion” republicans have successfully framed the narrative around abortion and Fox News has been their messenger
8
I have read most of these comments. I think that if you have not lived in the south, you cannot make pronouncements on the South and really know what you are talking about. It is a huge region, three times the size of the northeast. Most good Southerners make fun of people from Alabama or Mississippi (especially if you are from UTK) as you find them crazy and backward. To lump someone from Tennessee into the same category as someone from New Orleans shows you don't know the region. This is like saying that someone from Fall River, Massachusetts is the same as someone from Midtown Manhattan. I lived in New England for 8 years, and it has its own set of issues. What is going on in Alabama and Georgia is alarming, but it is going on in OHIO as well, and OHIO is NOT the South. There are a lot of Foreign Companies investing and Manufacturing in the South, and doing very well there. (Nisann, BMW, Mercedes, Honda, Volvo, Toyota, Nippodenso, Air Bus, the list goes on.) They demand an educated local work force, and people get opportunities they never had. They are changing the culture by virtue of being there. Don't forget Charlotte has had a female mayor, Atlanta Andy Young, Texas Anne Richards. How many Governors of Illinois have been indicted and prosecuted? There is a huge difference in former slave states, coastal states, border states, the Appalachian backbone. Most self respecting Southerners will give you an eyeroll when the subject of redneck culture comes up.
5
Just cancelled a trip to Savannah’s GA because of the new abortion law they passed and their voter suppression on the last election. I wrote the Chamber of Commerce explaining I will choose to spend my tourism dollars in a different state. Small potatoes and insignificant, I know. Somehow it makes me feel that I can do “something” .
149
@SACFRMA
I wasn't aware that Savannah passed a new abortion law. I thought it was passed by the state legislature. And you wrote the Savannah Chamber of Commerce and thought you would persuade them to do something about the state legislature?
If you want to challenge a government action, the first step is to find out how government is structured.
16
@Charlesbalpha I think how @SACFRMA responded was excellent. The local chamber of commerces and local governments need to hear directly about the impact of this law and feel it in their pocketbooks. Imagine if they showed significant loss of tourism revenue and could pinpoint the cause due to letters and phone calls from people who canceled their trips as a response to Georgia's abortion laws. Pressure on the state senators from the local buinesses, communities and chambers etc. might be a way in to change minds or change votes. It certainly can't hurt. Best not to admonish anyone for their efforts no matter how small, but instead encourage them to take it one step further and also write or call the state senator.
55
@SACFRMA Well you might be changing lots of plans as Trump takes this Global.
4
I subscribed to Garden and Gun for a few years after coming across it while on vacation in Nashville. It's a lush piece of media, and I liked that it shared a lifestyle that I wasn't familiar with. But two or three mass shootings later, I couldn't read it anymore. I realize it's not a political magazine, but wished that there had been even a single editorial acknowledging the "gun" part in a way that wasn't exclusively romanticized, with a $2K purebred hunting dog in the accompanying pictures. The silence spoke volumes.
4
I think they will overturn Roe and back to all the horrors of back alley abortions. But I think the forces that win the battle, will then be able to bring the war they have been waging on contraception into the open as the major issue. Maybe then women will vote for the right to not be legally classed as an incubator where they are policed and have the rights of the unborn, taken over their wishes for their body and life.
4
Fifteen years ago, I fled from Boston to Asheville, NC, the stylish, regional encampment for Mid-South liberals, youthful artist wannabes, and a growing population of well off retirees and folks like me seeking just what you describe, affordability and even culture shift. It felt like a wave that would ultimately change politics and influence the region broadly.
My experience lasted just 18 months, as employment was scarce, but still I left with a very strong sense of good things afoot. But politics in North Carolina have dramatically shifted right, as we’ve all seen in so many ways. Living there, I always felt the deep regional culture, mostly positively—though it felt quite weird to have a US Senator like Elizabeth Dole. But I cannot imagine being sanguine, and settling permanently, with the kind of retrograde, extreme developments accompanying Trump’s rise.
4
I moved to Birmingham, Alabama decades ago from Manhattan, where I lived and worked for nine years after having lived in the Boston and San Francisco areas. I came here for a career opportunity and I have been happy here even though I loved Manhattan. When I moved here, none of my friends in Manhattan worried about how I would fare in the deep South because they were cosmopolitan people who understood that one can find any kind of person and any kind of lifestyle in any place. My life here has been much the same as it was in Manhattan. I read the same kinds of books, listen to the same music, watch the same sort of films, and worship in the same kind of church. My friends, colleagues, and neighbors are highly educated and enlightened persons. I have had almost no personal experience of the kind of Southern backwardness about which I read in the Times and other media, although I know it exists. The only hardship in moving here has been my dependency on automobile transportation, but there are very few places in the United States outside of Manhattan in which one does not need a car. The best change has been my ability to find excellent housing at an affordable price -- in an old and ethnically diverse neighborhood that provides proximity to various cultural venues and first-class medical facilities.
7
Does your state embrace modernity or is it retreating into a patriarchal, racist past, or worse, marching toward becoming a church-state? That’s what we’re talking about here.
I want a future where women are autonomous, where science matters, and where one person’s religion has no bearing whatsoever on another person’s personal liberty.
I live in a state where, for the most part, these things are true, but it is tenuous.
11
What troubles me about this issue and always has is the discussion about a woman’s right to choose that denies the rights of a still forming human being. It is a child, it just isn’t fully developed yet. We talk about it like it is a nothing,
I fear for the safety of a woman who will get this procedure done one way or another, I truly do.
But we are talking about killing as though it is as normal a right as voting or driving. It hurts our humanity to be so cold about what this procedure accomplishes.
I understand the pro-lifers, and I worry about the women without safe access.
I have struggled with this my whole life and feel no resolution. I also have family who adopted and am so grateful to the women who chose this noble path, and it is noble. And I have known women who had abortions and were forever changed emotionally in a sad way. I wish every woman who finds herself pregnant and is not ready the best wisdom and comfort I can.
3
Ask southerners what they think of New York and they will be very candid. They say they like to visit but would not want to live in NYC where it is expensive, noisy, congested and at times rude. I agree.
The southerners I have met have all been nice and pleasant. They have a sense of style not found in the north. They are polite and that southern charm is so welcoming after the fast pace of the city. My cousins in Fort Worth, Texas are perfect examples of southern hospitality and it is so welcoming. I could easily adjust to their way of life and values. It is such a refreshing change from the city.
6
Try living there, and you’ll get a better sense of reality that isn’t readily displayed to tourists. As one who has lived for years in both NYC and Dallas, there is no comparison regarding basic human kindness, and the comprehension of Minding One’s Own Business. NYC understands autonomy and support systems.
12
@Danielle Is compassion measured in $14000/year property taxes on a $400K house or $15 each way bridge crossings?
2
I once thought if I stayed in Oklahoma I'd help things change. It's worse here now than it was in 1973 when I moved here to go to college. For instance, Oklahoma incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than any place in the world, giving people, on average, twice the sentence-length of other states. There are people doing life for a baggie of marijuana.
Not a day goes by that I don't wish I'd never moved here to begin with. If jobs in Oklahoma paid enough (state jobs don't pay well) to save enough to move, I'd have left long ago.
27
@Linda "There are people doing life for a baggie of marijuana." Quite interesting, since that is nowhere in OK law.
2
"Go where you are least wanted because that's where you are most needed." - abolitionist Abigail Kelley Foster
A major reason we're in our current predicament is because we've settled for a "thin democracy": one built on the idea that a citizen's obligations begin and end with voting. (And, obviously, a lot of people don't even think they need to do that.)
As a former Bronxite now relocated to the midwest and doing activism here, I can say that there is a lot more support for liberal positions even in conservative states than people realize. Many surveys shows a strong majority of people, even in red states, supporting abortion rights, for instance. And ditto for other progressive causes.
If all those transplanted liberals did even a few hours of political / organizing work a month they could have a vast impact. Worrying isn't enough.
27
@E People have written about the "southification" of the midwest, including on the abortion issue: https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/05/11/us/ap-us-abortion-bans-states.html
We have, unfortunately, *lots* of Christian fundamentalists and are also seeing a lot of confederate flags. MI currently ranks 38th in quality of education, 35th in crime, 41st in infrastructure, etc. And then there's Flint...
3
Depends where in Michigan you are
1
I lived in Atlanta for many year. No question the cost of living is much less than living on the coasts. You get what you pay for, however, in more ways than one. Example: Mass transit in Atlanta is a joke because the state government shackles MARTA, and suburbanites are afraid of "the blacks". The traffic and pollution will force more people to have longer commutes. They will never have a system like BART or METRO.
I found race relations in Atlanta far worse than in several northern cities in which I had lived. The transplants that I knew who loved it there were agnostic to this issue and the political climate of the old south that was present in state law, big business, and law enforcement. My friends and acquaintances would never admit that being a white married Christian man was the preferred power player, even though this was an unspoken truth.
Your article reflects that Americans, more and more, value possessions and living space first, and society second. In Atlanta, people l knew talked more about their lavish homes, condos, pools, gardens, and their disposable incomes, (and the weather, also debatable) than world affairs.
The new south allowed them the ability to buy at interesting, quirky, fanciful, furniture stores that sold pricey pieces they previously could not afford in Boston or San Francisco. For them, perhaps, societal values, cultural norms, were less important than their newfound lifestyle. We will see.
Progress in the south is at glacial pace.
43
@Chesapeake I spent 20 years of my life in southeastern PA and 20 years in Atlanta. You’ve got to be kidding if you think the North is wholesale more progressive and modern than Atlanta
2
@Chesapeake I was born in Atlanta and I live here again. I love it here, and my experiences here could not be more different than yours. Perhaps you lived in a suburb of Atlanta, as those lines of thinking are sadly still common in certain pockets. Those are changing too, but slowly.
The City of Atlanta, though, is a rich and vibrant place. The many “transplants” I know here are helping give fresh energy and voice to movements established by longtime residents of all backgrounds. Our conversations and causes center around equity (and the repercussions of historical inequity here); access and transportation options; affordable housing; human rights.
Race relations can feel fraught in Atlanta because we are having the conversations, constantly trying to do better and to be better. Contributions to our culture and history from all backgrounds are celebrated. Historically disenfranchised populations are invited to the table. The conversations that emerge can challenge. As a City, we continuously seek to do better.
I can’t imagine sitting around talking about furnishings at any length. How boring.
2
Sadly enough, many women are at the forefront of this "new" movement to restrict abortion. It looks like we must again live through history, repeat it, and then have a new generation of young women fight for the same reproductive rights we fought for in the 70's. I'm grateful the future now hangs on "them" and not "us". Or, more selfishly, "me".
19
Here we come with the "wedge issues" that both Republicans and the Republican-Lite parties use to stir up single-issue voting in order to avoid the extremely important unresolved issues of a government totally sold out to big-money donors, who make direct deposits to both parties via lobbyists, who then write the laws of our land that are passed by these puppet lawmakers. Amazon pays ZERO taxes, along with 60 of the Fortune 500 US-based global corporations. So taxes fall on the evaporating middle class. The only not-for-sale candidates are Senator Sanders, Senator Warren and US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who along with 100 members of the Progressive Congressional Caucus are fighting every day against the 1% of the 1% and global corporations that have taken over this country!
13
@mjpezzi I totally agree with your excellent assessment here, what the NYT should be bringing to the forefront are the issues important to everyone, not amplifying wedge issues. If highlighting something that shows we are all unified in our diversity, I’m all for it. But Republicrats divide Americans by showing disunity in diversity. The Progressive Caucus fights for ALL Americans, not just the 1% and their wannabes!
1
At age twenty five I got the opportunity of a lifetime to work for a month in Baton Rouge and Gonzales Louisiana. Being from Minnesota it was quite and eye opener. I saw blatant racism in a doctors office, I talked with a young black man pushing a broom on a construction site who was dumbfounded that I was talking to him and I saw the deep poverty along Louisiana’s chemical row. I believe the civil war had it right and wrong. Ridding this country of slavery was important and necessary. We should have then let the CSA form their own government apart from the rest of America. Those who live and enjoy the deep south east do not and will not ever conform to centrist political views that most of us hold dear. The southern way of life is militaristic and racist and ultra religious. Let those people go. Both nations especially the northern and midwestern peoples would better off without them.
50
Very well said! And very true! Though I have hope that with the aging of the Baby Boomers and even the death of our parents generation that the younger generation of the south, Millennials, Generation Y, etc., will begin to change their ancient culture of racism and misogyny.
4
@Critizenq yes, two Americas. And let the South regress back to pre-American Revolution, while the rest of us are propelled into the socially just future.
3
I had a very similar experience in rural North Carolina, speaking with a delightful older black fellow on the dance floor of a honky tonk bar. He said, “You’re not from here, are you?” I nodded, and asked him how he knew. “Have a look around, and you’ll see what these people think of white women and black men spending time together.” I glanced around, and the looks were direct, and searing. I replied, “Unless you feel unsafe, I don’t give a damn what these idiots think.” We continued dancing.
6
Does the data show that these newbies vote? Do they go to church? Do they go to the country to volunteer for PP?
8
And what will happen, when a young pregnant mother, has an early miscarriage, and goes to a hospital in these Southern States for medical care?
Will the Doctors, in an Alabama, or Louisiana ER refuse to treat her for fear of being prosecuted for providing an abortion, if she needs a D&C?
Will women with early bleeding during pregnancy be left in hallways, where no one will treat them?
41
Caution - beware. Anti-abortion leaders intend for these extremist laws to make Supreme Court rulings look like so-called "middle ground" with abortion restrictions. But the "compromise" will still gut Roe v Wade. .
20
At the end of the day, diversity is great but people actually want to be around those who agree with them. The new south, the old south, Brooklyn NY--its all the same.
7
The "New South" was built on air conditioning and low labor costs. Like the rest of the country the political and cultural divide is between urban-suburban and rural.
For Northerners who emigrate South, they will find themselves in islands of like minded people in their neighborhoods, but surrounded by oceans of rural people who resent, detest, and despise them. If you "ain't white, you're not right."
22
I believe these laws are destined to fail.
Their punishment are so ludicrous ie 99 years prison time for an abortion or for doctors that perform abortions or prison time for anyone driving someone out of state etc...
This may come into conflict with freedom of movement or commerce laws across state lines.
And I wonder if their extreme wording is deliberate in that the conservative legislatures know they will fail but could still go back to their anti abortion evangelical base and say, “we tried, we will keep trying so please still vote for us”.
If I were an OBGYN doctor I would want to practice in these states for fear of some zealous prosecutor wanting to test the law and prosecute me if a patient of mine miscarries.
8
As a northerner looking to take a break from cold winters, I will now be very careful of where I spend my vacation dollars.
And I hope businesses looking to relocate in the south do the same.
45
As long as state legislatures can gerrymander voting districts nothing will change.
Upcoming court decisions on gerrymandering in numerous states will plot the course for our nation, and wither or not majority's or well crafted minorities will rule.
The south has long had a brain drain, and it was engineered by those in power to keep that power from being challenged.
15
Met with a friend who is being heavily recruited for a very senior leadership role with a company co-headquartered in GA and he’d be required to locate there. He lives a non traditional lifestyle. His response to this Fortune 500 company, a resounding thanks but no thanks!!
27
Most of us when we were kids knocking through elementary school and on through high school wondered at one time or another why we had to study history. Eck. What does what happened 100 or 200 years ago have anything to do with life today? Well, in the south especially, it has everything to do with it.
Slavery hangs over the south like a rotting corpse. Everything about life in the southern states had to twist toward supporting slavery, which was also an institution that required oligarchy, the rule by the few. Most whites in the old south did not own slaves. Those who owned dozens or hundreds were the exception and they were rich because they owned human flesh and controlled vast plantations. The big land owners ruled and the people followed.
For most of its history, the south was an attenuated democracy, one crippled by decision making concentrated in the hands of the powerful. Newspapers and, as they came along, radio and television all had to bend toward, first, supporting slavery and, later, white supremacy.
The legacy of those times lives on today in the social and political attitudes of voters across the southern tier of states. Each generation passes along large chunks of its belief systems and habits and any change comes slowly, regretfully. Will the southern states still be "different" 200 or 500 yrs. from now? Quite possibly.
Anyone who wants to "move south" should come to terms with this history...and this present.
19
The sad fact is those with resources will be able to afford traveling to another state to exercise thier right to an abortion, and the poor in those states will not.
That is until the a law is passed that says if your are a resident of say...Texas and obtain an abortion in another state, outside restrictions passed in Texas, you will face prosecution.
This is not paranoia...this is preparing to fight the future.
13
I have long loved Ginia Bellafante’s columns, including this one. But to say that Charlotte and Austin, two long-time cities of progressive thought, owe that to Brooklyn expats is provincial and insulting. Now, if you said Queens expats...
5
It looks like there are no comments from the only state that has it all, so if you need all town mountains, red towns in a blue state, a blue metropolis, oceans and farmland, we’d love to have you!
6
All that youthful optimism and talent is not about to change more than 300 years of bibles, bigotry, and backwardness. Wait until the field shifts from abortion to contraception and from contraception to equal pay, benefits issues, and other things designed to make women second class citizens. The South is not so much moving backwards as stubbornly staying where it has always been just under the surface.
27
The new abortion law here will only affect the place bound (so long as the surveillance state is held in check!), an old and pervasive underpinning to the culture wars.
3
Bright young people will always be outnumbered and unwelcome in the South. Please consider New Mexico instead: blue state (all-Dem congressional delegation, Dem gov, Dem legislature), ethnically diverse, low cost of living, great scenery, near-perfect weather, cool architecture, excellent local cuisine, & a kicked-back, live-and-let-live vibe. No one here will ever ask you what church you attend, and right-wingers are relatively few and far between (except in the parts of NM closest to Texas). If you're a young progressive seeking an alternative to NYC/San Francisco/Boston, we want you here.
33
@Alva
New Mexico is one of the most artistic and beautiful states.
1
Republican men are known to have issues with women in positions of power. But it's not an opinion shared by progressives. We value their work. In fact, generally speaking, I believe women are smarter than men. Their sense of right and wrong not corrupted by braggadocio or a need to dominate.
Men would be outraged if women tried to tell them what they could or couldn't do with their bodies. Yet some men have no reservations about imposing their morality on women. Abortion is a personal decision that should be made by women, not a collective of Republican men.
18
@JimmySerious It's not "morality" they are imposing. It's the need to dominate, to keep woman as second class citizens, etc. There is no "morality" in this; it is all about men deciding for the "little woman" what is best for her. Notice these men are not adopting the unwanted fetus, nor supporting a child when it is born. The hypocrisy is stunning.
7
There’s a reason why housing is so cheap in red states. Nobody wants to live there, outside of major cities! Yes, there are exceptions but when the state legislature passes ridiculous abortion laws that mean that if you miscarry, you might be arrested, no amount of savings is worth it. (And if you are single, why would you need three bathrooms?)
There are plenty of smaller towns in blue states that are cheaper than the big cities that are well worth living in.
13
Only a few states left to live in. For the kids better to go to Canada.
11
The problem with the "New South" is it is not new. One of the big problems is that the Churches there want to trample on the rights of people who do not believe the same as they do. I am pro choice that is not a crime or a sin. Do not tell me I have to live by the tenant's of a book written fifteen hundred years ago. What has been going on for the pass thirty years is a campaign to elect people in local elections who believe Pro-Choice is evil. It was brilliant and it worked and now you have something not so much different from the Muslim Theocracy that rules Iran. It's main purpose as Pence puts it is to make American Christian again. But I do not believe that my wife should have 10 children and stay home and cook for me while she babysits our brood. This is what life was like a hundred year ago for the families of Irish and Italian Catholics. The problem extends far from the South as the Republican party has embraced the positions of the Christians and Evangelicals into their political platforms. It is not just abortion, it is about birth control, Gay rights and Marriage, Health care, Education, Separation of Church and State. Time to wake up people vote in your local elections. Ask candidates what they believe in. The rights you give away may be your own.
17
@Kevin
You are absolutely correct when you say this has been a 30 year campaign. It includes not only restricting abortion and family planning but also defunding public schools through allowing vouchers for religious schools. To keep the people in the cities in check, they pass restrictions on their ability to legislate. I grew up in the south and lived most of my adult life there. Moved out west to a blue state and am now rethinking my retirement plans as it is getting worse, not better.
8
I lived in the Texas Hill country, 30 miles west of Austin- it might as well have been the Deep South of the 1930. The town hired a black policeman- he left in 8 weeks. I managed to stay for 9 years, 8 1/2 years too long.
117
I moved to south central Georgia for a great job 10 years ago. What a mistake. Sure, I was able to buy a very inexpensive house and pay hardly anything in taxes, but at what cost? Services and public transportation are almost nonexistent. All public meetings start with a hymn and a Baptist prayer. My house and car have been vandalized because my Democratic candidate signs. Food is expensive and nasty tasting. Fox News is on in every restaurant and bar. And now this abortion legislation!?! I'm moving back up north. It just isn't worth it anymore.
54
One of the rare breed of native Californians, when time for retirement came I was living in New England and chose to move not to CA but to Florida, with its low taxes and balmy climate (yes, I weighed the choices traded earthquakes for hurricanes).
In many ways Florida is not progressive, but the lifestyle is hard to beat and FL is one state where the senior vote really makes a difference in how seniors are treated.
As for abortion, there are plenty of inexpensive flights (and bus rides) from Florida to states where abortion will remain available. Besides, this is the 21st century, and morning-after pills and sympathetic prescribers are widely available and are likely to be available for the foreseeable future. Florida has multiple chapters of Planned Parenthood, where advice on these matters is widely and freely available.
2
@Mon Ray
I will not disagree it is obviously enticing to retirees based on their percentage. But your definition of cheap flights compared to someone on minimum wage are likely very different. A bus ride to where -Alabama? Georgia? And why should they have to travel for access to a procedure deemed constitutional over 30 years ago? The whole point is throughout the south it is becoming more difficult, no doubt lots of bills are floating around the state houses in my state and yours.
6
@Mon Ray A woman could go to jail for years if she attempts to leave while pregnant. That's the law now.
6
Trump and the Republicans want the most invasive form of government you can imagine. They talk about smaller government but they mean invasive and controlling; just the complaint they launch against the Democrats. Today it is women's rights but sooner or later they will decide that a Vasectomy is also illegal. So men, better look out or your rights are next. Republicans are now coming after your right to use contraceptives. The body and rights invasion will be here soon and it is the Republican way. A Republican form of government may be physically smaller but it will be much more invasive.
20
Delusion.
I grew up in a smallish, now medium-sized Southern city. I began hearing that "new South" stuff in the '60's when yankee factories like Corning and Pringles moved in. In those days, kids went out collecting candy from their (white) neighbors on Halloween. But of course we all still knew you had to maintain quality education: so when the New Southern desegregation was forced on them, my cousins left public schools and went off to Christian Academies.
Forty years on, I happened to be reading the local press (I left the New South two weeks after I turned eighteen). The big controversy in the news of my old town was whether this pagan holiday could be allowed to besmirch the good Christian culture of this pristine city.
There never was a New South. There isn't one now.
42
This is a great article, and the comments also ring true. As a New Yorker who moved to Atlanta 10 years ago, I see both sides of the discussion. Old South, sitting next to New South. The divisions are apparent. Social circles are no longer divided on racial lines, but along locals and transplants. I frequently ask fellow transplants how many of their social circle are traditional southerners, and almost all say, come to think of it, none.
Change will not occur in one election cycle, but over many. We need to hold tight, and keep living our lives, be active in local politics, help the economy grow. I’ve said for years the solution is dilution. These horrific abortion laws are also a way of trying to get rid of the New South, turn people away, and remain as insular as possible. The truth is, life is nice down here, as the areas grow, change will inevitably arrive. Old South will fight hard, but history is not on their side.
13
The divide is between urban and rural, not South vs. everywhere else. the rise of southern cities is a good sign, because it is in urban centers where progressive, non-repressive thought thrives. it will take time, but urban domination will occur in the South just as it is occurring everywhere else on earth.
16
One party concentrates its efforts on solving problems and governing. The other party concentrates only on winning at any cost. I support the brave southern progressives who write comments in the NYT but don't see much hope for the deep south. Some signs of life in Georgia and Texas, but lets not kid ourselves about the rest.
19
Let's hope the coastal profit centers of America now knee the Deep South Handmaid's Tale Empire in the wallet, where it hurts the most. I totally disagree with Stacey Abrams on this. Ruin their economic growth. That should get their attention.
48
I was once recruited for a faculty position at a university in a conservative Southern state, well known for its football teams. On the way from the airport to the campus, I counted the number of churches, of which there were many. I knew that the first question my family would face was: "And at what church do you worship?" This would mean that my children would have to become "churched," if they were to connect with their peers. I rejected the university appointment and accepted a faculty post in the NorthEast. I never had any regrets.
53
@Don Alfonso Plenty of people in the south are not members of protestant churches. They may be atheist, Catholic, or even, hold on to your hat now!, Jewish. If the only lens you view the world is through your own stereotypes then you miss a lot of the world. My kids, have made plenty of friends in their schools here, all religions, races, backgrounds, schools here are not as segregated as those up by you. No one has ever asked about what church they belong too, although when they find out we're Jewish they hope to be invited over for a Channukah party. Lots of school friends came for my sons' Bar Mitzvah and party, in one case an old chaplain friend from the Army showed up. Maybe one of those people who are 'churched'. By the way, I have never heard of that phrase, ever, and have lived all over. Are you sure it's not something someone in Boston made up? After all, your city is not known for it's excellent race relations.
9
@Moira Rogow Maybe it's not bad in San Antonio, but in small towns in Texas and Oklahoma, expect to be asked about your religious choices. Grew in Wichita Falls, Texas, now live in Oklahoma, get asked what church I go to on a regular basis.
7
@Moira Rogow The fact is I was asked and also when on vacations in the South. You can use my reply if it suits you: "Oh, I'm an inadvertent Christian, that is good deeds have occurred in my vicinity, but I was just spectator."
If those who are pro-choice want to do something about all these anti-abortion laws, you can start by boycotting companies based in these states. Coca-Cola and Delta are both based in Georgia, for example.
If you can put a dent in these states' economies, they will be pressured to reverse some of these draconian laws.
34
@Matt
Blackmailing companies by boycotting them is just spiraling downward in a different way.
Our legislators should enact laws with bipartisan support and pass them.
We get the government we vote for.
5
@Norville T. Johnson Divestment helped bring South Africa to its knees. I don’t doubt that the legislators voting for these measures receive contributions from these companies, so sending them a message could help.
18
@Matt
Coca-Cola and Delta are both Atlanta-based companies. The folks who supported this law have little love for Atlanta. A boycott of those companies would not change anything.
10
In large measure, the problem is the Democrats failed to follow the advice of Howard Dean, when he headed the Democratic National Committee. He urged the Democrats to compete in every State. Instead, the national Democrats chose to give the South to the GOP, which means giving it to evangelical ministers and Republican power brokers and hucksters.
There is a New South politically in waiting. What it needs is the Democratic Party to get active there.
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@Pat Choate
I totally agree. When they kicked Howard Dean out as Chairman of the Democratic Party I was appalled. I felt it was the first and the biggest mistake Obama ever made.
Democrats have got to get in and fight. We are too dammed comfortable. Too happy. We really need to realize that this is war: a war of ideas and words, but still a real damaging war.
7
"New South" or not, somebody voted into office the legislators that approved that new abortion law. They knew what they were getting. How people say they vote and how they actually do vote are often two different things. Just because people are young and move from NYC doesn't make them less likely to vote for restrictive laws and conservative representatives. Besides, they choose to live in Georgia, and they have to live with the consequences of their votes, not me.
17
As an African American male born and raised in Brooklyn and currently living in Atlanta, Georgia, I welcome the traditional family focus which the South epitomizes. Yesterday, I saw whites between the ages of 25 – 50, riding manual scooters across Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, sitting on old porches from houses previously owned by blacks - houses brushed with new bright yellow, purple, and cream painted coats.
Many whites are working or own quirky small business you hope will make it beyond 5 years, but most work for corporations. Georgia is exciting and electric. There is greenspace everywhere. Young whites from the East and West coast have opportunities and they are an important geographic group that adds to the human quality and range of experiences I have had while here. Georgia in general is interesting. The gun, rental, and abortion laws are all different.
8
@Jonathan You welcome the "traditional family focus which the South epitomizes." So does that mean you don't approve of non-traditional families?
2
Southern cities are full of non-traditional families-gay, straight, and everything in between.
1
Once, my dad and I drove from our home in NOLA and stopped in Lake Charles so my dad could get a fishing liscence. After my dad gave New Orleans as his city of residence, she asked, "Is that in Louisiana?" Why no it isn't. Don't worry. NOLA will remain the same.
9
We have lived and worked in New Orleans for some time, while slipping back to NYC periodically. There are many qualities attractive to young people, cost of housing, food and entertainment foremost among them, and it's a city that doesn't know or care about your age. But the state has many problems, and NOLA will continue to struggle under its regressive umbrella. None of its GOP House reps voted to keep us in the Paris Climate Accord, despite the fact that even the best case scenario (the goal of the accord) puts over 1200 square miles of the state underwater in 50 years. (New Orleans, more protected, would be a large promontory in the Gulf.) That said, Louisiana comes in last or almost last in so many surveys on quality of life that it's a surprise to discover it can, in fact, be a wonderful place to live. Dampening the enthusiasm of younger, more liberal-minded citizens and pushing them to leave will only hold it back.
8
I had a nice career on Wall Street; nothing spectacular but I worked ridiculously long hours, worked hard, kept my ethics, and had a decent amount of money by age 50. After our youngest of four graduated high school we looked to downsize and take some time off from the rat race. We looked carefully at Florida and NC for their lower costs of living. But so glad we chose NOT to go there. We moved to the jersey shore. It’s beautiful. I pay my “high” taxes and actually get services in return- the garbage is picked up twice a week, the schools are good ( and I gladly pay for the benefit of other families’ children as others did for me when I had a growing family) and the Garden State Parkway is a very well- maintained road. And now it is so clear that regions of the US have different values, and one must take that into consideration - while there are good people everywhere, towns have prevailing cultures, and living with people who believe in compassion and justice is critical for our own happiness.
As in all things, you get what you pay for - and living in the NY/NJ area is no exception.
147
These new arrivals from the North are living in gated communities, not literal but metaphorical. Residents of such communities have no deep links to the neighborhood so cannot hope to change the deep seated prejudices and attitudes of the people who have lived there for decades.
If one of these women needed an abortion, they could fly to the nearest city that offered these services. So apart from tut-tutting they need not relocate back to the Northern cities.
20
@Meenal Mamdani Yes the new abortion laws will compel affluent women to drive or fly out of state to get abortions. But what about those who are not able to do so?
6
When we moved south in 1973 for me to take a teaching position at an excellent university, my wife and I noticed that our college town was a tolerated island of liberalism in a sea of conservatism in which clusters of liberals survived on rafts. We came to realize that our university environment was tolerated because it was an engine of economic growth. We came to consider ourselves living on the American equivalent of the ARAMCO compound. Not much has changed, although with the coming of Republican power to our state things have gotten a bit worse.
73
We were looking at Texas, North Carolina and Florida for our retirement.
I think NJ is looking pretty good, now.
We were looking at schools in Texas, Florida, North and South Carolina for our kids.
The Northeast and California will now be where our money goes.
If I were a young women, I’d leave.
No other issue will galvanize me and mine more than this one. I simply refuse to spend a dollar or a minute in a place that willfull treats women like children. Thanks but no thsnks!
163
I moved to Charlotte 2 years ago for a job. I had lived in the south before & found it livable & charming. But the national political situation has tipped the balance here. I am in a new job where I work remotely, so I can live anywhere and I am planning to move north of the Mason Dixon. If trump is re-elected, I’ll move to Canada.
It seems telling to me that the primary education systems in the south are among the lowest in the nation. Last study I saw put NC at 27, Alabama tied for last.
94
@Gwe. Enjoy those taxes.
1
@Jackson. You get what you pay for. Or don't.
17
The nasty truth here is that whether we like to think of it that way or not, we already have at least two different countries existing within the frame of our 1789 Constitution. In fact, we pretty much had two separate countries right from the beginning, fought a war about the issues dividing them three quarters of a century later which ended with the pretense that all the political and cultural differences had somehow been resolved, and are now starting to look at a possible re-run of the whole thing.
I personally wish a political candidate would start talking about this. Perhaps what we need is a Constitutional Convention to discuss “the unthinkable” - an American version of the Czechs’ Velvet Divorce. It would probably take more than a generation to figure it out, but I personally won’t stop believing that we’d all be a lot better off if we didn’t have to live together in the same house.
70
@Michael
please remember that the reason all these laws are going into effect now is because a greedy New Yorker was elected President (btw, i am from NY, myself). having lived on both coasts and the South, people are similar everywhere, but the urban/rural population ratio is bigger in the north and on the coasts, so they are blue. go hang out in rural MA or upstate NY and see how liberal it is. my best friend lives in NH and voted for Trump, knowing he was voting against abortion rights, because of tax policy - money.
14
@jason
Have you asked your best friend how much more income tax he owed this year than last year? My taxes (on Social Security and a small amount of investments) went up 30%. The 1% and corporate America may have benefited from trump's tax laws but the rest of us didn't.
14
@Michael that woulda mean abandoning the cities which in most red states are not in fact red.
2
Even when a southern city is purple or blue, it is not free to do as it pleases. State legislatures are only too quick to step in and pass statutes overriding more liberal laws passed at the local level. It's also become a part of the standard Republican playbook for Republican-controlled legislatures to pass laws at the eleventh hour restricting the power of newly-elected Democratic governors. For the foreseeable future, most southern states are likely to remain red landscapes with urban dots of blue scattered here and there. Returnees to the South will probably understand the dynamics better than newly minted transplants.
43
Conservatism does suppress labor migration from other states. Flat out: Restrictive laws have a negative impact on the talent pool. However, the net effect is hard to tease out. How much are you changing migration versus how much are you changing who migrates?
I live in a predominately white and conservative quasi-urban economy. I find young talent will still come but most minorities don't stay. They take whatever they need from a professional aspect and then migrate someplace else. Not necessarily California or New York either. Maybe Dallas or Austin. Maybe Denver. Not Utah though.
As a result, the labor force is predominately white and conservative. Browns and whites move in, only white people stay. I'm over simplifying but that is the general pattern I see.
Abortion is a little more complicated. No one needs an abortion until they do. A young worker might dismiss the significance of the restriction until they run full sprint into a wall they didn't realize was there. Like walking into a glass door. Ouch.
Others might reject the state out of principle even when they have some misconceptions. This is the idea of reputations. Your state has one too even if you don't realize it. People will naturally avoid states with bad reputations. Signing a draconian abortion law is a good way to hurt yours.
I think that's why Utah only moved to a 16 week restriction. We already have reputation problems. Business isn't going to be happy if you stigmatize the state more.
68
It is the educated, entrepreneurial people moving into the South that will change its culture. The Republicans who voted for these unconstitutional, unenforceable laws did so to pander to their base line voters. The people migrating to the South will vote to change these laws - in fact, I will not be surprised to see many of the lawmakers who passed this legislation voted out of office next election.
27
@Maureen. I hope you’re right, but Republican legislatures in a lot of those states have managed to gerrymander legislative districts to make it as difficult as possible to dislodge them. The result is that Republicans continue to keep the majority of seats in state legislatures even in states where a clear majority voted for Democratic candidates.
45
@Linda and Michael
Gerrymandering has been successfully challenged in the courts. It is by the continued migration of educated, committed and financially secure people who are going to change the culture. This is a good development.
5
Mifepristone and Misoprostol are the future of abortion. The pills are non-invasive, safe, and private. During the long decades of marijuana illegality, people found ways to buy it, and did. Even if red states try to make it a criminal offense to order the pills, there will be underground markets selling them. After all these decades of Roe vs. Wade, women are not going back. Evangelicals will make it harder for the underprivileged, but they won't prevail in the end.
139
@Ellen - Exactly. And even if they are outlawed in those states, Blue States will happily flood the market and make sure everyone who wants it gets it.
30
@Ellen
They re discussing "investigating" miscarriages and prosecuting women. Best to leave.
9
Run for office. Run for school boards, town offices, state legislature...everything. The only way to change this tide is to push back against it.
58
@blixen
It does not do a lot of good if you live in a severely gerrymandered state. Yes, our local schools can become very good and our towns progressive, but then the Republicans in the state legislature take not and do things like pass state wide laws outlawing things like local minimum wage laws or decide to gerrymander your twin council boundary lines. Then we look at the US Supreme Court and realize no help is likely to come from that body now in conservative Republican hands,
21
I ran for school board.....
@Blixen
Run for office seems like a viable option -- but often it's an exercise in futility. Where I live, if you weren't "born and raised right here" your candidacy is nearly doomed from the start (especially for local offices). Most voters don't want an "outsider" making decisions.
1
There is also a very large outflow of talented people from the playgrounds of the rich on the coasts to wonderful, livable cities and towns in Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and New Mexico -- where the state politics are often to the left of where they came from. (Also, no summer humidity.)
49
Looking at University of Georgia in Athens with our son, my husband and I were are were blown away by the beauty, the affordability, the urbanity of this little sliver of blue heaven.
We began to consider what it would be like to sell our Monmouth County home, move south to an equally gorgeous place at about half the price, with annual taxes equal to what we pay every month. Add in milder weather and the access to a major city (Atlanta) and it started to seem imaginable.
Then, like an unraveling string of pearls, the election was stolen from Stacey Abrams, 500,000 voters were disenfranchised and now this insane abortion action made us realize you get what you pay for and as far as our family is concerned, the freedom of living among the like-minded, open-minded, live and let live population of the greater NY community is a far greater value than some extra money in our pockets.
I'll keep a vision of Georgia on my mind, but my feet, my money and my votes are staying right here.
360
After living in Georgia for 30 years, I learned that those lower taxes mean fewer public services.
176
New Jersey used to vote Republican but now it is run by the Democrats. They have enacted the most liberal policies and it is almost as close to being as progressive as New York. My family left in the early 1980s and never regretted it. I don't miss the Garden State one bit and there are prettier places in which to live.
4
@Dr. C--In Texas, it can mean restricted library hours, fewer potholes getting repaired, restricted hours for swimming pools in the summer, and cutbacks in public transportation.
25
Sorry folks, but the Deep South was never that place imagined by this author and others. Solid red states tolerate their blue city enclaves for the economic benefits they provide as well as the marketing value of having small islands of progressivism, but those same states, through their backward and ignorant legislatures, take steps to assure, through gerrymandering and rampant voter suppression, that nothing will really change. It’s a delusion to think otherwise. The majority of citizens in those states, meaning the white, evangelical Trump thumping majority — both men and women as witnessed by the success of the Alabama anti-abortion legislation— want the equivalent of a patriarchal theocracy in their states. Deeply embedded ante-bellum culture? Ignorance? Who cares. The answer is to let them wallow in their backwardness and give up on the silly notion that there is a new South about to emerge any moment. This yankee lived in Birmingham for six years in the early 1980s and it was the same story then. Almost 40 years of wandering in the desert and nothing has really changed. Doug Jones was an anomaly that resulted from the phenomenon of Roy Moore. No one seriously expects him to keep his seat. Don’t indulge those states with the new call for an infusion of new population and energy — just stay away, and support efforts by Planned Parenthood and others to fund travel by poor women to states where safe abortions are legally available.
263
@Larry Rothman
I spent a few years in Charlotte at the beginning of this decade, and have spent significant time in various southern cities off and on over the past few decades, and the author has it right with how they have progressed over time.
The issue is older, whiter, and rural voters have been able to maintain enough of a grip on power by using dirty tactics such as gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement, as well as using mostly social wedge issues to drive engagement from their side.
This leave the impression that the majorities in these states are all closet white nationalist religious zealots, when the truth is that those in power are represent a minority view.
How we solve the challenge of a minority holding power over the majority at the state level is at least as important as solving the issue at the national level.
And while I don't have any great solutions to propose, simply writing these states off is not a solution.
44
I interviewed for a job in an "up and coming" Southern city some years back. Everyone kept asking me which church I would be affiliating with when I moved down. And these were educated, highly paid professionals. It was creepy.
I can't think of anything that would make me move south of mid-Pennsylvania (southern Pennsylvania is WAY more like the South than the North).
124
@Eric
Curious. I've worked in Atlanta all my life and no interviewer ever asked what church I attended.
13
Some of the question about churches is more a conversation starter than anything else. The old joke is that in Macon they ask about your church, in Augusta, your family, and in Savannah, your drink.
9
I had the same interview question about religion when I was interviewing for jobs in Utah.
9
Living in a slower paced city other then Manhattan sounds so nice. The current rat race can get to you and you just want to pack your bags and leave. This city has become unmanageable with the constant crowds and noise everywhere.
Give me some of the laid back south even if only temporarily and I would be very happy. I would not have a problem with their conservative values as I would fit right in. A friend moved back to North Carolina and I was so envious. New York is not the only place where you can thrive. There are some very nice people in the south and they are as educated and worldly as anyone else.
14
@KMW Come to Vermont. Oh, wait, we have a Republican Governor who may veto the abortion-rights bill the Vermont legislature just passed....
@KMW
I bet you'd love beautiful Mississippi.
1
They'd better get out and start volunteering for issues that matter to them and vote. Here in FL there is not other option.
23
Those of us from The South have mostly understood that the concept of ‘The New South’ was a white-washing of the racist and violent past. It was less about being more ‘northern’ and more about trying to rebrand after civil rights without talking about it.
I was far from surprised when the Alabama law passed. Scared for our society but not surprised. As for the transplants and liberal cities, their votes are making a difference to a degree but these states are seriously gerrymandered. If a similar law passed in North Carolina I’ll be moving as far from the South as possible, as it’s too gerrymandered to fix. Southern cities and states are great examples two different Americas, one that is okay with violence towards women and one that isn’t.
120
I doubt there are many pro-life southerners who would turn down a great job opportunity in New York because it is rabidly pro-choice.
I doubt many pro-choice New Yorkers (with the notable exception of Times readers who are posting here) would turn down that dream job in Atlanta or New Orleans because of the new abortion laws, or other places such as Austin because "my vote doesn't count."
This is beyond ridiculous.
10
@Erik "I doubt there are many pro-life southerners who would turn down a great job opportunity in New York because it is rabidly pro-choice."
That's it exactly, though I'm not sure your intent is to point out that the anti-abortion Southerner that moves north is still free to do what she wishes with her body.
The opposite is not true.
127
@Erik for me, raising a family in what will be the wrong side of the coming civiil war is just not an option I will entertain. When I go looking for a slower pace, cheaper housing, lower retirement costs, etc, I will be looking north, to places like Portland, Maine, Burlington Vt, Portsmouth NH.
70
@Erik
There's nothing new about rural Southerners' hostility to abortion. The only difference is that they expect to be able to vote on the subject if Roe vs Wade is overturned.
It is during the 45 years of Roe vs Wade that "my vote doesn't count" because people were not allowed to vote on the issue.
In a democracy one side of an issue is always going to lose. It doesn't mean "my vote doesn't count", it means you've been outvoted.
If you want a real case of "my vote doesn't count", look at the governor's election in Georgia, widely believed to have been rigged.
20
New South is a facade. Little has changed culturally and politically despite the influx of Northerners. Most are apathetic as they no doubt where back home. The good old boys -- and I do mean boys -- are totally in charge. The Confederate flag may be out of sight but the attitudes and behavior still represent their Lost Cause. I've stopped going downtown Charleston as it is little more than a Confederate Theme Park. I volunteer, I do what I can but I'm always thrilled to get back north of the Mason Dixon line.
72
One point is that people like your young, ambitious, city dwelling, probably well-educated friend will not have any problem getting an abortion while living in Alabama, should it’s abortion law stand. Your friend would simply hop a plane to DC or New York, where abortion is likely to remain safe and legal—what wealthy enough southerners did for years before Roe v. Wade. Who won’t be able to obtain an abortion in Alabama? The very young, the poor, the uneducated—the very women who will be the most affected by having children they can’t afford. Of course, this problem most certainly already exists, as some states have fewer and fewer abortion providers. The rich need not worry about abortion, or lack of it. What surprises me is why so many of the people who will be most negatively affected by these bans continue to vote for people who want to enforce them. Sometimes my feeling is, “Fine. If that’s what they want, let them have it.” But, of course, it’s not everyone who wants it. And then the blue states foot the bill for the red states’ “morality.”
115
@Roxanne Grandis
However, all female residents in states like alabama will encounter increasing difficulties accessing medical care without also traveling out of state. Why would any doctor specializing in female reproductive care want to practice in a state which can jail you for life if it suspects you have performed even a medically necessary abortion?
21
@irene That’s an interesting point. However, I think that many people are motivated by things other than politics in where they live. But, yes. If I was a progressive gynecologist and I had a choice about where to practice that wasn’t influenced by my family or money or some other reason, my first choice would definitely not be Alabama.
8
The "New South" is not so new as much as it is also not the "Old South". The South is struggling to find its real identity. The problem is that it has none. People of the South may be good and decent but too many are still fighting the Civil War. Others are still trying to impose fervently conservative Christianity of a distant era. Except that to them that era must be restored no matter what the cost to our Democracy and our freedom.
The South, save perhaps for Virginia and maybe parts of Florida is living in the 1800s ante-bellum South. Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi and the Carolinas are in a different world. There remains a white aristocracy of the Old South and also a remnant of the post-civil war white supremacists with outsize influence and power. The ghosts of the war, discrimination and hate still roam the South. There is deep loathing and fear of immigrants, blacks, Jews and women with power. And very deep resentment of Washington DC. The loss of white-power and the gains of minorities and immigrants threatens the institutions of the Old South.
Sometimes I wonder if the fabric of our Union is not permanently torn. Until there is a great generational change the South will remain as it is. Even "The bright and the driven" will have to wait for change. The Deep South is no longer, if it ever was, part of middle America. It is also no longer ante-bellum South. The war goes on. And on.
57
@Jay: In truth, the Civil War never ended.
4
Yeah, a lot of these younger north easterners moved down here after a Katrina and in a short time left their mark: I can no longer smoke my cigar in a bar. They are trying to re-make the City of New Orleans into Manhatten. Why did they move?
10
They just want the benefits of living in NYC at a lower cost.
10
Meet the new South,
same as the old South?
Really, northern youth... if you are looking for cheaper rents and the ability to start a business look no further than the rust belt cities. The pursuit of happiness is still alive and well there.
34
It's urban vs rural, not north vs south, which is happening across the entire country.
34
@Mary Marshall---Every large city in Texas "went blue" during the 2018 midterms. You are right in that it has always been the rural voters saying "NO!" to progress---any progress as being something "those city slickers" want.
11
@Mary Marshall
You are right that it is also urban vs rural. The southern third of Minnesota is Congressional District One. It went about 60% for Trump and just replaced a Democratic congressman with a Republican in the midterms. Yet the fastest growing areas, Rochester and Mankato (pop. 100,000 +/- each) are very progressive and vote Democratic.
1
NYC, Washington, Boston etc. are all very expensive, but well worth it. The cities of the new south lack public transportation, decent public schools, and awful violence. The property taxes are weirdly high. The South is no place to start a family.
And how can anyone ignore these ferocious conservative policies? Abortion, the death penalty, lax gun laws, voter suppression- the list goes on.
Students applying to college should avoid Alabama, Missouri, Georgia, Ohio etc.
75
@Cousy Lol. DC has good public schools? Have you looked? No violence? I love DC and NYC, but they are exhausting places to live, and if you didn’t buy something there 20 years ago, good luck to you now. Now Richmond (2 hours south) is reaping the benefits...although I don’t think we need QUITE so many craft breweries.
4
@Cousy
Ohio is not the "New South". Don't lump Ohio in with it, despite its current anti-abortion tilt.
2
@Cousy Great public schools in DC and NYC?
The barely blue enclave cities in the red Bible belt can make the experience of living in the South palatable, but living within the closed minded majority was more than I could bear any longer. Leaving the South was the best thing that I ever did for myself.....no looking back from the land of the blue and the freedom to think for oneself.
45
Hang in there. The wonderful thing about life is death. We all age out and are replaced by people who look like us but think a little different. The North is colonizing the South again just as it did after the Civil Rights era when the Rust Belt was moving to the Sun Belt.
6
Clemson gave my son a generous scholarship and it was cheaper and the weather better and - there are no Jews there. So no- he didn’t go.
I can’t live in a place where people smile at me while they are saying “bless your heart”.
The folks in this story all have an escape plan, all have people who can help them go somewhere else for help. But the poor have no one and that is the goal of these laws. To control the poor, punish them and keep them down.
65
Didn’t Obama say that the best way to change things was for more liberals to move to red states and turn them blue? By all means intrepid millennials. Please go do this.
17
Reading this made me think of Nashville. When I arrived there in 2003 as a transplant from Washington, D.C. I was amazed at how unlike what I expected the South to be Nashville and very liberal Davidson County within which it sits are. Then time passed and I eventually moved out of Nashville to Sumner County, a short 35-minute commute to the north, to the real Tennessee. Out there on the surface at least everything was still rather genteel and "new South." Educated, affluent people never used the "n" word, at least in public. Only a few locals refused to stop driving their pickups around town with 4'X6' Confederate flags flying on poles mounted to their beds.
8
Once you cross into the Old Confederacy you understand the truth of William Faulkner's famous line, “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
Yes, change is coming. The cities are now blue islands in a red sea. In some states a Democrat can win a statewide election. And I am sure that by the middle of the 21st century much of the South will have advanced into the mid to late 20th century.
But until then, as Tom Lehrer sung, it is "The land of the boll weevil, where the laws are medieval."
35
@John Graybeard
Interesting discussion.
@John Graybeard The problem of your theory is that is going the wrong way. Louisiana and Mississippi were democratically controlled even 20 years ago. Mississippi had a “liberal” Supreme Court until the mid-90’s. These two states are moving more to the right. It is true that Louisiana elected a Democrat as Governor 4 years ago. But that was a very strange situation that had little to do with the state becoming more progressive. (His predecessor was an absolute disaster and his opponent was a total creep.)
1
Make no mistake, people who live in the civilized liberal southern cities are required to follow the same misogynistic laws that the uncivilized parts of the state have passed.
39
Bellafonte uses the word herself, “fantasies,” when talking about Birmingham and the “consumerist and architectural fantasies” it awakens in young New Yorkers who want to relocate. These are the self-oriented fantasies that underlie the slow creep of gentrification nationwide. Financial privilege is as blind as any other kind of privilege; it’s easy to like the look of a place without honoring the need to immerse yourself in the complexity of the resident culture in order to actually live there. Projecting yourself onto a desirable landscape and then finding the landscape wanting when its citizens act counter to your political beliefs seems naive at best, tragically spoiled at worst. Don’t go anywhere unless you’re willing to be there even if “being there” means devoting yourself to the kinds of grass roots efforts that will actually begin to bring about the changes you want everyone around you to also benefit from and enjoy. And don’t be surprised if that work takes a lifetime and some people don’t like you. A good life is about real people, not “consumerist fantasies.”
16
It aint just the South . Its the middle. That vast swath of land that flows from "communist"Canada to Tejas. Cities liberal as anything else on the coasts and the rural vast expanse beyond them that can be likened to the Living Dead. Step out of Alexandria, Step out of the Kingdom, Step out of Hilltop and it is a different world out there. But it is not exactly the Living Dead in that they fear you as much as you fear them. To them anything that rings change is considered suspect and elitist . Is it Deliverance on a large scale ? close but in all fairness not quite. Folks who are used to NYC,LA,Chicago or DC permissive society cannot use logic to understand the inhabitants of these regions. If you look at them with your set of values you will find them Christians only in name, educated only according to the diplomas hanging on the wall and generally living according to different paradigms.Don't look at them thusly. Because they are one hundred percent genuine in their beliefs . Not brainwashed. Genuine. Logic is futile cos their logic ain't yours. Imagine the Handmaid's tale with the heroes and villains having switched places in your heart
It is like America is populated by two species of humans. At one point there is a common ancestor then two evolutionary branches appear and are equally viable. Both look the same so one cant readily identify the other as the enemy until...
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Don't panic. This is a temporary, last gasp "Alamo" moment for the 60+ year old white conservative Christians in leadership positions in the deep south. They've lost on gay rights, are losing church attendance, are losing on cannabis, and are desperate for a win. When they die off in 10-15 years, the upcoming leaders of the next generation will be far more tolerant.
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@Alex Emerson
They didn't "lose on gay rights". The Supreme Court removed the issue from democratic control, just as they did on abortion. What will happen if they allow voting on the issue again?
10
I am a Progressive living in the Old Confederacy and have lived in more than a few places in the region. The cities are islands of moderation and tolerance amid a sea of conservative cultural Christianity. the divide is quite stark.
Even among those who are churchgoing, the divide is pronounced. The churches in the city centers are more moderate in their doctrine and much more inclusive, while those in the burbs are highly evenagelical and very conservative.
As to the impact on abortion politics, that war was lost long ago. I seriously doubt we will see abortion widely accepted in this country in most of our lifetimes. Those opposed to it have been playing the long game and have been both persistent and consistent, while those supporting “choice” have not.
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@David Gregory
By preventing people from voting on abortion, Roe vs Wade created the illusion that abortion had wide support, and pro-aborts got complacent. I remember the NYTimes declaring 15 years ago that "the liberals have won on abortion" and the conservatives had to get used to it. They didn't. They fought to get their voting rights back, knowing that that would make all the difference.
7
Long acting birth control has really changed the reproductive rights landscape.
Are any of these Southern legislatures trying to outlaw long acting birth control? Not apparent to me.
And women can buy misoprostol over the Internet.
The sophisticated ex-New Yorkers living in the affordable, moderate cities described in this article will continue to have lots of reproductive choices. Including, in the unlikely event it comes to it, a Jet Blue or Southwest flight back to the Northeast or California or Chicago for an abortion.
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@Frank Yes. But what about a poor 18 year old living in a rural county?
6
Thank you for the very condescending and pandering op-ed. Your piece demonstrated precisely why I use CSA as my location; Northerners still think that the South has not advanced much since the end of the Civil War. Well, the truth is that the North has not advanced much past the Jim Crow era when it enacted racial barriers of its own; racism and segregation in the North were a bit more subtle than in the South, but it was there.
But this op-ed is about abortion and how Southern states are passing some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. The state where I live, Tennessee, tried to enact a "heartbeat" bill but it failed even to get a vote and was tabled for further "study." So Northerners may want to consider flocking to Tennessee, especially Nashville, as a lot have already done.
I guess Northern liberals will have to think twice now about moving to the South where the cost of living and housing is a bit less than in the North, where you can get more for your money, and pay less in taxes, but where moral and social values are more in line with what God intended. Thank you.
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As far as paying less taxes.... how does precarious health care and education feel? Also, do you realize that southern states get essentially subsidized by the taxes the richer norther states pay?
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@Tzazu,
That's what the liberals want us to believe; basically, Tennessee pays its own way, it has a surplus based on a state sales tax, not an egregious income tax. Also, Tennessee pays the tuition for 2-year community college degrees. Besides under the Trump tax reform, highly taxed states, including those in the North, will no longer be subsidized by the federal government; they will only be able to write off $10,000 in property taxes and mortgage interest combined. I think that is still too generous, but it means more federal tax dollars coming to the South. In that sense, Trump tax reform is a gift to the South for supporting him. Go, Trump, go!
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@Southern Boy I am from the Knoxville area, and I know Tennessee. As every good southerner knows, the south is a very complex region, and probably three times the size of the northeast. I currently live in Maryland, which is also a nice state. Teach by your example and don't take vocal offense. I know my Tennessee, and I love it and I miss it.
1
If I was in my 20's or 30's and looking to establish myself somewhere, I would now start looking closely at the composition of the State houses and governorships around the country. Pull up the hoods up and look closer at the engines. Make an informed decision about where you live.
With what has happened in Alabama, I wouldn't even consider stepping foot in that state. My only recourse is to vote with my feet. And I would not give a dime in tourist money to that state.
I am not a millennial- I am in my late 50's. And I am anti abortion but also pro choice. It is possible to be both and actually, I think the large majority of Americans feel as I do. We don't like it, but we also feel individuals should be able to make their own choices.
I truly believe this decision is going to come back to haunt Alabama, and other states that follow suit. I also think it may propel many Republican women to vote Democratic in the 2020 election.
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Agreed. It’s possible to be pro life and pro choice. We should be for ALL life therefore trust women to make the best choice for them.
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@EB
Great comments.
I too will not spend a dime on tourism, or any products from companies based in Alabama. I have written three companies on this list to tell them so. https://www.zippia.com/advice/largest-companies-in-alabama/
I have also written the Alabama tourism board.
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I could not imagine living in a place in which the state and local governments is trying to force "Christianity" upon all, substantial numbers of people do not accept scientific finding--especially those of climate science--and the "other" is feared.
Those kinds of beliefs and practices are flourishing in the South, especially under Trump, McConnell and Fox News. Without the best and most oc cogent reasons, I'd never live in that part of the country.
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@Mike
As a native born Floridian, I appreciate your comment. May you convince your neighbors to stay in Rochester as well. Your understanding of the South is wrong, but, at 22 million and growing, our population is large enough without the addition of you.
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For years I have read about the "new south" and how the region has turned the corner on its past. As others have commented, don't you believe it. The "old south" is never far away, geographically or culturally. I recall going on an engineering trip some years ago to a power plant near Vidalia, Georgia with a colleague who was Nigerian. We both had hotel reservations made in advance. But when we arrived, my room was ready. My colleague, an electrical engineer, was told there were no more rooms.
I also lived in Jackson, Mississippi for a bit after leaving the Navy, and found everyone was accommodating and helpful, as long as you were white. Many fine Christian folks there saw no contradictions between there segregationist views and their religious views. I left after six months.
I am not saying that the south has an exclusive franchise on hate and racial intolerance. But living in a place that is racially, culturally, and ethnically diverse has to help people get past some of these issues.
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Reading this article draws parallels to taming a new frontier in the United States. Kudos to all the young talented frontiers people who are integrating Southern cities. In the end they will help bring us back together as a nation. Some of them will be bold enough to run for office, and as cities populate with diverse people, some will begin to win elections to bring the South back into the 21st century...frontiers folk we’re counting on you.
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Thank you. I fear for any woman of child bearing age living here in Georgia. But...I so desperately want young people to move here and finally turn this State around. We are close to changing the State...but, we have a ways to go...don’t give up on us...make us change.
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Move to Albuquerque instead! A blue city in a blue state, great food & culture, low cost of living, mountain views everywhere, and Netflix is expanding its studios here.
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@expatsp. I will never live anywhere east of Mississippi again.
Sixteen years ago when my husband and I returned to New England after ten years in St. Augustine, FL, people asked why. I would often simply say, "politics."
First, there was the "coincidence" election of the Governor's brother to the presidency. Then there was war, and a constant barrage of miniature flags flying from car antennas--and a new fear, masquerading as open hatred, of the Other.
Nowadays, nearby Jacksonville is booming, as is much of the South, but the area is more unabashedly conservative than it was when I left. No way I'd ever consider heading south again as a 60-something, let alone a 20-30 something.
Still, I hope young liberal types keep heading down--if only to change the make-up of the electorate. It's truly another world down there in Bible country. And it's not a world where this woman feels comfortable, safe, or belongs.
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@Leoradowling1043 I love the warmth of Florida, but I looked up the political makeup of where my dad lives there and it is a sea of red. Still. I stayed in a vegan bed and breakfast in the Florida Keys and the owner was a steadfast Rick Scott supporter. Hard to believe. Even the vegans are right-wingers.
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@Eugene Debs
If you love warm weather, nice beaches, friendly and tolerant people - come to Southern California.
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As a longtime resident of a deep-blue dot in the ocean of red that is Georgia, I can confirm the accuracy of other commenters’ observations: a short drive will take me past Confederate flags, lawn jockey statues, small towns’ monuments to the Lost Cause, etc. It’s sobering and saddening. And state governments in the South are dominated by the benighted rural areas. Their concern for future prosperity is completely eclipsed by their fealty to yesterday. Even if a rural politician had a progressive impulse, he (nearly always a “he”) would lose his next election to someone who’s not going to give our money to those people (wink). Barring the elimination of gerrymandering or improving public schools and breaking the stranglehold of the religious right on civic discourse, it’s hard to imagine things changing meaningfully. I love living where I do, but I can’t deny that my immediate environs insulate me from the frightening reality of the “real world” just a few miles away.
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@Tom Heintjes - my stalwart liberal in-laws, like you "love living" where they do, but the lifestyle in the South is "agree to disagree" which works for some until you need to access essential health care elsewhere. Not only are the NE blue states "donors" to DC (we send more money to the Federal government than we receive) we are now going to subsidize access to health care even more. The many excellent facilities which are tax-exempt are subsidized by my high state taxes, which are now capped from federal tax return deduction. I hope moving down South to bake some yummy pies in relative economic freedom doesn't become even more economically stressful for those of us keeping the doors open and the lights on in essential health care facilities.
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@jenny: Yes, many of us realize we enjoy our lives in part through the largess of our blue-state benefactors, and we are grateful even as we are chagrined that such inequality and unfairness exist. It’s maddening that most red-state voters don’t view themselves as essentially the beneficiaries of federal welfare. Even when they’re on food stamps, Medicaid, etc., they see themselves as ruggedly self-reliant. And the poor education I referred to makes it very tough to combat that sort of cognitive dissonance.
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@Tom Heintjes
Your observations are a great way to start my day. We are in the process of leaving the South and now that the decision has been made, I can't get out fast enough.
We gave it the old college try but living in a blue dot can't compensate for what is around us. We don't belong, we will never belong and I no longer care to try.
Another thing - winter here is fine but there is nothing nice about literally not being able to go outdoors in the summer. It's incendiary. I'd prefer to see snow for as long as I can given our warming planet.
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The solution to high rents in Brooklyn and Greenwich Village doesn’t have to be to move to the deep South
Up by the Cloisters is still affordable, and the Bronx is rapidly changing.
There’s a certain shallowness that comes with wanting to only live in the hippest neighborhoods
We live down hear following a job but kept our place in NYC.
We rent here as we’re not staying once we retire. Had to buy a car here as there is no public transportation worth talking about.
Rent is high, food isn’t any cheaper (and less variety and not nearly as good), sales tax about the same, clothing etc. the same, schools are terrible, wages are generally lower, crime high, homelessness abounds, and so on.
Travel more because there is nothing to do here unless you like to drink
Lots of Confederate flags on cars; so segregated that don’t see many people of color - very few hispanics or asians.
Trump is extremely popular here amongst the middle class and up.
We volunteer down here - less than in NYC where I think most from outside the City would be shocked at the high level volunteerism - but are not so surprised at some volunteers wishing some of the folks they served got one way tickets on busses to NYC.
It’s a different world down here, and it is not changing anytime soon.
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@Blue
It's not always about wanting to be in the hippest neighborhoods. Sometimes people don't want to spend hours everyday commuting on trains of questionable reliability. Take it from someone who lives in eastern Queens and works in lower Manhattan!
14
@Rep Isa,
Try driving around here with the congestion on the highways. The bridges between Tampa/St Pete are parking lots at rush hour.
Besides there being too many cars with no alternative there are terrible drivers so accidents constantly.
And you have to drive everywhere - there are very limited options.
And at night? Folks drive home from the bars.
21
@Blue As someone who lives in a city that used to be solidly red and VERY southern, but that has become much more hip and blue over the last 10-15 years, this isn’t really indicative of the entire south. (Also, most southerners don’t even consider Florida the south. Florida is Florida.) I lived in NYC for a time, and I love New York, but it really can’t be compared to any other US city, when it comes to entertainment, diversity, food, etc...
10
The "New South" may discover that their passion for catering to the extremes of their flavor of Christianity and nostalgia for the old South will come back to bite them. Like upstate NY's mythology that New York City isn't the State financial engine, the rural southerners can't fathom the amount of resources they derive from their newly thriving urban cores. Once people give up on trying to live there - climate vs. reactionary rightwing government the goose that lays their golden eggs may well fly away. Then the rest of the South can look to Mississippi to see how to do less with much, much less.
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Coming from Austin, living in Maine right now, going to move back part time to Atown soon, I find that this opinion piece states all I know of living in Austin for 18 years and returning - albeit as a snowbird. Don't be fooled by the 'oasis in a sea of red' idea, it's still the south and your vote does NOT count and after a few years it's depressing. My son left Austin, moved to Bentonvile and now is living in Brooklyn and commuting to the city on the L! he's happier than he's ever been because his beliefs, views and happiness are more in line with the NE, of course he grew up in Austin and knows that, at least in Atown, there is no public transportation, a thing he values. I'm not sure how long my 27 yr old millenial will stay in the city, he says at least 7 years to build up a resume (he wants to work for Google as a data scientist) that will bring him opportunities through out the world. Beware living in the south if you have democratic views, restricting gun access views because the majority of southerners havent changed one iota.
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@KT B: I agree!
Austin has a reputation for being very blue, but it’s still in Texas.
Molly Ivins and Ann Richards are long gone, and arch-conservative Dan Patrick et al. breathe the same air we do.
I drive a pickup, but it’s a Toyota and doesn’t have a gun rack.
And I’d move back to Maine in a heartbeat if I could, though there’s always the “I have concerns,” trump loyalist, Susan Collins.
7
The subtext of this article is that the real divide these days is not north / south (Brooklyn / NOLA) but urban / rural. As long as state legislatures are controlled by rural reps, the only remedy is what North Carolinians have done. Elect a Democratic governor.
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@Michael Exactly! Gerrymandering has made this terrible.
8
@Michael
He can veto any terrible legislation, but the Republicans can still override his veto!
2
Women's rights is an issue that is too important to leave in the hands of politicians, the courts, or even well-meaning lawyers. The issue needs to be brought to the people in the form of referendum in all 50 states.
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The referendum best rely on the popular vote, not anything resembling the electoral college -
@Bill B
Sorry, you don’t have a vote on my body.
1
@Bill B
Instead of calling them "women's rights", to which you will always get pushback, why not go with the accurate "human rights"?
When a little boy loses his mother to fatal pregnancy complications -- because she is not allowed an abortion -- isn't the law depriving him of human rights, as well?
6
I am from the south and have lived in the Boston area for 45 years. I have been puzzled as friends of mine have sent their children to Tulane, University of Alabama and University of South Carolina, etc. It's cheaper, friendlier and more beautiful, they say but the kids love it and the beaches are warm!! But, I said, wait, the culture is different deep down. The evangelistic spirit is deep down --- and - my vote NEVER counted there. I went to a funeral in Wrightsville Beach a few years ago for a family friend. As I was on the way to the airport, every church had emptied out and hundreds of people were holding anti-abortion signs....and I thought - there, you have it. So sad.
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@I love this savory tart recipe
If it is any consolation, while my children were college hunting I told them "nothing south of the Mason Dixon line". Liberals with no interest in fraternities or football, they did fine at (rural) Oberlin and U of Chicago.
35
More scary than sad.
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@I love this savory tart recipe Unless the Russians hacked your polling place, your vote was counted and it did count. There just fewer of you than the other side.
4
How lovely it is for those who have small businesses and can afford rent in the thousands.
However, much of the South is rural, small towns where there are more churches than restaurants and where the library isn't open every day because it cannot afford a full time librarian.
Most of the South is extremely conservative, sees the world in black or white, works for small wages and lives, often, a hard scrabble life overall.
These stories represented in this article are just cake icing. It is the cake that makes the political rules for now.
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@Sajwert
I now live in Concord, NH and while there is still plenty of poverty, rural and urban, in our state as well as drug addiction I feel that there is at least care and concern for helping those in need, particularly in the area of mental health.
7
@Sajwert: apparently, NYC is also a tough city to survive....
2
Whenever anyone tells me how progressive the South has become, I always tell them to look at 2 numbers: per capita public transportation ridership and per capita incarceration rates. Then contrast those numbers not with the rest of the U. S., but with Canada & other industrialized nations. Looking at just those numbers, Southern cities it seems are vehemently competing with each other to have the most environmentally unsustainable cities in the industrialized world, and Southern states strive towards having the worlds highest incarceration rates. With what just happened in Alabama, you can now add access to abortion on my list of things to check to see how progressive the South is.
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@Ben-It's all relative. If you look at the South as late as 1950 you had ugly segregation, no voting for blacks, blacks being de facto slaves, and worse lynchings etc.
In as little as 20 yrs., it all changed. That is the miracle of America. Ugliness can change in a nano second as measured by time spans.
Yes, the south is not exactly Sweden, Norway or even Canada when it comes to certain progress but nor is it was back pre 1950.
4
@Paul 1950? Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955. LBJ had to sign the Civil Rights Act in 1964 to guarantee black people the right to vote.
And lynchings happened well after that. Google James Byrd Jr. if you don't believe me.
The Republican party is still controlling the South, and a study has shown that most Republicans have negative attitudes towards African-Americans.
13
@Ben: Why not look at the murder rate in Chicago, and use that as an indicator of how “progressive” it is? Or we can look at what percentage of people rely on handouts.
1
I moved to a college town in FL in my early 30's. You only had to drive a few miles out of town to see the "real" south. It was sobering. Diversity and multiculturalism meant Baptists associating with Methodists.
I lasted 20 months.
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@Cathy There is no "real" south. You could make at least a half-dozen categories that would comprise large numbers of people, and even that wouldn't adequately describe it. One of those categories is covered by this article. What about the 46% who voted for Hillary in 2016 here in North Carolina. Are they not real?
9
@BarrowK
They are real, but their votes don't count because of the way the Electoral College works. I voted for HRC while living in SC. My vote didn't count either. So although I was born and spent my first ten years of life and my early retirement in the South I now live in a more enlightened state that is at least purple and tending more toward blue.
18
Lets examine the northeast. First, observe yesterday's news that NYC schools are the most segregated. I was born in NYC and live in the most culturally diverse area in the U.S. (Elmhurst, Queens.) While I relish the environment, and people are, mainly, civil to one another, sadly, each cultural group socializes amongst themselves and their associated religious denominations (Koreans w/Koreans, Columbians w/Columbians, Indonesians w/Indonesians) and only rent to or employ one another, to say nothing about marriage. These immigrant communities (and the remaining whiltes, are also prejudiced against Blacks to whom, including they would not rent to--this applies to in larger rent -stabilized apt bldgs. Also,, about 18 years ago I lived in Wakefield, MA, a short distance north of Boston. Diversity there meant a white of Irish and Italian background having a relationship or, heaven forbid, marrying! Blacks there knew their 'place' was only in Jamaica Plains (not even downtown Boston), and the few working class Hispanic or southeast Asian refugee grp hidden in Lowell knowing they were not welcome in the greater Boston area. Greater NYS is also very homogeneous and conservative. While areas around the US hold different viewpoints, it is important for all of us to leave our bubbles and hold a true mirror up to our own locales.
14
On the other hand, if enough liberal leaning younger people move to cities in the South, Midwest, Mountain West . . .they do eventually purple up.
It happened In Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada. It would probably take longer to happen in the provinces of the Old South, but perhaps one day . . .
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@Glenn Ribotsky Entirely agree here. Texas is still a conservative, red state, but it was a close between Ted Cruz and Beto O' Rourke in the recent senate election.
That being said, the liberalism in the South is not the same as the liberalism up North. Unions don't have much traction down here. Gun rights are still highly prized. Many may acknowledge a place in society for abortion or gay rights, but this may be more from a libertarian "live and let live" point of view, rather than from the Northern, more academic perspective about the Constitutional woman's right to privacy or that human rights extend to homosexuality.
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@Glenn Ribotsky What you get are liberal-leaning cities, or parts of cities, with extremely politically conservative and religious conservative suburbs and rural areas. With complete political control, the Republicans then gerrymander liberal areas to ensure continued political control. Political irrelevancy for those optimistic transplants or converts.
And just in case they may ever manage to eke out a political win like in the special case and probably very temporary of Doug Jones, the courts are stacked for generations to come with conservative, religious Republican judges.
"Perhaps one day ..." is a long, long chain of days away.
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@Glenn Ribotsky
What you have there is "opportunity cost". While you're waiting for the electorate to come around, you're stuck with the remnants of a very conservative past.
21
While not the intent of this story, I am
amused (and enraged) at the irony of liberal New Yorkers surprise in realizing they have moved to historically red states while (as expected from liberals having privilege to) overlooking the facts (which justifies their naïveté and dismisses their contribution to an important problem - Gentrification).
Fact is Birmingham and New Orleans are two cities with heavy black populations with blacks having political representation — so no surprise that Doug Jones has supporters in BHAM and Planned Parenthood already has its supporters in NOLA.
Liberals need to get out more.
This article and those interviewed are a perfect sample of the problem with Liberal America — a complete disconnect and blind spot to realities outside of their own, again, which includes knowing anything about the neighborhoods they are dismembering as well as the implications of “sticking around” because there are people heading here to “make the city what it is”... as though both cities do not have a rich histories and cultures before!
So while they sit back and believe they are making two (Black) cities more liberal (ie Democratic) and better than before, they will also sit back and be blind to the trauma their typical gentrifier behavior has on the people who are pushed out of those communities for cupcake shops
Disgusting. Egregious. And destroying black communities throughout America. Follow up with a piece on that.
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@Jessica Parker You are absolutely right--it is not surprising that Doug Jones had support in Birmingham, at all. He was expected to carry that city. What was surprising, as the piece states, is that he also had support in traditionally Republican suburbs.
40
@Jessica Parker I have lived my entire life in a white, ethnic neighborhood in Boston that has been completely gentrified and where real estate prices are in the stratosphere. A lot of people were priced out, but they were white, so there seems to be no outrage. On the flip side of that, lifelong residence have become millionaires by selling their property. How do you propose to stop gentrification? Prohibit young white people from moving into neighborhoods? Instead of ranting, how about some concrete plans to help people stay?
'
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@Maureen
I’ve lived my entire life in Boston as well. So has my mother and grandmother. The reason why you don’t see much issue with the gentrification of the white ethnic neighborhood you grew up in (I’m assuming it’s souther, the south end, or Charlestown) is because of the racism in those neighborhoods prior to that gentrification. Black people didn’t have free movement around the city of Boston before those gentrification episodes. You would get killed if you went to southie. The city is much better with those legacy neighborhoods totally gentrified in my opinion. Now I can drive around southie with no problems at all.
22
What this article fails to mention at all is the economic statues of these women relocating. They are moving with jobs and access to money that allows them to travel if a need for a medical procedure arises. How can you write a whole article on this and not even mention this or use the word gentrification.
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@Mariam
Yes, what about the poor women born there and living there? As I understand it, women who travel out of the state for abortion will also be prosecuted - they are owned by the specific state, not the United States.
5
Yes, when one begins to consider relocating to the South one has to carefully weigh the values espoused by the locals, or risk being miserable for a very long time. It's true that the urban centers, Atlanta etc.,may be beacons of tolerance, but too many southerners remain comfortable with segregation and dictating how their neighbors should think and live. That said, go ahead and leave behind the stress of the costly northeast and West coast. You'll have something in common with your fellow expatriates in Dixie.
23
@Garrett Leigh How does that differ with the rampantly segregated New York City, other than New Yorkers claim they are not "comfortable" with it. Especially the schools. See what happens if/when they end the "honors" middle-school programs in the Upper West Side.
8
@Garrett Leigh - NYC and the Northeast are very segregated as well. Not just the neighborhoods but the schools. It's just not explicitly endorsed. And I've heard that Boston is super racist.
8
@Garrett Leigh
"Yes, when one begins to consider relocating to the South...You'll have something in common with your fellow expatriates in Dixie."
Yes, self-interest over American values.
The evidence that millenials are fleeing NYC is VERY weak, more likely to be older baby boomers cashing out.
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@Pat Gourlay The residential real estate market in NYC is subject to the same law of supply and demand that's found elsewhere in the economy. If landlords are charging a fortune for rent it's because they can get it. If millennials are moving out then others must surely be moving in.
11
@Pat Gourlay It was reported that rental concessions (free month or two months rent) in the new swanky Manhattan apartments buildings are going the way of the dinosaur. So that article makes no sense.
1