I understand the writer's point. But as a lifelong NJ resident, I hope she understands that for some of us, if we could turn the clock back to 1860-61, we would let the states that left the union go away.
602
But we are a Union, and should be working to work together as one. Slavery is surely stain that will never leave the Southern states, but racism and all its ill are not confined to there, else why do the near-majority black populations in Newark, New Jersey and other non-Southern areas live so forlornly? Ms Renkl’s graciously-made point is to not be so quickly dismissive of so many people all at once.
122
@Anne Sheerin, I so agree. My family is from Mobile, and I value so much about the beauty and hospitality of the South. My father ran a primarily black factory in the Ironbound district in Newark and really did have a foot on both sides of the Mason Dixon line. Sadly, these highly-paid jobs evaporated as the textile industry moved abroad. Newark is still struggling.
Racism is alive and well in the North and if slavery is a reason to eject states from the Union, then Massachusetts and Rhode Island -- major participants in the slave trade and whose colleges benefited from the huge profits in the trade -- should be thrown out too.
In thoughtful moments, my dad agreed that the South would have been much better off if its agriculture were based on paid labor. But Northerners should look in the mirror and be honest and the racial composition of their neighborhoods and the not-so-hidden racism in their midst. And I include myself in this category.
88
@Terry McKenna
What an incredibly selfish, parochial, short-sighted attitude. The hundreds of thousands of of Union soldiers [white and black, native and immigrant, free-born and escaped from slavery] who fought and died to preserve the Union and end slavery were not so selfish. They may have had a clearer view of the issues, since they happened to be there in 1861. Clearer than the view from 2019 Dover, NJ. luckily for the nation at large, and particularly for the descendants of the enslaved people freed by the Union's victory over the slaveholding Confederacy. The outcome was far less than perfect, Reconstruction failed, another 100 years before the promise of the 14th amendment could start to be realized, but the alternative posed by McKenna would have been far worse - the persistence of slavery in a feudal oligarchy.
49
A few words: Patriotic Gore by Edmund Wilson. Read it.
Can anyone forget that Trump was born,raised and morphed into the idiot he is in Queens(yes,Queens,populated by a sophisticated highly educated populace lol) then was enhanced,groomed and promoted by the brilliant minds in Southern California?Apparently,based on the mean spirited comments,this bit of history has been conveniently swept aside.
12
Unlike the writer of the article and the Southern commenters on this thread, I don't feel disrespected or stereotyped when my fellow Americans call out the citizens from my state (Texas.) The truth hurts. There is a large swath of ignorant Southerners in my state and thankfully I don't have to deal with them often. I live in South Texas, which is a whole other state. It is largely a Latino population of American citizens and immigrants of Mexican descent. We have people who fit the stereotypes, but because they are outnumbered in this part of the state they tend to keep their stupidity to themselves.
I believe the problems in Texas are due to the apathy of Latino voters. As long as they have a job, food on the table, a roof over their heads, and family; everything else is outside noise. Of course, it's frustrating for people like me because I know much of it is generational (and educational.) I envy the collective group mentality the Black community has voicing their grievances to the political powers that be. It is the reason they are one of the most coveted and important voting blocks in elections. Until that time comes for the Latino population, we will keep being the scapegoat of the befitting stereotyped Southerner.
So, yes. The South sucks in so many ways and Northerners know that not all of us fit the Redneck-Hillbilly-Uneducated-Imbreeder-Conferderate Flag Flyer-Religious Zealot-Gun Toting-Trump Loving stereotype.
"If the shoe doesn't fit, it ain't your shoe."
15
Dear Ms. Renkl,
Thank you so much!
As a Southerner in NYC, I have in the past few years found myself ashamed to be a Southerner.
It's a complicated thing. Thank you for saying that. Thank you for expressing the ache of it.
John Mathews
14
I'm sure that many fine people live in the South. It's true that other states have plenty of racist, misogynist, science deniers.
But, it's about majorities. The numbers are pretty clear and no amount of southern hospitality can change them.
24
I am a San Franciscan, but decided I need to get out of my bubble. So, I went on a week long bike tour of Alabama. I KNEW it would not be as bad as “they” said, and I felt a pull to get out of my brewing hatred for Trump- and the south that elected him.
I met a few nice people to be sure. But regrettably it was clear most in the south people hated almost everything that wasn’t an old overweight white guy like me. I guess my appearance served as a disguise from my strongly left wing views? As a result, people opened up with me. I was hoping for a self reckoning that it was not as bad as I thought. But, the opposite happened. It was worse than I feared. It left me feeling quite hopeless.
35
So glad your voice is part of the Times. I look forward to your columns, and I know your thoughts echo so many of ours down here in “Dixie”... it’s just sometimes we’re too silent for our own good.
8
My short response is "Amen, sister." You capture the correct spirit of the region. Having spent over 30 years as a rural sociologist in the South while living in Alabama, I can say Senator Doug Jones is at least as much a part of our heritage as Roy Moore. We have approximately 180 citizen groups in the state organized around natural resource and environmental issues, including environmental justice issues. Race clouds every issue but I see truth in Martin Luther King Jr.'s arc of history bending towards justice. Not because that is a natural course, but because so many are fighting for it.
14
My two cents as a San Franciscan currently living in Atlanta.
The urban/rural divide is significant. Rural populations despise Atlanta and would happily jettison the city in order to become East Alabama. Sadly, these people dominate state politics with plenty of help from gerrymandering and other obstacles designed to ensure the status quo. These people will continue to dominate politics for the foreseeable future. Change is not right around the corner. It never has been and never will be.
Southern hospitality is often fake. People pretending to be polite but unhappy with the growing number of transplants from the North who bring their alien ways with them.
Religion influences politics and culture to an unhealthy degree.
Guns everywhere including in my classroom.
Low taxation resulting in underfunded schools and crumbling infrastructure.
And these are just to start. Please do not get me going on the lack of accessible healthcare, race relations, preservation of the white patriarchy etc.
The South is hopeless. Perhaps the portion of the country that wishes live in the 21st century and tackle contemporary problems would be better off without the portion of the country mired in the past and harboring old grievances. Certainly money sent from blue states to subsidize red states could be put to better use. I cannot wait to leave when I retire. Southerners want "their country" back - good - they can have it.
574
@Lucien Dhooge
Spot on! As an immigrant, US citizen now for over 35 years, having lived most of my life in Washington D.C., and for the last 15 years living in the Triangle Area (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill), NC (which is a fairly progressive tech/research corridor dubbed "The Silicon Valley of the East"), everything that you say about the South, I've full on experienced in my near 2 decades living here. I am also married to a Canadian who, to this day, is astounded at the social issues this country experiences and cannot believe the state of human welfare America tolerates and even encourages. Everything, every point you've touched, is true. We are a blue county surrounded by Trump country, in this state. The differences are astounding. And, to paint the South with a broad brush, although it's admirable to point out how general that is, is how the South must be described. Because for every Southerner who 'has stayed" and fought and voted, there are easily 10 or 15 others who fit the stereotype. Both my wife and I cannot wait, like you, to retire, and get out of this country, back to Canada where even the most far-right dogma is basically center/moderate. I have been watching Ken Burns's The Civil War and The West documentaries in order to better understand the roots of hatred in this country. In particular, The Civil War is a fantastic education as to how impossible it is for the South to adapt. It's astounding how narrow minded the South continues to be. Astounding.
413
@Lucien Dhooge I agree with most of your (and Mr. Pruteanu’s) points. One minor quibble. If SCOTUS would put some constraints on gerrymandering and voter suppression, the retrograde voices in the South would not be amplified to the degree that they are now. I suspect conservative opinion would still be in a small majority today (although demographic trends might argue that it would not be a decade from now). Bottom line, free and fair elections would lead to more moderate/progressive politics. So, to suggest that the dominant southern political culture accurately reflects the population is not correct. Gerrymandering and voter suppression delivers dramatically outsized power to an anti-democratic Republican Party.
134
@Lucien Dhooge
"Southern hospitality is often fake. People pretending to be polite but unhappy with the growing number of transplants from the North who bring their alien ways with them."
WOW. It seems as if Ms. Renkl's article reached a boiling point which blew the cap clean off the whistling tea kettle.
I'm only offering my meager two cents worth of an opinion here.
There is a monumental difference between "Southern hospitality"and open rudeness and hostility. An overall politeness doesn't necessarily mean those actions are fake or insincere but rather merely good manners and respectful behavior.
Such negativity and jumping to erroneous conclusions and assuming those are facts is a huge part of the perception problem. Somehow over time, kindness and compassion has been discarded, not gently tossed aside like delicate gardenia blossoms, and only rancor, anger, and hate permeates the room and the air.
18
The virus of racism and white male supremacy that was never snuffed out in the failed Reconstruction after the Civil War has burst into the open with the attempt to use abortion to restrict women's control over their bodies which amounts to sexual slavery. It may not amount to secession since they have their Jefferson Davis Trump in The White House, but, make no mistake, is a blatant attempt at nullification of Roe v. Wade and to subjugate women, as they once were in 1860, to the white male Christian patriarchy. And we thought The Handmaid's Tale was fiction. Gilead is just the 21st century version of the Old Confederacy. Fortunately, women, especially those in the South, learned the right lesson from the abolitionist movement and won the right to vote a century ago. Let's hope they use it to save the Union, the Constitution, and their freedom from religious oppression.
368
@Paul Wortmanp the irony of this is that a woman representative introduced the bill in the Alabama legislature and a woman governor signed it into law. This implies it's not just a male patriarchy thing. Apparently, some women are just as happy to control other women's bodies as their male counterparts.
71
@Jeff Look at the elected legislature.
17
@Jeff
Republican women are first, Republicans, second women, and last, usually, wives. Usually evangelical Christian wives. They are rarely independent of their husband's values.
45
It makes me sad that the final profile was a fundraiser for Vanderbilt U's libraries. Really? A school with a phenomenal endowment? How about profiling people doing real work, for the people in their communities. It was all going ok until I ran into that.
4
I'm not an Alabamian by birth; I am an Alabamian by choice. Forget all those stories that paint Alabamians as narrow minded red necks. For the most part, these people go the ends of the Earth to help others, particularly if there is a disaster - they don't wait around for the government to show up. Yes, I am appalled by the new abortion bill that the legislature approved, but politicians are not the real people. We don't always vote conservative and down the party ticket. We think about things and make our own choices and don't necessarily want or need the government telling us what to do.
32
Proponents of a culture of life don't recognize the incoherence in their position because it has nothing to do with life and everything to do with curtailing the promiscuity of women. After living in Alabama for six years, I have never met a group of Americans who elevate the performance of hypocrisy to such a sublime art as Southerners do, bless their hearts.
I don't doubt that the American South has the potential to be more progressive, less inhumane, and more just and equitable. But time and time again, despite the good citizens listed in your article and pockets of left-leaning voters in Jackson, Birmingham, and Nashville, state-wide elections continue to reveal the true spirit of the south, which, to me, seems unmoved since the civil war.
15
This is ridiculous.
Pack this in with Hillbilly Elegy.
The very simple reason people from this part of the country (as well as where I came from Eastern Wa. State/Idaho) is because there is enough consistency to a narrative. These more conservative/right-wing/fundamentalist/salt of the earthers or whatever you wanna call it, vote the same exist in a state of comfortable white male supremacy and most of the people who "fight back" also live and let live with their bigoted neighbors which is why these parts of the country have never gotten any real traction when it comes to policy or real social change period.
8
How would a charismatic John F. Kennedy born in Alabama, Yankee born George Wallace turned out politically?
2
It seems almost tragic when non-southerners spew out all kinds of prejudice against the misogeny and racism of white southern males. Try to take those kinds of attitudes and statements against people from the south and say the same thing about “blacks”. If you made such statements about lazy, horrible, primitive, etc. black people – you would be banned from the comment sections.
I never did, and never will, vote for the people who have been passing these laws. Just like the black middle class hardworking people living next door to me don’t want to be judged by the act of the criminals that robbed the gas station down the road – this white male doesn’t want to be judged by the thugs that have taken power in my state.
9
Arlie Russell Hochschild in her 2016 book “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right,” is worth reading. Hochschild spent six months in Louisiana. She learned and saw the detestation that the fossil fuel industry did to their lives and their environments. She saw how fundamentalist religious beliefs transferred those losses and anger onto a scapegoat – often the foreigner “cutting in line” ahead of them to their illusory American Dream. On abortion, she saw how the GOP used their fear of hell and damnation to vote with them all the time against their lives exploiting the abortion issue. Hochschild is indeed a journey into “the Heart of Our Political Divide.”
6
Control women's bodies and you control them. Lock Blacks away, intimidate them by police, and limit their vote. Be outraged at the LGBT, disown your queer children, and exclude them all with clear laws. Punish anyone with draconian means including the death penalty.
The South has been and remains in the grip of xenophobic bigots fueled on religion and paternalism. Good Old Boys.
Every country has a similar region that's mostly self isolated, undereducated, and underemployed, full of ignorance, resentment, and fear of change. They can't compete so they tear it all apart and want to live in the glorious past. Let them. But they shall not pull the rest of the country into their quicksand of stupid.
9
Even worse, you could be a 16 year old boy, sick with the flu, with no bed for 6 days, no family to help you and put in a cage in Texas and left to die. Just because you're from Guatemala.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/us/politics/migrant-boy-dies.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage
9
I’m 61. An immigrant from Scotland in the’ early 70’s, became a naturalized citizen in 2012. My wife is Canadian and became a citizen in 2011. We’re about 2 years away from our retirement target date. We are in the midst of a planned move to retire in another country, possibly Spain or Portugal. We have become disenchanted and disillusioned with the direction our adopted country is moving and are looking for a place to live where healthcare is affordable and and the public discourse is less toxic. After the recent elections in Spain, we are hoping that the same problems we see in America will not take hold in that part of Europe. If so, where else might we go ?? Not really sure. So sad. What’s happening in this world ?
16
I agree with Ms. Renkl and her gracious writing - that there are good people everywhere. I agree it doesn't pay to demonize an entire state, no matter its location. But the heavy hand of "Dark Money" is everywhere - in every state deemed vulnerable and a target by the radical billionaire right. Reading the book by Jane Meyer (2016) helped me understand the playbook of the likes of the Koch brothers and their ilk, and the obstacles in the way of disrupting their game.
12
We're number 49! We're number 49!
Thank goodness for Louisiana, which saves Alabama from being ranked as the worst state in health care, economy, infrastructure, crime and environment, according to the 2019 annual ranking by US News.
This isn't about some fuzzy notions of local attitudes and values. It is a broadly dysfunctional state that might be a contender for number 50 in 2020.
14
The South is why the Voter's Rights Act was signed into law and the reason it sorely needs to be re-enacted - the rationale behind the law hasn't abated in the least. As long as the majority of each of the southern states continue to live in the past, things will never change for the better. Unfortunately for progressives, there isn't much of an in flux of folks wishing to move down to those environs and the only folks there are the one's reared and raised there. If enough progressives made a grand sacrifice and moved down there, perhaps in a few generations things could start changing for the better and there can be real...growth in the South. But until that day comes, I really would not be at all surprised if the Scope's Monkey trial is retried in Tennessee in the very near future.
13
I grew up in Charlotte, but have since lived in Philly and now call DC home. I admittedly have a different experience of the South: Charlotte is reliably blue these days, and the NC county where I completed undergrad was won for Bernie in the 2016 primary. That said - I’m well-acquainted with many of the attitudes that hold certain legislation hostage. I grew up in an Evangelical church that did not necessarily support Trump but that also actively protests pro-choice platforms, for example, too. A long and intentional time away from this upbringing has given me perspective I’m so very glad to now have: the “evangelical” demographic (though truly not as generalizable as is easy to type) has become incestuous in its theology and dogma. Without attempts to mate beyond its walls, its worldview is increasingly bending in on itself and becoming sick. The bedrock of white supremacy is unfortunately tied to a white worldview of Christianity and therefore dictates how many vote, and this is extremely detrimental to liberty and justice for all. I can say, though, that many desire change, and some change is happening.
HUMANS share this common problem: we all want a scapegoat. Maybe if we took care of business we wouldn’t need to send it out of town via THOSE OTHER people. I am still angry at many of the systems I grew up in - & I am choosing a different life for myself - but I am learning that perspective CAN shift, and eyes CAN be opened. There are justice fighters within the South.
8
I loved living in Atlanta, Georgia. I really did. It's been many years since I lived there in the early 70's so I have no idea what it is like now. I can think of only one word to describe how it felt to me then: Gracious.
It was also a bit scary. There were feral dogs that ranged within our neighborhood and I had small children and pets at the time. It was also the time when several young boys bodies were being found. But the Azaleas were beautiful. The people pleasant and well-mannered. The days lingered until Kudzu invaded our property and then it was war.
Actually, I didn't notice until I had been there for a few months that all I ever seemed to have contact with were white people. I was coming from California at the time where there were so many new immigrants from Viet Nam. Where I had neighbors (neighbor friends) from what seemed every corner of the world. Heck! I learned to make Tamales from one in exchange for teaching her to knit.
Georgia was beautiful, elegant, and gracious. It's true. I was sad to leave while being excited at the same time to be returning to a vibrant culture in California.
I now live in France. I live near Paris. I think it is a lot like California and Georgia. It is gracious and there are people from everywhere here! I have learned to make every thing from Cassoulet to Tajine in trade for teaching others how to use a sewing machine.
I can't imagine not having friends from other cultures because they enrich my life.
9
Brava! You and those you name (and I'd say many others) are fighting the good fight. A deep bow . . . from a Birmingham native transplanted to a state (Pennsylvania) that can claim a full pedigree for such illiberal practices as gerrymandering (PA ranks #2). Interesting that among the Justices who revoked Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, only one (Thomas) was a southerner.
9
I was recently involved in a car crash in a small town in the Appalachians. Different races. Quite tense. The trooper who responded was older and white. He was courtesy itself, and bent over backwards to be fair - almost to the point of ridiculousness. Compare and contrast with multiple dreadful incidents in the “liberal” North. The South isn’t perfect. But then, neither is the North - or, indeed, any of us.
84
As someone who grew up “privileged” in New York in the 1960s, I had a deep distain for all things southern and felt a powerful sense of superiority over the “racist South”. Later I learned from a friend who was harassed by and stood up to the KKK when she sent her kids to a newly integrated school what courage it takes to take a principled stand in a hostile environment, particularly when so much is at stake. I realized that “being liberal “ in a liberal environment is a piece of cake compared to standing up for equality and justice when that’s not only unpopular but also potentially dangerous. I’m so thankful and humbled by Margaret Renkl and others like her for courageously bringing light to the darkness.
126
I am always perplexed that such a Christian country can treat a group of people so badly and deny the impact of that pain and suffering.
Don’t they still have segregated proms down there?
Southern culture infantilizes black people. They are cool with blacks as long as they follow the good natured, happy hearted person that graciously accepts their role in society.
They are cool with the black person of yore that would chop wood, house servants and what not. Cool with people who can take a beating and turn the other cheek.
When blacks try to be treated as true equals and fully participate in society is where problems begin. Go to school, live in nice homes, vote, run for office and you start getting resistance.
8
No. Our proms are not segregated nor is anything else.
6
Of all the things mentioned, the proms are the only thing that your comment denies. The rest... not so much...
2
Any region that accepts fundamentalist religion as absolute inerrant truth is certain to be backward, bigoted, and unChristian.
I was born and raised in upstate New York, and was stationed as an Air Force Officer in Georgia, Alabama and Florida when they were segregated. Treating AfricanAmericans as sub humans is ugly.
11
I hope and pray that the Southern States will promptly secede from the Union, and take Trump with them!
10
I've been to Alabama (and Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia,etc.). People there were pleasant to us. (My spouse is not white.) I firmly believe that you can't find nicer, more decent people in the United States than you find in the Old Confederacy. However, they are also devoutly religious and once they get the bit in their teeth, they're 'off to the races.' They've been led by the nose by legions of reactionary sharp operators who know how to push their buttons, and have been doing this since Reconstruction days. It's all a damned shame.
8
I lived in the south (SC & GA) for years, and what sets the south apart isn't racism or anger or any of that. As others point out, that stuff is everywhere in the USA.
IMHO what makes the south unique is the folks there are just a bit SLOWER than the rest of the country. A bit slower to cut you off while you're still talking. A bit slower to assume they know your story. A bit slower to jump to conclusions without thinking it through. They're not perfect, but Southerners ARE more polite.
10
Yes, we in the north are faster, but maybe its because we actually think doing things is more important than praying for things.
11
@heb
Sure they are. We see the results of the elections coming out of those places.
Sorry, but every time I see election results from most places South, it's never close. Everyone knows every single person that lives in the south isn't necessarily like the typical stereotypes, but that can be said about anything.
8
It would be easier if racism and bigotry were confined to the southern USA. Unfortunately, it's not. Racism in housing in New York City. The need for a fair housing law in California. And Mayor Richard Daley's Chicago is a special case of legalized "favoritism."
Thanks for writing this opinion piece.
8
I am a Liberal for Southern Succession. I would be delighted if the south would just go its own way and leave the US. I will not fight you. I'm tired of paying for the South, arguing with the South, and fighting for the least of you who reside within in the South. Trying to drag the South kicking and screaming into modernity is as exhausting as it is apparently pointless.
19
Couldn't agree more, and no foreign aid from the northern states. That would be the biggest tax cut I would ever get! Let them wallow in their poverty, poor education, and claims of how polite they are, which they believe makes up for a complete lack of social justice. Let me be clear, it doesn't.
12
@Melanie You'd be jettisoning a very large number of Northerners (and, where I live, a fair number of Californians) who have moved to the South, generally for jobs, weather, lower taxes (yes -- for that), and to retire. If you're counting as "the South" the city of Houston (where I used to live) -- it's one of most diverse cities in the country and despite the flooding, very vibrant. Did you want all of those immigrants to secede, too? No, not at all perfect in the South. But there was always racism in the North and in California. Always. And, as I recall, California wasn't precisely welcoming to impoverished people in general -- eg, "Okies" fleeing the Dust Bowl.
6
Let’s see/you would jettison research powerhouses like RTP, excellent state universities in a number of Southern States that are actually affordable, and a fair number of cities that younger people are moving to in droves. Tell me again why we’re the slow ones?
10
A two-state solution seems like a good idea -- for the U.S.
7
To misquote Abraham Lincoln: "the rebels are no longer our countrymen"
2
Here's the difference.
" As if every person in the entire state can be painted with the same brush. As if the presence of something indisputably evil obviates every good thing that happens within state borders"
Southerners like to believe as stated here, that there may be some bad people in a place, their South, that is essentially good.
But many of these same people believe that northern places like Baltimore or Chicago are not only full of bad people but these places are inherently bad places also.
And NOTHING Democrats like Mayor Pete say or do to try to recalibrate the conversation will ever change the minds of these people as to their belief in the inherent evil that exists north of that Mason-Dixon line.
8
Like Margaret Renkl, I too live in Nashville. So "the fury of a blue-state outsider" is my fury. A lot of us who live in these states are angry, and we have a right to be. We live in liberal Blue counties, discounted and disparaged by the rural Red county majority in our state legislatures. Our progressive legislation is routinely overriden by our Republican super-majority state legislature, and when there's a national boycott, it's the big Democratic cities which take the brunt. The rural counties still get their Amazaon distribution centers and AT&T call centers, and the boycotts never touch them. We are the economic drivers in these states, conservative counties freeload off our economic engines, and yet they never pay a price for the horrible legislation they pass.
20
It would be helpful to provide the source data which supports the claim of ‘economic drivers’, for as you know, TN primarily is an agricultural state and that’s what dominates our economy. Or perhaps you are suggesting TN is primarily high tech or healthcare, in which case you need to read more BLS reports, or even UT’s annual report to the governor, such as he is.
2
I used to admire America, particularly the important role the USA has provided as a global leader and beacon of hope for nations still struggling. I no longer do. The GOP and Trump presidency have exposed America’s ugly underbelly - a vast cesspool of corruption, racism, inequity, greed, and ignorance. What went so wrong? America’s history is now meat for study and criticism on a global level. The truth, it seems, is that much hasn't really changed in the USA. The cruel, ignorant and indefensible attitudes never left, they’ve just been laying low awaiting a more favorable environment in which to surface. Nowhere is this more evident than in the good ole South, a true backwater of regressive thought and behaviour. Under Trump the USA’s reputation has suffered a profound blow. Once the GOP is gone it will be a long road to recovery, with so many grave social issues to address and a very large segment of the South which is resistant to change. As a Canadian I don’t have the option to vote out Trump. You do. If Trump wins a second term, we will all be dragged down – no matter what country we call home.
28
The Republican Party and 45 consistently incite and persistently stoke fear and paranoia directed at Southerners to assure continued electoral survival. Working off the blue print of the 1968 Southern Strategy designed to quell the efforts of another Southerner, George Wallace, from attaining dealmaker status, the GOP finds assured confidence by invoking this political framework. The travesty arising from this choregraphed charade is the erosion of Southern goodwill in the eyes of the nation, presumptively diminished and scornfully castigated as societally deficient. My experiences as a Black American attorney litigating in the federal courts in Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas are nonetheless positive. Interacting with individuals involved in the litigation experience in these federal courts revealed both instructive and informative forays into the life experiences of another world. Though I remember clearly George Wallace's 'segregation forever' speech of January 1963 and Wallace's infamous 'stand in the school house door' in June, 1963, the September 1963 Birmingham church bombing that claimed four young Black girls, the firehouses and police dogs unleashed upon Black protesters in Birmingham in May 1963, bloody Sunday in Selma in March 1965, the violence flowing from James Meredith integrating Ole Miss in 1962, and the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi during freedom summer 1964, I found a resilience of positive action there. Race matters.
8
As a transplanted northerner living blue in a red state, I can say that Southern hospitality is a good thing, but Southern politics is horrible. While I sympathize with the fact that it is not fair to paint all in the South with a broad brush, I applaud activists who use economic tools to highlight the radical agenda of those in the various state houses who are attempting to suppress the vote, suppress women's rights and deny healthcare and assistance to the poor.
18
What's accomplished by name-calling? It tends to poison whatever wells of good will there are.
I was fortunate to have had housemates from Louisiana and Alabama, back in the 1960s.
Both of them lived outside the South for many years before moving back. My long friendship with them has offered me a more nuanced view of the South than simply traveling through it or reading about its history or current affairs would allow.
There's also a great deal to be learned from Southern writing valuable not only for our understanding of the region but for the perspective it provides on the nation as a whole. "We have had our Fall," observes Flannery O'Connor, reflecting on the legacy of defeat. "We have gone into the modern world with an inburnt knowledge of human limitations . . . which could not have developed in our first state of innocence--as it has not sufficiently developed in the rest of our country."
7
I lived in the south (SC & GA) for many years, and what sets the south apart isn't racism or anger or any of that. As others point out, that stuff is everywhere in the USA.
IMHO what makes the south unique is the folks there are just a bit SLOWER than the rest of the country. A bit slower to cut you off while you're still talking. A bit slower to assume they know your story. A bit slower to jump to conclusions without thinking it through. They're not perfect, but Southerners ARE more polite.
4
@Heb: As a Georgia native now calling Canada home and who still has relatives living in the Deep South, I’m not sure sure Southerners are really so much more polite. My experience is that many might appear more polite on the surface, but it is only skin deep. Many Southerners IMHO use that surface politeness to manipulate and control. Iron fists in velvet gloves. And tiresome in the long term.
4
Uhh, some commenters don't seem to be able to think past the lazy stereotypes.
Lyndon Johnson, a Texan, got the Civil Rights Act passed by calling in every favor he could.
MLK was a Southerner.
If memory serves, the following presidents won the majority of votes in a range of Southern states: Obama, Clinton, Carter, Johnson, JFK ....
Meanwhile Donald Trump comes from New York, Mike Pence is from Indiana, Chris Christie is from New Jersey.
I'm fairly sure most New Yorkers don't want the rest of the US to generalize about New York on the basis of the fact that Trump comes from there.
Also, Trump's victory is thought to have happened because of 2 midwest states and Pennsylvania.
15
And labor has been dismantled in Michigan and Wisconsin. I wish the madness were confined to the south.
6
The North has its issues but it didn’t fight to keep slavery, nor installed Jim Crow, Massive Resistance or voter suppression tactics.
Enough with the silly bothsides-ism.
9
The haughty in any region who decry the splinters in others' eyes need to take note of the logs in theirs. Lots of racism and white supremacy most places, in all of us raised in this American culture. But arguing over who's more or less tainted by it is a waste of effort if you want change. Get to work, people.
11
Unfortunately, it might actually be better to think of not just the South, but every other part of this country, and the rest of the world as racist. Because they all are in varying degrees. And while there has been incremental progress in embracing diversity and multiculturalism in many places, there still is so much more to be done by everyone. Whether you're part of a nation or a culture that's been around for 200 years or 2,000 the darker side
of life affects us all.
Vote.
5
In Louisiana we have a governor who is a Democrat. The choice was a no brainer for most of Louisianans. John Bel Edwards or David Vitter. The Republicans couldn't sell Vitter despite dirty political campaigning. Now we have state legislators obstructing much of the progress our governor is attempting to make. He did accept the ACA Medicaid. I think he will be reelected. But far too many Southerners watch Fox News and like our President fail to read respectable journalism. Please don't paint us all with one broad paintbrush.
10
I feel your pain but the South is dragging the entire country backwards. Try harder.
15
Sorry, not sorry, Ms. Renkl, the South has been holding the country back in every way or since its founding. I wish the deep red states in the Deep South would secede. This time there would be no civil war. Just a “good riddance.”
18
Tell me again about all the "good folks" when trump wins with a 60/40 vote margin in the South; then again he will be put over the top by silent. secret racists in the same states in the North who put him over the top in 2016....
8
One of the most credible works that enters into the mindset of the South is the book "Strangers in Their Own Land" Anger and Mourning on the American Right," by Arlie Russell Hochschild (2016). Hochschild spent 6 months in Louisiana to understand the cultural and religious mindset of people. The rationalizing away of how the corporate world impacts their lives, especially the fossil fuel industry, is incredible. The transfer and scapegoating of "the foreigner" who is always cutting in line ahead of them for the American dream is prevalent. The abortion issue is centered in a dualistic world view of salvation and fear of hell and damnation - thank fundamentalism. It boils down to scapegoating others for the damage and harm that the fossil fuel industry has down to their lives and their environment. Instead of hearing the Gospel of love and social justice they have judgment and fear - that the politicians around them (the GOP) have harnessed to keep corporate power while scapegoating the reproductive rights of women. It is a worthwhile read.
4
The entire country has been dragged into the sewer by Southern politicians like Tom Delay and Mitchell McConnell. I truly believe that the South won the Civil War. Please finish the job and secede.
15
Thank you so much for this thoughtful commentary.
My late aunt was a teacher in Birmingham Alabama her entire working life.
A strong supporter of civil rights (who hated George Wallace) she use to say that the happiest day of her life was when she was finally able to teach as part of an integrated faculty at an integrated school.
11
I'm an American expat from New England currently living in Canada. I belong to a professional association with meetings alternating between North (jurisdictions in the North-central United States, as well as central Canada, with whom they have a lot in common) and the U.S. South and Southwest. The organization was founded forty years after the end of the Civil War, still within the memory of its senior members. We tend to meet in medium-sized cities, often in so-called "flyover country." Almost all of us have enjoyed venues we might otherwise have not considered visiting. Leaving aside the high quality of our conferences, I have developed an appreciation for "Third Space" organizations such as ours. If urban and rural, and North and South, are not to split asunder —whether in law (for the U.S.) or culture (for all of our states and provinces)— it will depend to some extent on civil society entities that keep people talking. It will also depend —alas— on enough commonalities between jurisdictions that members of various demographic groups within these civic organizations aren't put into painful, compromising, or even dangerous positions when meeting in some locations.
3
Growing up as a mixed race man who has at once dreamed of escaping the deeper South and now knows the fringes of it are rougher still, the sentiment of this piece land firm. Hardship did not stem from racial or religious oppression in my child eyes, but more directly economic strife and frayed familiar relationships. It was the greater community that carried me and my direct family through, and that connection is unforgettable.
Part of the beauty of these direct threats to human rights within the sprawling South comes from the community rallying—stronger and closer than ever—against the seats and industrial complexes that have scarred history. This struggle for equality will last just as long, if not longer, than the solidification of unjust power structures that hold on for dear life. Race and religious separations plague the entire planet, but the core reasons for such fear of a fellow is a lack of representational community, and an understanding of the hardships we all share collectively. That goes doubly toward our political landscape as a country and global people. We need to do more to heal and boost the morale of Southern communities most at risk, so we can all fully look towards the future as a safe haven instead of continuously running into the past.
4
Wow! Thanks Margaret for this insightful article. It allows me to cool my Northern jets a bit and gives me hope that although I disagree with all that is coming out of the state houses way down south it is at least being challenged by thoughtful and resolute people like you.
8
I live in a region of the country derided as Northern Liberal Elitists, of which there are many.
However, I've discovered elitists live all over this country & they're not all Liberals.
We have more than our share of people who are desperate & fearful & have been charmed by the same snake-oil salesman as many living across the South.
We are not without our panderers to & of hate.
It's always easier to look outward to blame others for one's own misery, than it is to face one's own failures or to search for inner strength to rise above & help others who are victims of hate & predation.
I know there's a lot of work that needs to be done to achieve justice & freedom from the obstructionists in the South. I also know there's a lot of work to be done push back against the haters & bullies who want to turn back the clock in this section of the country as well.
Our struggle may be even harder since we're unwilling to admit the evil is prevalent among us & we're all not as open-minded as we'd like to believe of ourselves. Our rose colored glasses are actually blinders to the real world we refuse to admit is part of us as well.
8
As they say, hope springs eternal.
3
Thank you so much for this quietly discerning piece.
2
As I read through the comments, we all agree there are good people in the south ( true). There are bigots in the North ( true). Unfortunately the south has a very long history of legalizing oppression, slavery, Jim Crow ,resistance to the civil rights act ( just to name a few ). The denial of science and history “Scopes Monkey trail”, “climate change”, the “ lost cause of the confederacy” ( just to name a few). So here we go again. I keep hearing about the new south but where is it? This latest disaster in GA, AL is par for the course. I don’t think anyone really has any idea the consequences, but a safe bet is any women how believes she should have right to control her body and health will be leaving in droves. And don’t expect Google, Microsoft or Amazon to expanding into these places anytime soon.The cycle continues, brain drain, lack of economic opportunities, which leads to an insular mindset, which leads to regressive culture and politics ( ugh)
I try to be optimistic maybe the best thing that can happen, is that they run horrific law up to run the supreme court, and it gets shot down in flames ( Supremes might conservative but they aren’t stupid). Maybe the “good” people will finally wake up and vote the wacko’s out of office. But hiding behind the southern hospitality is hypocritical. Southern states are oppressive ,and have a low regard for human rights, and that’s un American and is hurting a very damaged reputation worldwide
10
We are struggling here? Give me a break. Unemployment is at its lowest in years. We just elected Marsha Blackburn to the US Senate. Roll on Trump train.....
2
Trump has inherited all the positives we are seeing now from the previous administration. Bad politics take years to show and he is quickly unwinding the key policies that got us here. We need to be proactive and course correct. Those most supportive of the "Trump train" will be hurt the most.
6
"As if every person in the entire state can be painted with the same brush. As if the presence of something indisputably evil obviates every good thing that happens within state borders. As if such statements aren’t a transparent form of prejudice itself.
Y'all are responsible for electing incompetent -racist and soul ugly individuals to represent you.
With rare pockets of humanism -Your society is ground zero for humanistic regression for centuries now!
Your stereotypes are well earned.
16
Sorry MS Renkl but I doubt your essay did much to convince the average NYT reader that the south is salvagable.
6
Sorry Ms. Renki, if you want to uplift the south from the dregs of its history, stand up and do it there, not in the pages of the NYT. All those "good people" down there already read the NYT. It's the others who need to be brought to task for their history and lack of courage to change.
The "southern strategy" has been operating for over 400 years. It didn't start with Nixon. Slavery, killing and displacing native peoples, stealing land, AND, for your ancestors perhaps, accepting the lies framed in religion.
What people don't know about the south unless you lived there (and I have) is that football, beer and booze is the religion. Domestic violence and cowardly hatred. Those are the religious principles that drive ignorant men and their women in tow to create unjust laws with no basis in reality, steal elections (see Georgia and Florida 2018 for instance) and whatever else they are going to do. Like, maybe take a mass murderer to Burger King and give him a fresh shirt (right Dylann Roof) or just go ahead and kill another Black male for sport and say "Well I thought he was gonna kill me," except that the Black male didn't have a weapon and was, what, asking the officer to leave his property or some such.
Put it up south, put up under your lies and dismissals of all others when not convenient. Yes, it is strange and amazing that the Equal Justice Initiative exists in Montgomery, Alabama but, that's life in the city. It's everywhere else that is so dangerous.
11
Well, the South is still solidly Republican and it used to be Democrat. Civil rights laws have anything to do with that?
Oh, and abortion is only the start. Welcome back, Jim Crow!
9
Margaret:
Thank you for your column. You nailed me.
As a northerner, a liberal leaning and angry one at that, you unmasked the reality of my humanity and those who live in my country. We have diverse opinions, some unhealthy in my opinion. There is a sea of humanity out there and this sea always includes groups of people I can easily identify with because of who they are. They are not black, white, north, south, man or woman, they are humans, real people who share my belief that we can make the world better if we work together, if we focus on what we can do, and strive to do our best in the face of terror, self righteousness, voter obstruction and insane laws. I am glad to know of the organizations in the south that are striving to make the US a better place. Thank you for giving me hope today.
63
Thank you again, New York Times, for driving another stake through the heart of the liberals in "The South", whatever that is. I live in Connecticut and North Carolina. Racism is infinitely more prevalent in Connecticut where I grew up and non-whites are relegated to the poorest cities and neighborhoods without exception. When "they" succeed, "they" may be able to buy a bigger house in a town with better schools but that town will also be mostly non-white (Bloomfield, Connecticut anyone?). That suits the Trumpists in Enfield, Somers, Suffield, and Ellington, Connecticut just fine because (only said to another white person), "they want to live together anyway". Try being a Jew in New England where it's fine, as long as "they" live in their own "town" too. Jews in Longmeadow, Massachusetts; Gentiles in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts. In the Massachusetts town next to mine, the local country club didn't allow blacks, or Catholics, as members until the 1970s. To say that an entire geographic area of the planet is racist, backwards, and ignorant displays just one thing in my mind: the racism, bigotry and hypocriscy of the commenter who fancies themselves so "enlightened".
Enfield, Manchester, East Longmeadow, Ellington, Palmer, and Pomfret are more "progressive" than Black Mountain, Chapel Hill, Hillsborough, Hendersonville, or Davidson? Sorry, no.
75
@Joseph Cyr-Cizziello Born in CT and have lived in NC and TX, I mostly agree. To add on to your comment, CT is rife with white-on-white racism. I've never heard slurs against Poles, Irish and French-Canadians outside of CT, mostly in the context of white blue-collar folks vying for resources. Nutmegger racism is truly deep and complex.
The Northeast is indeed a Democratic stronghold, but racist people live everywhere. Some of us Yankees need to get off our high horse and think about that. Great point, thanks for your post.
17
@Joseph Cyr-Cizziello
And yet it is North Carolina and the South in general that sends racists and bigots or people who tolerate racists and bigots to represent them in Congress. Connecticut and New England do not. That says much about the people in both places.
14
@Joseph Cyr-Cizziello. You left out Asheville!
2
Thank you for providing a rational "voice" from a portion of the country that all too often is only represented through stereotypes. The rest of the country needs to hear from more people like you. The state of the nation today will require all of us to work towards repairing the enormous amount of damage done by the current occupant of the White House and revisionist politicians in the South and mid-West.
3
I grew up in the South, and witnessed wise people helping, and hospitality, but also much worse racism and xenophobia than in more northern states. It is often the "country against city" as others have said. When I was growing up, and still today - there is danger in the outskirts if you are not a white male (or if you in any way stand out as "other.") In high school, if (as a white woman) I wore bright shoes, I was taunted with n-word comparisons. This is in the late 80s. The homogeneity, sexism and racism are too exhausting for me in my hometown region. But the racism and sexism of our entire country has been exhausting for the past 4 years. It is stunning that our country is at a place where an openly sexist, racist, xenophobe could win our highest office. It's all of us across the country that have to work to be better. It doesn't help to lump whole states together right now, because there is more diversity in the South than ever before, and there is a diversity of experience from region to region within each state. We need to fight the endemic corruption in our country together.
6
How about North?
1
i would be more sanguine about the prospects for change, but what makes me less so is the number of young people that appear in video of trump rallies and other white supremacist events.
5
Many of our problems today are rooted in the Civil War. Today, a large number of Southerners will go to their grave believing:
1) The North had slaves, too.
2) The war had nothing to do with slavery, and was fought over states rights.
3) Thousands of slaves volunteered to fight for the Confederacy.
4) Lincoln was a war criminal.
Until the ignorance ends, our nation will continue to battle the demons that still exist from the Civil War.
5
The State Right you claim as the cause of the Civil War was the right to own slaves.
1
I agree with everything in this article save for one turn of phrase. Can we please stop saying “race relations” when we mean “white supremacist violence”? The former implies a symmetry of power and ill intent that are simply not present.
3
I recently returned from vacationing in South Carolina and the only people who were pleasant and cordial were people from the Northeast. Leaving me to conclude, to paraphrase Long Shanks from ‘Braveheart,’
that the problem with the South is that it is full of Southerns.
8
I'm sorry, but the South has made its own bed. With the advent of Trump they have now forced me to live in it. I have voted all my life to have my taxes support the less affluent Red Staters, but no more. They have elected GOP tax scolds for 50 years, not to fix their broken schools, roads, economics, or healthcare system, but because they wanted to place their Christianity above the Constitution. They thought keeping the brown population down was more important than moving their whole population up together. They need to fix it on their own now. If there are any Southerners who are progressive they need to get their backwards neighbors out of the blind box they've been voting in all their lives. Sorry, Margaret. We told them conservative thought was an oxymoron; we told them thoughtlessly waving the flag did not make their state a better place to live and work; we told them forcing their religion into the public sphere was counter-productive; and we told them Trump was a lying con artist who cared nothing for them or their problems, worries, or concerns. As far as I'm concerned, they are on their own now. It is the position they obviously wanted with their wilful ignorance. I hope they secede once again; this time maybe we won't be so foolish as to force them to stay.
10
Why have some many Southerners chosen to define their culture harkening back and using as a yardstick of measurement the 'Golden' Age of the Ante-Bellum 'Old South'? Can it be so shallow just not be Yankee-like? or to maintain the distinctive separateness of the region? Are there no other worthy elements to chose than white vs. black, and a degraded form of evangelical Christianity that is talk and praise and almost devoid of the Sacrament of the Altar, the Holy Eucharist, and the curse of white patriarchy?
3
My slow warming up to Alabama, home of some in-laws, took a huge step backwards this week. Inside a fast food burger joint whose name does not begin with M, two jovial, joshing-sounding men came in and started shouting at one of the line workers, “Tell your boss I’m gonna shoot you.” His arm was outstretched with a finger pointing at the worker. Then he turned around to the rest of us in the place, with a look that meant we were supposed to think this was normal and also worthy of a belly laugh.
Last week, people. Just last week.
The Deep South has a very thin veneer of friendliness, to people whom they deem “the Other”.
7
I see the American South (where I have lived for a decent spell) as the progenitor for what has become One Nation under Trump. Yes, there are good people and good things going on in the South and in the nation as a whole, but neither convey the collective nobility for which hundreds of thousands of Americans died in the mid-nineteenth Century.
We are still fighting the Civil War partly because the reunified country emerging from it never established anything like a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address, recognize, educate and heal the brutal wounds that prompted the War in the first place.
As a result, the racist brutality re-emerged as soon as the mitigating influence of Reconstruction was willfully destroyed by retrograde leaders on the winning side. (Thank you, Andrew Johnson; nobody can deny that you had a lot of help.) Racism remains ingrained in the American soul, and not only in the Deep South.
We live in a democracy of sorts. If we allow ourselves to be categorized by "leaders" willing to slice and dice us into mutually hostile bubbles, then that is who we are and how we are rightfully defined by people beyond our borders even as we ourselves keep our heads buried in the sand.
All the individual good works to which we can point might make us feel better. You or I may be good individuals, but we are tilting at windmills if as a whole we fail to choose a core of human decency to represent us collectively at local and national levels of governance.
9
I visited Waco on a business trip about 15 years ago and only when I got lost on my way to work I started noticing the extreme segregation. Granted there is also segregation in some areas of LA, etc. But I am not talking about physical segregation alone. It appeared to me that the segregation there is an accepted "fact" of life and everyone knows "their place". I agree that people were nice. However not very tolerant of other people's view if they didn't agree with it.
5
As an individual who lives in the Pacific Northwest where our minimum wage is going to be $12 in all areas of our state except those with $15 per hour minimum wage, or workers have the rights to pregnancy leave, Family Illness Leave (8 employees or more), will have paid family medical leave in 2020 and on and on and on; I am sorry, but the citizens of the south elect people to office which do not want to provide such benefits to their citizens. They pass laws that enslave women's uterus' and want to treat as criminals, medical doctors. They claim states rights to keep workers from unionizing.
People upset about Alabama and other southern states do so based on observable behaviors. What is observable is the legislatures and citizens of the south are treating themselves and their fellow citizens badly. It is observable. It is sad.
14
There are certainly more good things in the South than
bad things.But we must realize that the Alabama legislature
has the power to make the state laws.And even if they
use that power in a bad way to make bad laws the laws
are are still the laws and disobeying them can certainly
get you in a lot of trouble. So that is a fact that can't be
ignored.And who knows what the legislature will next.
So i would advise anyone who is thinking of moving there
to think twice.
3
It's indisputable that many prominent elected leaders in the south are determined to keep working people in their place. Look up Nikki Haley's low road economic policy of keeping wages low. She said: "We discourage any company that has unions from wanting to come to South Carolina because we don't want to taint the water." The south is dominated by elected leaders who have thrived on the support of the plantation owner class that fully embraces a "master-servant" mentality that is determined to keep American workers from ever getting out from under their heels.
The message to white southern men is to be a good old boy, do what you are told, and never rock the boat. In exchange for their compliance the overlords promise these men that their lot will never be as bad as being a woman, an immigrant, or being black.
Nothing is going to change in the south as long as white southern men cower at the feet of people with money and power.
15
@Bill; one could also imagine women rising to the occasion but as long as they willingly or unwillingly fall in line mostly due to baked in religion, then ... yes, nothing is going to change in the South.
4
If you do not enjoy the association, then shed it. Either change the state you live in, or change the state you live in. It's as simple as that.
The South is the South is the South. Let's not equivocate about its redeeming qualities. If you understand what the South is, then you know they deserve the labels and the censure. All things considered, they do not deserve better. I do not think anybody believes that the collective worth of the state is anything but the collective worth of the state. There are good people? There are good places? There are good things? That's delightful. But the South is the South is the South.
6
@Andre
2016 Election results in Nebraska: Trump 58.7 % and Clinton 33.7 %.
2016 Election results in Georgia:Trump 50.4 % and Clinton 45.3 %. Those in Nebraska should not throw rocks.
15
Our family travels (drives) west from Florida, to Colorado, every summer. Due to the disgusting, Alabama abortion bill, we will not travel through that state, anymore. We will fly! Primarily, the thought of giving Alabama any of our hard-earned, tourist money is now unthinkable. Maybe if enough tourists ban Alabama, along with any businesses/companies that are headquartered in that state, they may think, again, about their sickening politics/laws!!
11
@Rain
You'll have to pass through anti-abortion Georgia, then.
Good luck with your ethical and geographic dilemma.
2
@Maggie, fyi, we can fly direct from Tampa and Fort Myers, to Denver! The good news is we never have to set foot in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia!
1
I wish you luck, Ms. Renkl. I grew up in southeast Alabama and I was so happy to get out. For every good and decent person in that awful place, there are 10 racist, homophobic, xenophobic people. And now they're on drugs, too. I don't like those odds, so I left and I ain't never going back.
18
I guess I still have faith in Alabama voters, not their Government’t, since they upended the 2018 Election by not supporting Roy Moore. I do not want to paint them when the broad brush of “ no choice” politics or think that all of them are racists or stupid
My hope is that the State Legislator will not be elected and replaced with people of compassion and intelligence, except for those few that were not in favor of the recent law that would insist that women have no choice regarding their rights, even if their pregnancies were the result the of incest or rape. This is indicative of the cruelty the Governor and the 35 members in the Legislature
Lock them up
3
I only wish that progressive southerners were more successful in attaining political office, and making some *desperately* needed change. Stereotypes are based on reality, and the horrible often trumps (if you'll pardon the term) the good. It has been 150+ years since the end of the Civil War, but you wouldn't know if from the headlines coming from the southern states. I really hope that REAL change can come to the south. Observing what is going on from a deep blue state makes it hard for me to believe that some in the South acknowledge that we're in the 21st century, not the 19th. And it doesn't help that our so-called president panders to the very worst of them, stoking those negative fires and keeping them hot. :(
3
Sorry, but I'm not buying it. The South, time and time again has embraced racism and ignorance, and it's reflected by the people who are in their statehouses.
27
@PubliusMaximus: I don't think she is denying reality. To some extent she is objecting to a kind of facile condemnation that actually doesn't even get its facts right. How many memes do we see where the southerner is depicted as a ragged specimen with bad teeth? Kind of leaves out George Wallace, and many of the rest of the worst of them, doesn't it? When we are critical, we should focus our criticism acurately
5
My wife and I both grew up in the North. We have lived in Milwaukee for the last 29 years. But from 1980-90 we lived in the South, 4 years in Mississippi, 6 in Atlanta.
We loved our sojourn there, especially our time in Mississippi. Ms. Renkl is so right about its natural beauty. The people that we met and got to know were kind, generous, gracious, welcoming and unassuming.
In no way were we blind to the South’s cruel history, which continued to assert itself, albeit it subtler ways, while we were there. However, the South does not have, and never has had, a corner on cruelty and intolerance. The most racially segregated states today are not in the South, but in the North. Milwaukee’s is the most segregated metropolitan area in the country. New York, Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland round out the top five.
In rural Wisconsin, blacks are few and far between. So most Wisconsin whites have little or no personal contact with blacks and no need even to think of them.
In contrast, blacks and whites both make up substantial segments of the rural population in parts of the South. More than that, when we lived there, they knew each other. When we went to vote, for example, blacks and whites at the polling place would swap stories, ask about each other’s families, etc. Was there still an implied racial hierarchy in these conversations? Yes, but at least people had the basic decency to acknowledge each other’s humanity. Up here, a lot of people don’t even have to do that.
12
@Jeff; just curious, you guys are white, yes? Just wondering if a black family would've had a different experience there.
5
It is hard to understand how these states keep letting down their people all the time in education, healthcare, jobs and every other metric that contributes to a good life and still get elected every time to push through harmful and cruel policies! When will it end?
9
Thank you Ms. Renkl for the shout-out to some of our great nonprofits in the south. Ive worked with some of these and they are on the frontlines of the resistance against Trump and his enablers.
4
I have a theory that when about 20% to 30% of a population turns evil, the whole population is corrupted and the society itself becomes evil. This is true even if a majority of the people are good. Basically there's a critical mass of evil—and it's well below 50%—that once reached debases a society. America overall is past that threshold today. In the South, I'm afraid, it's well past that threshold.
For what it's worth, the paternal side of my family are Southerners and were slaveholders before the Civil War. Most of them are wonderful progressive people today. I know the good Southerners Ms. Renkl is talking about. But I'm afraid the corruption runs deep in the South and the cancerous tumour must be cut out or it will destroy us all.
15
Whenever a culture is built upon a foundational belief in the inequality of all human beings, it is unlikely to change. The core belief that one people is superior to another provides that culture with its identity, status, and a rationale for all manner of ill will and unkindness. DJT didn't create the ocean of hate we're drowning in - he just punctured the dam of civility that held it in check.
22
FOR AMERICA 2016
Are you downcast? Be brave, stop to listen
To a young woman playing her guitar,
Singing as the freeway car lights glisten
Misted windows on the bus to Georgia
For rich and poor she has no preference
This is a girl who loves the earth and sun
And will not shift her gaze in deference.
She is your poem and it has just begun:
She hates tyrants, she lives for others,
Knows justice is always in jeopardy,
Verses the hopes of children and mothers,
Marks time for the stupid and crazy.
She respects hard work and intelligence
Gives freely of her income and effort
Treats all with patience and indulgence
Believes only what life itself has taught.
Open and light-hearted, she earns her way.
She despises easy riches and wealth
Disputes with none yet has her say,
Values each season, rejoices in health.
Listen again as rain falls and signs pass.
Even at her worst, she aims for the best -
She knows defeat and storms can never last
And riding home she settles back to rest.
To all the Northerners braying against the South: New York gave us Donald Trump.
11
Yes and he lost his home state by 1.5 million votes.
7
@Carol: True, but on the other hand, NYC gave you Trump as a reality TV personality: you gave him back as president of the United States.
8
@John Bergstrom Well, I hope all the reality TV money was worth it for NYC.
1
Sugar coating at its worst. Those "good" southerners do nothing, ensuring the triumph of evil.
8
Good on you and those other organizations but I can't do it anymore. Strongly contemplating abandoning the South.
4
My first reaction to the headline was another bashing of the South by those of the North, especially Northeast, who tend to think that the only people who are good live both north of Mason Dixon line and east of the Hudson River. I have lived in the Midwest, the Northeast, and the South. No one area has it better or worse when it comes to race relations, crime against minorities, challenges to the rights of others. It is just that the problems manifest themselves in different ways. For all the headlines of different things that make it so hard for blacks in the South the worst 15 cities for black Americans are all non-southern cities and most are in the Midwest. People who have not actually lived in different places tend to use a very small lens to judge other areas. Frankly it would be hard for me to find a place in the South where the people are as rude, as unwelcoming , and as insular as I have found people to be in the Northeast. Citizens of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston wear rudeness as a badge of honor, makes them think that they are tough. Newsflash, it just makes you rude. My wife and I have spend the better part of our married life living in the South after growing up in Ohio and western PA. There are lots of good people in those areas. But we will end up in the South when we retire and it is not just for the weather or cost of living. People are simply more friendly in the South, more welcoming to strangers, and generally happier people.
7
I worked in planning in Atlanta and in New york, and believe me, New York is a LOT better. There was a simple checklist for ANY development to occur. in Atlanta (I am talking commercial), no new driveway entrance was too close to an intersection, no coverage by building was too much - Atlanta made itself the ugliest city in the nation, with those sort of development tactics. Meanwhile, in New York, you could spend months arguing the square footage of a wooden sign. And those were all public hearings..Atlanta development is just a quick staff review, and let the traffic flow!. I can't stand the south, I hate horse-racing, I dislike southern accents, sweet tea, sororities and fake southern manners, cottonmouths and water snakes and humid hollows where who knows what lives, uneducated, eating fiddleheads and fried chicken, or mama Junes' spaghetti made with ketchup instead of tomato sauce.. no thanks...Tried both, staying in the North.
13
@grace thorsen: Wait a minute, there's nothing wrong with fiddelheads! But other than that...
2
I appreciate the issues pointed to by the author. While good people and innocent people would be hurt by a boycott of anything made or grown in Alabama, Missippi, or Georgia, it is clear the actions by the good people pointed to by the author will never reverse the actions by the SBC, frat boys and sorority girls, or the Republican party as now existing in any state in the south. Why should those appalled by actions taken by southern legislatures and governor's continue to economically support those who would force a 9 year old rape victim to bear the child produced by that rape? Please advise what equivalent powerful course we have.
12
I've traveled quite a bit, but I find the American South more "foreign" to me than many countries outside of the U.S......and becoming more so.
15
And indeed we find you equally foreign
I, too, was reared in the South and worked most of my career there. People must remember that the hatred, racism, and white male power has always been there; it was just, sometimes, covered. But little has changed and for that, we should all mourn.
The admirable work ethic of Mexican workers causes many employers to seek them out, to prefer them to other employees...even white ones. But, oftentimes, that doesn't translate to decent treatment of them.
Let's forget about everyone being 'just like us' and live up to the vision that once defined the United States. Our present politics and policy choices WILL destroy us.
7
Readers from the South keep harping on so-called "Southern Hospitality" as if that excuses everything. I can't help but wonder that if people are being polite to your face but vote against you & your loved ones having the right to make your own medical decisions, quality healthcare, helping the weak & poor, protecting the vulnerable in society from crazed-gun nuts, equality, and a good public education...are they really nice? Or is it just a shallow fake facade of outside niceness?
I've lived & traveled in the South and it's a beautiful place but up North people don't fake being nice. They are real. They might not always say "Yes, ma'am" or "No, Sir" and they won't fake being your new best friend when they first meet you but the majority of people want to do the best they can for their fellow humans and vote for the public good. They want to help people not make them suffer: That's Northern Hospitality.
18
@Paula
After 42 years of living and working in the south and rural America, be assured, they smile to your face and will attempt to destroy you at every opportunity behind your back.
They have no skills, education or ability to deal with complex technologies or jobs. They're one asset is to politically manipulate. This shows in the political situation we have today, the people with the least education, knowledge and skill are running the country.
The problem with that is that they can steal power but they can't do anything constructive with it .
11
I watched a movie about the rise of Nazism last evening (believe it or not, "Cabaret"), and it was frightening to see the parallels between Germany in the 30s and our country today. Economic disenfranchisement, ubiquitous propaganda and cultural groupthink created the moment where otherwise good people could tacitly consent to atrocities committed in their midst. We're not that far gone yet, but we seem to be getting there.
10
Interesting that nobody is considering the possibility of angry southern women coming to the polls, voting some of legislators out of office and scaring the others into toning down the abortion laws (taking out the personhood nonsense and the lets-throw-the-women in jail). Even when, on the national level, they hope that will happen to Trump.
That's what comes from identity politics -- organizations like the NYTimes treating people as members of a voting bloc
with no minds of their own.
3
The Louisiana House recently passed an amendment that would remove abortion as a protected right in Louisiana. It still has to get two thirds majority in the Senate and be voted on by the citizens of the state. They tried to make the Holy Bible, King James version, the official state book too. That didn't get far. The writers of the bill didn't take into account the many Catholics in the southern half of the state, Napoleonic law, and all that. Catholics have their own version of the Holy Book.
It's also against Louisiana law to assist a person commit suicide, but it is widely available to those who are intent on such a thing. Doctors and hospitals do it on a regular, almost daily, basis.
So what if Louisiana makes abortion unconstitutional. People will still be able to get an abortion. You see, people in Louisiana are used to ignoring the law and especially mandates of state "laws" that come out of the state legislature. The citizens still remember the governorship of Huey Long. Y'all Yankees should look that up and read a book or two about Huey Long.
Sure, all places have both good and bad people living there; unfortunately, the good folk in the south have been, and will forever be (it seems), in the minority. Any American, 21st century dweller, should consider whether continuing in a union with such backwards states as Alabama or Georgia, is truly worth all of us losing our rights. Secession ASAP.
7
It occurs that this piece could aptly be titled ‘As If’ given nominal shift, a little ways from the start, to the good things of the South. But the example of folks singing to raise money for Vanderbilt U suffers from its own burden of exclusion; as in the Vanderbilt with big walls around it, thus better to keep out the riff-raff. It would better show the good South if Vanderbilt sponsored the singers in fundraisers for the rural libraries, otherwise they are just singing to the elite choir as they so often do.
4
It's time to cut the south loose. Kick 'em out. All the southern states can form their own union. The rest of the states can then govern like grownups. Without the south and their backwards senators, representatives, and electoral college votes, we could address climate change. We could address guns. We could address education. We could address election interference. We could address healthcare. The only thing that has and consistently holds this country back from making true progress is the backwards south and its backwards politics. It's time to let them go. Doing so would also get rid of the biggest "taker" states. Four of the top five states that receive the most federal aid and give the least in return are in the south. Without the financial drag of those states, combined with the absence of their resistance to doing anything meaningful about any of the real problems facing the country, the rest of us could do real good. For everyone. Not just corporations.
It's time to stop enabling the south's backwardness. Cut loose, they might realize "whoops, we're doing this all wrong" and make their own changes. In the meantime, they drag us down and prevent the rest of us from doing anything useful.
And no, I'm not advocating for the south to secede. I'm advocating for them to be expelled. When we kick them out, we could give them a friendly "ya'll take care now, y'hear" before we shut the gates.
21
Wait, hold up ,you are from ARIZONA with some of the most hard core right voters in the country. Get woke in the phrase of the moment.
2
I have lived in N.C. and traveled through most of the other southern states and my conclusion is that in many ways the south is still what it was in the 17th century - a place defined by bibles, bigotry, and backwardness. Bless their hearts.
17
Thank you for this perspective.
Nothing like some Southern stereotypes to start the day. Thanks. Of course, stereotypes of other cultures is forbidden.
5
Exactly. As a Southern liberal who has voted Democrat in every election I am amused at Northern liberals who talk a great game when it comes to avoiding stereotypes and cultural appropriation but have no trouble saying all sorts of inaccurate things about the South.
3
@Catherine: I grew up in the country not far from you. The stereotypes remind me of a lot of people I knew.
3
What's going on with the"sentient human being" remark in the subtitle of this article? Is the inference here that the people that do not agree with the author are not sentient? If that is the case, and I think it is, then how does that mix with the author "bristling at stereotypes of 'redneck' southerners" and people generalizing about an entire state?
Dehumanizing the people you don't agree with will only militarize the situation.
4
Yes, that is the inference and the logical conclusion.
2
Its not that I don't believe you, I really do and think there are wonderful things about the South. But as an Immigrant, Muslim Male, I just don't feel like it is the part of America for me. The south is a hostile place to visit right now for people like me, who are naturalized citizens, or as I am reminded when I open my mouth - not a real American. Your opinion letter was encouraging and gives the rest of us some hope! And we need that right now.
7
As a transplanted Northerner, I will readily admit there are aspects of the South that I will never quite understand. A career spent predominantly in and around Wall Street taught that the What always trumps the How and that you better not expect anything but the most direct of engagements . Not in the South. A missing " Yes, Sir" or "No, Ma'am" can indelibly color any conversation beyond the rehabilitatable. That being said, and as someone who faced far more overt prejudice in my hometown than I ever faced in North Carolina, I do believe that until the South owns the problems from the past, those problems will continue to own the South. Maybe and thankfully not as fully as in prior years. But unless that question is decided in favor of personal and historical responsibility for all that has occurred, the present and future remain at best unresolved.
2
Delighted to have Margaret Renkl write what I and many of my south Louisiana friends already think. But she doesn't address the problem of how to increase our numbers. The image of the South should be better than it is but that will take courage and the willingness of good people to stand up and be counted.
4
I believe it is time for blue states to go their own way, reduce reliance on federal programs, and let the truculent southern hard red states (and similar states outside the Confederacy) broil in the juices they have been heating since the Civil War. Yes, as this columnist emphasizes, there are good people in those states who also hate the policies and practices of their state government. More power to them. But our system of government is not so finely parsed as local zoning rules. The better natured states need to free themselves of the Neanderthal provinces before the latter bring us all down. There will be collateral damage, but otherwise there is catastrophe.
6
The author cites “…a gargantuan list of social-justice organizations around the South that would stagger the imagination of any anti-Southern ranter on Twitter.” What she fails to mention is that those organizations wouldn’t need to exist in such numbers if they weren’t so desperately necessary in that region; That social INJUSTICE is preferred attitude and action of the great majority of white (and especially male) Southerners.
Frankly, I don’t care nearly as much about Southern “funny stories and gorgeous songs” nearly as much as the overwhelming, pervasive bigotry, selfishness, inchoate fear and hatred that inspire them.
11
Seriously, government should get involved in fixing the South of its deep-seated problems. Seems like those issues have always been with us, dragging America as a whole down. A future administration should specifically focus on the South and change it. For the good of the country and the world.
7
My family is from Alabama. We were stationed in Georgia in the 1960's. We chose not to drive to visit (the remaining) family in Alabama because of the bad experiences we had with the highway patrol. (We had "northern plates" on our car)
As I said in response to Doug Glanville's column, see the movie, "Green Card".
4
Of course, there are good people in the south.
But you mentioned voter suppression. Honestly it seems to be growing in both number and legality.
Why?
Who votes for these lawmakers? Can one display gracious southern hospitality and still favor voter suppression?
10
@Eduardo
I dont know, can one be from New Jersey and still favor voter suppression? It's everywhere.
2
@Jay Strickler
He asked if one could display gracious southern hospitality, which is a trait not a place, and still favor voter suppression.
1
I believe there is a vast number of progressive white Southerners who are fighting to change their region. But I wonder if this is just a patina of liberalism that surrounds the larger reality of what the white South really is. It is a nightmare of religious fundamentalism and racism deep enough for people to repeat the ugliest tropes about people who aren't like them.
They are the backbone of the Trump presidency and there is no mistake about that. They are custom made reactionaries who have nothing to contribute to our society but the propagation of hate, superstitution and cruelty. There is nothing to be done but to wait until demographics makes them irrelevant in national politics. That won't be long. By 2040, the ratio of non Hispanic whites to nonwhites will be roughly 50/50, making the current Republican coalition a recipe for electoral oblivion. That is how it should be.
16
I live in Atlanta. I don’t disagree with you. And there is racism here. However, take a look at the Midwest. Racism is everywhere, especially out in rural areas of this country. All over this country. I am sick of it everywhere. I am sick of people who won’t vote for a woman for president. I am sick of people who want to control women’s reproductive rights. I am a Methodist. I am sick of people in my faith that do not understand that God loves everyone and excludes no one. I am sick of people who vote for people who, in the vernacular of the South, talk ugly.
Resist is how I live now.
8
It is much more a rural vs. urban cultural divide than North vs. South.
3
"But it isn’t the only true South. Please believe me when I tell you this: We are fighting back."
Yes, I believe you. You are a valiant lot. But you are so few and so beleaguered.
7
As a southerner by birth and background, what makes me mad about Ms. Renkl’s essay is that she divides the south into “good” southerners like herself, and “bad” southerners - she might even use the word “evil” - like those she opposes politically. This is an example of the kind of black-white thinking that is hurting America, and which southerners probably excel at but have no monopoly on. Could Ms Renkl accept that she may actually be wrong on some issues, even ones she cares deeply about? Can she accept that some of her enemies may be right on some things, even if that doesn’t seem to be the case now? That sort of humility would be helpful, both personally and politically, to her and to those around her.
5
Well, she is objecting to a facile condemnation of the whole south on the basis of, for example, racist videos enjoyed at a fraternity house. She wants to point out that there are southerners who are actually working for human rights, for instance. But you seem upset that she should feel the need to hold up examples of decent people doing good things, to counter-balance the example of a black man being beaten to death in jail, for another instance. So, are you suggesting she should stop apologizing and look for the good in racist videos, or beating prisoners to death? Or in deliberately suppressing the votes of the black community? Would that be the kind of humility you are looking for?
4
@Alex Marshall She's primarily talking about the inherent racism of the South so not sure on what issues she could be wrong about. Racism is a pretty clear cut issue. One is either racist or not. Not saying that there isn't some room for degrees of variation but there are not good people on both sides of the issue. I was born in Memphis and lived there in the 60'. I saw racism first hand directed at my friends who were chased out of my apartment complex by an angry confederate. Guess who management sided with? So I'm still unclear as to your point about what some racists could "be right about".
6
I live here. Your typical white southern “conservative” like conservatives everywhere have lost the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. Let alone stand up for decency and kindness. That is as plane as day.
2
Seriously, I think corporations and businesses should relocate en masse to these states, and bring their diverse work-forces with them. They can incentivize the move as needed. I truly believe that until we dilute the population in the South with a variety of cultures, religions, viewpoints, etc. it will continue to fester in a stew of ignorance, evangelicalism, and fear of the other. #OccupytheSouth
6
@BugginOut
That's exactly what's been happening the last several decades. The Sun Belt is growing like crazy, and it includes most of the traditional South. The South is more diverse than ever, especially flagship cities like Atlanta, Charlotte and Dallas.
7
The South is already integrated, silly- check out my hometown of New Orleans.
4
@BugginOut
Corporations and businesses ARE relocating “en masse” to the South; according to the U.S. Census Bureau seven Southern states grew between 5% and 14% between 2010 and 2018 despite our “stew of ignorance, evangelicalism and fear of the other” (whatever that means.) This same report showed your state joining Illinois and West Virginia as the only states that lost residents during that period. Sounds like somebody needs to kick start a #OccupyConnecticut” movement.
4
Watch the PBS series on Reconstruction. It is in 1 hour segments totally 4 hours. It really filled some holes in my understanding of reconstruction but also what happened to the south and the black American, freed slave.
6
Great writing, but this article could have been written by Steve Pinker, and entitled "Things Are Much Better Now." But the virus of racism never went away, and it's made a dramatic return with today's GOP and a grossly dumbed-down America. I would say "Shame on America," but it no longer knows the meaning of the word.
12
@weylguy: She's not saying things are OK, or that the virus of racism ever went away. She's just saying that bad as they are, they aren't as bad as they have been in living memory. And she's not talking about complacency -- the examples of decency she chooses are activist groups trying to keep the change going.
Electing officials in the South has been inextricably tied to "Christian" philosophies. Until the separation of church and state is accepted, you can look forward to the same old, same old.
10
Only one correction to this otherwise thoughtful piece: the natural beauty of the southern states does not count one iota toward defying "flyover country prejudice". Southern hospitality does, and so does the fact that many people are fighting to make this region more tolerant and compassionate. But beautiful woods, mountains and vales do not begin to make me less prejudiced about states that drag a black man to his death behind a truck, or about the deaths of black worshippers at church. I can understand that not every resident is a hater or killer. But enough are to enact inane laws and resort to killing as a means to their ends.
8
After reading many of these comments, you would think Donald Trump must be from South Carolina. Or that Michigan and Pennsylvania gave Hilary Clinton the presidency.
Of course, there are racists and misogynists and good people in every state of the Union. The proportions do vary, but the problem is the same: there are never enough of the good ones.
11
Well said!
I have been watching all the
Scandinavian television offerings on Netflix.
What really stands out to this Southern raised American woman, who lived in Ireland in the eighties with my first husband-
Racism, is an excuse to do terrible things to people you can label as ‘lesser’, and to obscure the reality that all people, of every hue and persuasion, do terrible things to one another.
This behavior increases and becomes common as it is allowed to occur-
the more power a person has, (just like in days of yore- a man was ‘king’ of his ‘castle’ and allowed to beat wife and children with impunity), the more he can abuse those beneath him, financially, socially, physically and in every other way.
The Scandinavian countries are quite homogeneous- and it has been a revelation to watch White people do the most terrible and inhumane, downright cruel and medieval things, to one another, and realize that once race is eliminated as a cause or marker of violence, what is left is that it is testosterone fueled male-bodied humans of every color that do the raping and the murdering and the corrupting and the stealing.
Why not examine male violence?
Too many powerful males?
Well, let’s just roll out the South again and breathe life into racist ideas, that, hilariously for this 50 yr old woman, who has seen 6 decades of American life unfold, were all but dead, to the extent that no one and I do mean No One wants to be called racist, at all ever.
That did not used to be the case.
1
Although I'm sure it's worse there, this is not only happening in the South. I live in Eastern WA, a very red place in a very blue state. It varies from place to place, but I'd say that the scary, right-wing attitudes cover more land area than the progressive ones do. Fortunately for folks like me, there are enough people concentrated in a smaller area in the West to pass laws that make our state a better place to live. While they pursue their city lives, we can live contentedly in our gorgeous, sparsely settled neck of the woods. That doesn't mean that we don't work for change, but it is very slow in coming.
5
You have thrown me a life preserver, the other end of which is hooked to my North Carolina South. It's heartening to know there are other real Southerners out there....those who are shamed only by the bad things they know they do and not by name calling and innuendos aimed in their direction. In one of the Shardlake mysteries, Matthew Shardlade and his cohort were verbally and physically costed by a gang...his cohort asks 'What's wrong with them?" Shardlake says it a way of living when there are unbearable things in their lives... To think like that one wins his/her personal freedom and is not entrapped by plain old meanness and egotistic bravado!
17
@Jerry Partrick The North won the Civil War. The Confederates have won the 154 years since. I honestly don't know how the good people can stand to stay there. The bullet fired by John Wilkes Booth that took Lincoln and installed Johnson as President was the single most horrifically effective act of violence in our history. I'm not sure Lincoln would have done enough, but it couldn't have been worse. Germany and the Allies gave us the model after WWII - denazification and the outright banning of a doctrine of hate. Where would we be today had we hung a treasonous Confederate officer every mile from Appomattox to DC? And allowed a neutralized and disarmed South to leave? A truly United States.
1
Like another commentator stated, the biggest problem is that a lot of Southerners are very religious and as such quite self righteous and most of them don't even see it. I don't think they really believe in separation of church and state but rather believe that it's their religious duty to bring "salvation" to everyone else! Religions (all of them as far as I am concerned) are not compatible with democracy since each of them believe that they own the truth! The Funding Fathers were obviously well aware of this problem.
18
@Lagrange; correction: Founding Fathers
We figured that, but it is kind of prophetic the original way.
6
I would love to help with progressive southerners struggle. I really would. But some important people in some southern states have decided that because I'm a female I am unable to make reasonable decisions or to take decisive action in any manner that would be positive to Mankind.
I guess in the south it's 1 step forward and 10 steps back.
16
Premising the argument here on the assertion that there are lots of good people in the South is truly a red-herring. No rational person would think otherwise. But acknowledging that fact does not serve to defeat these realities: most egregious voting rights violations occur in the South; virtually all southern states support Trump and his hatefulness and divisiveness; the push to curtail reproductive rights is driven by the South; the southern states are the poorest, unheathiest, and least educated, and the largest net importers of federal dollars. So, nice to have a reaffirmation that not everyone there is “bad,” but at the end of the day it is inarguable that the South, as a region, is a drag on our nation.
26
When I first visited the Mississippi Delta on a "Blues Tour" in 2003, it was immediately clear to me why so many African-American musicians (Louis Armstrong, B. B. King, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Koko Taylor, the list goes on and on) leveraged their talent to relocate to somewhat less prejudiced cities in the North.
And when I visit the Deep South today, it's still easy to imagine that the Civil War ended just a few years ago, not in 1865.
16
I have a question. Where does the South begin? It used to be below the Mason-Dixon line, i.e. south of Pennsylvania. And while not all Southern states joined the Confederacy, Delaware and Maryland had segregation laws until the 1960s like the rest of the South. But a lot has changed since then. Beginning with the FDR administration the sleepy Southern city of Washington, DC grew as the federal government did, bringing people from all over the country. In 1987 I moved from Long Island to Northern Virginia across the Potomac river I did not sense I was in the South. My neighbors came not only from all across the country but from across the world. Moreover, I see many Southerners who lose their accent once they leave the South.
4
@Mark Ryan
I'm a southerner and never had an accent. Ditto, my parents.
3
@Maggie
Same here. I was born and raised and still live in Nashville. In grad school I had fellow student - from Cuba, no less - ask me where "my accent was". The closest thing in my family was a touch of Gullah from my dad's South Carolina side. We don't all sound like Foghorn Leghorn.
1
@Mark Ryan
Sorry to report, but the South extends all the way to the Canadian border, by way of Idaho, where bumper stickers on vehicles that will never see a city street proclaim that Black Cows Matter.
4
I'm tempted and give in, saying it all the time.
I have friends throughout the south that are horrified by the shocking numbers of their "neighbors" who are so arrogantly certain of their own views about culture, guns, society, economics, religion, and personal rights.
You couldn't pay me enough to move south of the Mason Dixon line.
10
@JFR
"I have friends throughout the south that are horrified by the shocking numbers of their "neighbors" who are so arrogantly certain of their own views about culture, guns, society, economics, religion, and personal rights."
You're talking about Ohio or Pennsylvania, right?
2
@Maggie My Pittsburgh friend says PA is Philadelphia at one end, Pittsburgh at the other, Alabama in the middle.
1
@Maggie
True enough, the mindlessness endemic to the south has migrated north - can we blame climate change?
1
I believe you when you say you are fighting back. Unfortunately, the majority of voters in the South keep electing individuals who will take away the rights of women, minorities, and immigrants. To characterize the south as filled with rednecks is completely misleading, rather it is part of the Bible Belt, and with conservative evangelical Christianity leading the political fights in the region, you may be vastly outnumbered. I do say, good luck, and good hunting.
7
Meanwhile, NYC has some of the most segregated schools in the US. We are not all bad here, either! And yes we know the Alabama abortion law is horrible joke on those who live there!
4
I spend a lot of time in Rhode Island when I was in the Navy and some few years later I was a College Text representative in the NYC territory. Discrimination is not alien to the northern states. I was refused service in Rhode Island only because of my accent - which is a Southern Appalachian dialect, not what people call a Southern Accent. When working in NYC, I called on a Department Chairman at City College and was told that he would not deal with me at all because I was Southern and, therefore, hated blacks and Jews. Neither of those charges were true then and they are not now.
My family from East Tennessee voted not to secede and my great grandfather was a major in the Union Army.
As for the racism charge, I had been in a Civil Rights event supporting blacks and after that, I was in Memphis and marched with the garbage workers. As for my "hatred" of Jews, few know that the only port in the US that allowed Jews in until the Pogroms was Charleston, SC and the oldest Congregation in the US is in Charleston, though some say St. Augustine, FLA. Most became merchants in the small towns and cities and some successfully went into politics. They had no problem in being accepted and one even was on Jefferson Davis' cabinet.
Although there are a lot of Jews in the South, Mississippi has probably the largest number of any state.
Racism and Anti-Semitism is not as common in the South as some suspect, but then there are the Rednecks.
12
Ungrateful Southerners never acknowledging Catholic Yankee, President John F. Kennedy's inspiring "Moonshot" Space landing a man on the moon generating hundreds of thousands of Southern white/blue collar NASA, allied jobs, development.
6
Give me a break. There's no justification whatsoever for the unprecedented legislative attacks on women and women's health, people of color, and voting rights in statehouse's controlled by Donald Trump's right-wing 'we want your womb' political party.
I was born at night, but not last night. I'm not an idiot and neither are you. Yet the author of this piece thinks so. She wants us to know their are good people on her side. That's nice. There were good people in Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Darfur, and the Confederate South too. So what.
We are keenly aware that right-wing forces in Washington and our red states are doing everything they can to impose their will and preserve their power. They're working overtime to subjugate and enslave women, marginalize LGBTQ people, and disenfranchise people of color.
Something is rotten here, and it's not the King of Denmark. Three political party's in what's described as a 'two party system' will never work, and the partisanship defies reason and prevents progress.
There might be good people on both sides, but not on three sides. Stop trying to justify the actions of bad actors by citing the work of good ones. I don't buy it.
16
@Roy Steele
As you wish. Meanwhile get to work on your homeless problem.
Frankly, my dear I don’t give a.... You missed the real Southern sentiments entirely. Their prejudices against differences resides in fears, suspicions and some may even say common sense. They do not trust that failing city schools can give their children the advantages of an education to compete. They fear that young children can be influenced by examples and/or role models to become godless, promiscuous, and drug dependent. They suspicion that common courtesies are slipping away with increasing contempt and disrespect for authority, traditions and hospitality. These are the deeply-ingrained motivational sentiments which surround incompetence, vulgarity, and degradation of life.
They already know that the old wicked slave-holding South will never rise again nor should it. Now at least she can hold her honorable defeat and diminished dignity close to her with humility. Whatever the chaos, challenges, and changes that may come to her at least she knows that she can not always...depend on the kindness of strangers.
2
@Charlie - You can't get more godless, promiscuous and vulgar than Trump and thanks to Southerners he's in the White House.
12
@DR I didn't realize Penn, Ohio, Wisconsin, Alaska, Montana, Nebraska, N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Kansas, Missouri, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Indiana, Iowa, West Virginia (it's not), Michigan, Oklahoma, and Arizona were Southern states?
3
Thanks for the article. As I read it, I didn’t see it as a “Southern” problem. I just kept thinking of the rich, the religious right, the hard-right intelligentsia, loose cannon gun owners & bigots.
Help me understand why I voted GOP for so long.
10
I grew up in the North. The only Southerners I regularly see are on TV and are usually members of Congress who seemed to be very stupid, very old, white men. They are anti women, anti-change, anti-science. I keep asking if it would be ok with them if their daughters, sisters, grandchildren were paid 80% of their male counterparts in whatever job they held. Would it be ok if they drank contaminated water? breathed contaminated air? Would it be ok if their family members were gunned down by law enforcement for just being on the street?
18
It is a plain ole fact that I was born and "raised" in the South, but I don't consider myself a "southerner". I consider myself to be an American citizen. Those few times I might have referred to myself as a southern boy were for rhetorical, often sarcastic, purposes only. I can't really say I have established much of an identity as a southerner. Maybe I understand how some people think because of a common experience and I feel obligated to explain it to those pig headed, lame brained Yankees who insist on being modern day carpetbaggers. But I will equally criticize a "southerner" for being dumb as a post.
Most of what people in general perceive as southern backwardness is the product of selective reporting by a biased media, liberal Northern elites who think they are the ultimate authority on all things in America, because they have a readership scattered all over the country. They single out and report on incidents and utterances by individuals that reinforce their own biased views of people "south of the Mason Dixon line", which is complete nonsense that has no bearing on reality at all. You might just as well mention something you read in a Harry Potter book.
4
@Aristotle Gluteus Maximus
Guess you've never been asked to leave a bar because you're not white. I was in a US Army uniform, was told to leave the bar in a stopover in Macon Georgia. Or passed by when asking for a beer in other bars in southern towns; my "WHITE" friends had to get the beer for me.
Great southern hospitality.
9
@Aristotle Gluteus Maximus - The reality is the laws passed in the south. There's no good way to spin bigotry, misogyny and racism.
2
@Dtngai
Georgia?! Whadda you expect from Georgia? I've been asked to leave a store, but not because I was a certain skin color, but because I was looking at a magazine that was on the shelf with all the other magazines. Maybe you weren't served while in uniform because it is against regulations? I didn't say there was no racism in some parts of the south but there certainly is more generalized racism in northern cities. I'm not the only one who has commented on that here. Washington DC is much more racist than slave market New Orleans.
I am not a Southerner, but I went to undergraduate in Nashville then lived in Atlanta for 15 years afterwards. I traveled throughout the South in those years, and as others put it, there are distinct differences between the cities (Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, etc.) and the rest of the states. One way to get elected to statewide office is to vilify those city folk, hence the election of some real cro-magnons to state legislatures.
Some of the kindest, most liberal people I know are native Southerners, as are some of the most conservative. But I could say the same for New England.
10
I attended the University of South Carolina and graduated in 1972. Not exactly an enlightened era for the South Carolina that existed beyond the walls of the picturesque campus, but in those days the intolerance seemed to be at a lower volume than it is now. Almost everything I hear about South Carolina these days makes me cringe.
4
Keep up the good fight. The right is enjoying its moment, but these good old days will pass.
4
@Lock Him Up I'm not sure they'll pass. In the meantime, though, due process applies to all or it works for none.
3
Wonderful column. We have a president who wasn’t raised in the South but whose father was brought to court for his racial discrimination practices in New York. A Northerner, Trump, who has the title of president fosters hate and divisiveness in our country ... he’s a dangerous racist. The racists and misogynists in the South are emboldened with Trump but there are great people like Mayor Pete from conservative Indiana, flyover country, who articulates for a more kinder and more united country. I believe there are kind and good people in the South and I believe there are cruel and racist people in the North ... I have experienced both. I love many things about my country and its people but I also believe it’s more important now than any other time for a leader who unites us and makes us want to be better human beings no matter what state we live in.
6
First of all, I'm always skeptical of someone who doesn't recognize slavery as the "worst time to be a sentient human being in the American South". I just have to doubt your understanding of history, if not your sensibilities. Whispering disapproval of your politicians' activities behind closed doors, then continuing to vote for them is not useful. If you really want people to stop believing the stereotype, raise your voice and use your vote to convince us otherwise.
8
I keep hearing that there are many good and decent people in the South, and I have no doubt that's true. But the good and decent people must be a small and weak minority. because Southern voters keep electing horrible politicians and supporting horrible laws. And that pattern has continued since long before the Civil War.
19
While the sub head tries to mollify the divisiveness of the headline, it’s still a call for division and schism. If it wouldn’t cause such celebration at the Kremlin, I’d advocate, only half jokingly, for a new secession. As it is , Putin couldn’t be happier, and will continue to exploit this vein of pure schism.
2
The worst time in the South? Maybe during slavery?? Worst for whom?
I accept that there are some exceptions to the rule, but the culture is indeed one that is reflected in the animus and the draconian laws.
2
Sorry Margaret, but I find it hard to agree with you. I'm originally from a Caribbean island; live in CA; and have spent all of my professional career traveling around the US, to include countless trips to the South over the past 35 years.
Only in the South have I ever been asked these questions ( verbatim,with a straight face, and no hint of irony):
"Are you black"? ( I have curly hair and olive skin)
"Are you a lesbian"? ( never married, no kids)
"Do you speak real English"? ( English is my first language, I have a Caribbean accent)
"Your daddy must have been very rich" ( I have an Ivy League degree)
This is as true today as when I was a young sales rep at the beginning of my career. I could go on, but my point is that things are different in the South - and from my direct experience, not in a good way.
22
Good on ya for this column. It is easy to stereotype based on a limited sample consisting of the ever-present yahoos, but those are everywhere. Some are even from that cultural oasis called New York and hold high public office.
3
There is no way, no way I want to have anything...ANYTHING to do with Alabama, and most of the other states in the former Confederate States of America! As far as I'm concerned, we should have settled the issue of racism & states rights back in 1865 when we had the army there to do the job! Sherman's March to the Sea ended a few yards short! Radical Reconstruction was abandoned. Reconstruction v2.0 (1960's Voting Rights & Civil Rights Acts) have allowed to fade away and be watered down. It's time to do it again! A Reconstruction v3.0! If they think the south will rise again, then let's remind them who won the war! The Union Won The War!
11
"As if every person in the entire state can be painted with the same brush."
Pot, kettle, Ms. Renkl.
6
As Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers would say, 'it is the duality of the southern thing.'
2
See Toni Morrison regarding the "black presence" which affects writing in the United States. See Baldwin "the spirit of the South is the spirit of America." The South should never be demonized, because the North has done as much and worse.
4
Grew up in the South, as an adult moved West. Here's the main problem I see with the South- there is a certain fatalism that goes along with Christianity as its practiced there. Its mostly the very conservative kind of Christianity that emphasizes human's sinfulness in general, women's depravity in particular, and minorities being completely "other." With this belief in human's inherent sinfulness, there is no real belief that people can really improve, except in as they believe in God. This is the fatalism. In this mindset everything is God's will and humans are there to enact it, nothing more. As I experienced it, this fatalism is in the very air people breathe- and injustice is usually understood as Gods will or a judgement on humans. This philosophy/fatalism is just not a major factor in progressive states- there, there is hope for change and momentum toward human powered change. And God isn't part of the culture as in Southern states. Until the majority of Southerners can see their way to being agents of their own destiny, I don't see things changing.
12
@Dog lover; well stated.
1
" We are fighting back. "
It is impressive and admirable that people like you stand up and fight against the repressive culture that is endemic in the South. I lived in the South for 1 year, and couldn't wait to leave. I hope people like you can effect change, but if history is any indication, that will be a long and hard road. Best of luck.
4
I have lived equal parts of my life in a reliably Democratic northern state (Illinois) and in a reliably Republican southern state (Texas). In both places I encountered considerable prejudice as well as considerable tolerance. White people in Chicago were (and still are) often just as quick to move out of a neighborhood that begins to integrate as are their southern counterparts.The hatred that greeted Martin Luther King when he tried to march through several of Chicago's white neighborhoods was every bit as savage as what took place in many southern communities. And last but not least, I can assure you that the current Republican gerrymandering in places like North Carolina and Texas is a mirror what the Illinois Democrats did to reduce that state's Republican. congressional delegation as the number of that state's representatives steadily declined. We all still live glass houses and ought to be quite careful about throwing stones at other people's walls.
7
I like Ms Renkl's writing, but her column sums up why the US doesn't move forward in terms of its insiduous heritage of white supremacy, which tends to be more overtly voiced in the South. There is far too much of "look at us, we're nice (white) people," and far too little of doing the hard work of acknowledging that we're all in this together, we're all part of the system, we've all benefited from it. The US needs something equivalent to Germany's denazification after WWII. We are so not over race that actually when I read stuff like thing I just cringe inside, all good intentions notwithstanding.
10
I emigrated to Canada52 years ago. Have never had one day of regret.Need a warm winter break? Bermuda rocks.
15
We have come along way but still have a long way to go. Good luck with the fight!
1
I was born & partly raised in the segregated South. I left there in 1965 and have been back rarely. I don't miss it. There are certain elements of southern culture that I still enjoy—food mostly, and music—but it's just not worth it for me to go back more than once or twice a decade.
9
This article has been written from the perspective of a southerner. They believe in the myth of southern hospitality. One day as I was driving, a pick up truck had a label that said" "welcome to the south, now go home." Southern hospitality applies only to other southerners. I've lived in Georgia for 20 years. Why? It's cheaper to live here. Drivers here are very aggressive and hostile. They reflect the local culture. I've lived in many states: MI, NY (NYC), MA, TX, VA, SC, and I've never experienced the nastiness and rudeness in any other state as I have here. There are exceptions, of course. Others that have moved from other states, have witnessed the same. People from GA claim is the ones from other states moving here the ones that are rude and nasty, particularly, in Atlanta. Not true at all. Laws here are enforced arbitrarily here, and if one tries to get laws and ordinances enforced, or expect rights dictated by laws respected, then one is considered mean and a bad neighbor. Of course, the author of this article wouldn't know. as many others from GA because she is from the south and she is welcomed here in her own home. I have really tried to move out. No luck, the blue states are very expensive.
11
@ART. I'm not contending there's great hospitality in the South. Largely, people are about the same everywhere. (I've been to all 50 states, most several times). As a native Georgian, I don't defend Georgia, but I will defend Athens. You won't find a more friendly place than Athens-in spite of some of the students. You will be hard pressed to find a more progressive city than Athens. I suspect your dislike is due to grumpiness around college students. Few folks I know ever want to leave Athens. Your "cost of living" defense to staying is rather silly. Athens is about the national average in costs, and property taxes are quite high, although much less so than much of the N.E. As to drivers, yes Athens' drivers are overly aggressive. With 36,000 plus silver spooned UGA students (the majority from Atlanta) as well students of two other colleges, all living in a small concentrated area, there's aggression. Atlanta drivers are quite aggressive given the horrible traffic problems that exist. Take someone from rural Kansas, move them to Atlanta, and they will be driving like everyone else. Over 50 percent of Atlanta residents are not native Southerners by the way. Have you ever driven in Boston or D.C.?
2
Thank you so much for this column! As to the comments on how we must like the current knuckledraggers because we keep voting for them, I remind them that Mike Pence, Chuck Grassley, Orin Hatch and other hateful conservatives are as easily found above as below the Mason Dixon. Also, if you wish to review racism at its most virulent, read , “The Color of Law,” by Richard Rothstein. Housing segregation was a national vice enshrined in law all over the country including in many so-called liberal enclaves.
11
I would ask Ms Rankl how many of her white neighbors truly believe Blacks are the equal of Whites?
7
@Caded
Do those in Boston?
3
I have lived in Florida, South Carolina , Georgia, Alabama and Boston. The most racist of those places? Boston.
15
@John Jabo
You're not talking about racism in Boston.
I'm white and I have never felt at home in Boston!
They just do not like outsiders and do not get me started about the drivers in Boston!
5
I'm from Arizona. I relate. We too are fighting back.
4
The "representatives" in each of these State houses are filled with people who were voted into office by the citizenry. Oftentimes these "representatives" run unopposed. While we all love a good hoe down or a good ole country fundraiser, its most certainly not enough and reflects the people who live in these areas and their (un)willingness to get up, get out, and get going.
3
“The fury of a blue-state outsider can’t possibly touch the fury of someone like me — someone who lives in one of these states, someone who is actually subject to these dangerous laws.”
Respectfully, I think us blue staters are way more angry. Angry because in fact we ARE subject to the rule of the American South. As a condition of joining the USA, the slave states demanded that their less-populous states be given disproportionate power. We are all ruled over by a minority of our citizenry. It doesn’t matter what we want, because the Southern and tiny western red states can easily control the Senate. With that, they can thwart the House or the executive, as they choose. With the Senate alone, they can block appointments and patiently wait for the electoral college to hand them the presidency. Then they can pack the courts, and with the courts, they can make laws or break them, as they choose.
No, fury doesn’t begin to cover it. You chose to live in the South. I didn’t. Yet here I am.
32
“ the past is never dead. It’s not even past “. -William Faulkner.
The South, in one sentence.
33
I've been a northerner all my life, but the south always draws me in for the people, culture, food and beautiful landscapes. As NYC thwarts all of my efforts financially to grow my small business I look to the south for opportunities. Will it be perfect? No, of course not. I am aware of the racism, and sexism running rampant.
I'm a liberal female entrepreneur who votes Democrat. People think I'm crazy to want to go South, but I look at is as though I'm one more vote towards change and a representation of who these old-timer conservative sexist men need to be afraid of.
8
Traveling through the South is much like traveling through a third world country. It is nothing like the Midwest or northeast or west coast or mountain states. It’s a different world. More like Romania or Hungary than Germany or France. And just as different as these from other parts of the US
Viewing it as a foreign country with a foreign culture makes far more sense than believing it is somehow average America. Yes they are patriotic to the US, but it is deeply different from other parts of it. Yes the people in the South are more supportive of white supremacy ideas, of contempt for blacks, for extremist Christianity, for low levels of education. But then so is Michigan.
Yes there are people fighting against these realities. But the realities are deeply entrenched, going back four hundred years or more. Attachment to the culture is deeply emotional.
The South is what it is. They don’t much like the other parts of America, and are as elitist about their world as New York is about their’s.
Both argue they have many good people. But culture defines what is moral, and emotion makes a fool of truth
6
"Tennessee just executed a deeply repentant Christian convert who had lived an exemplary life in prison."
OK, if that's the standard for dodging the death penalty, do you realize how many jail house conversions there will be?
6
Always back and white. The Southern mentality distilled.
@SpotCheckBilly Civilized people don't believe in the death penalty.
My southern aunt used to get upset because northern liberals would come down to the southern cities and try to make them progressive. They were not too successful as the people there rebelled. Can you imagine if the southerners were to move to northern cities and tried to make them conservative. They would be run out of town.
Many of us like the fact that there are still pockets of conservatism left in the US. We do not like the liberalizing of our country and am glad someone is putting the brakes on to stop this. It is nice to know that the southerners still hold family values and are not emulating the coastal elite areas. There is a lot to like about the south and its people. They are welcoming but don't want others to change their lifestyle. They can make up their own minds as these recent laws that were passed prove.
2
@KMW
Like the law passed in Arkansas this week that allows rapists to sue to stop their victim from having an abortion? Or, if he is too late the rapist can seek monetary damages? That law? No thank you. And lets not even pretend that "family values" are important to conservatives and Evangelicals anymore.
17
Putting the breaks to stop what?
5
Forward to 1860. The South will rise again.
7
I understand differing opinions when it comes to politics.
What I will NEVER understand in my head or in my heart is why a church is set fire and burns to the ground. My Lord, this is a sacred place of worship, regardless of the religion.
But then if one's religion isn't respected, why would one's political views be any different?
Forget about the notion of treading water, this country is sadly going backwards.
8
It is admirable to be fighting back, particularly when there is significant opposition to progress, as there is in much of the South. A law can be changed overnight: social change takes generations. LBJ said after he signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 that the Democrats had lost the South "for a generation". He was wrong. It has been three or four generations. That is the pace of cultural change. Keep fighting.
6
A certain city in Mississippi is very familiar to this Yankee because not only have I been visiting there frequently since the mid ‘70s but my family connections pre-date what is often referred to as “that great unpleasantness “ in the 1860s. And yes, they were slave owners some with all the failings associated with this peculiar institution.
Yes, there have been massive social changes socially and economically. And there is a civility, a friendliness, a politeness between the races that is wonderful and charming and refreshing. However, a glass ceiling exists.
For example, if say Colin Powell or a similar black man of fine reputation were to speak in this town, his venue would be filled . But he would not be invited to dinner unless the host was black.
I am a woman and I understand glass ceilings and I hate them.
8
I can tell that you tried real hard to paint a sympathetic picture of a southern town but you couldn’t resist your own myopia. To say that Colin Powell would not be invited into one white home is spurious and prejudicial. You’re using the same stereotype that the author described. There are enlightened people fighting for justice in the South and piling on is harmful to our cause.
3
I live in Tennessee, in a county that recently declared itself a Second Amendment Sanctuary. Yes, there are other people who want to see change. But we are so outnumbered and yes, so out-gunned. It's become very, very difficult to keep being optimistic without feeling like a fool, and honestly I no longer am optimistic. We are what we are. And what we are in this part of the country apparently is a good hunk of what got us into this unholy mess, and most people are tickled to death to be just who they are and to have come out on top.
7
We've lived in Tennessee for two decades, but since Trump became president we've been actively seeking a new home state.
Margaret is correct that most people are 'nice', but it is on their own terms. A black family that moved into our neighborhood a couple of years ago recently left. There was no overt discrimination, but they never felt welcome. Same with those of us who aren't religious. People look right through you. They're shallow and judgmental. As a gay man who works in a local business once told me, they think they're good people but they really aren't.
30
I lived in an "enlightened" part of the south twice in different decades and it really hadn't changed much in the 30 years in-between. Sure. Lots of nice well meaning people, just not the required 51%. They say the right things, but at the moment of truth, vote for the status quo. The pressure to conform is extreme. Many justify it as some sort of independence movement driven by a weird grudge against the government and "the north" (except when it comes to their disproportionate share the federal tax dollars). Like most of politics in America, it is driven by Money and greedy folks who keep old divisions alive to collect donations and stay in power. That fact that it works so well tells you it still resonates and for your average Ga state legislator "if it ain't broke don't fix it". If all those affluent folks in Nashville and Atlanta started paying off the politicians to be more progressive and stopped worrying about not being welcome at church or the club if they break ranks with their friends, maybe things will actually change. Guess what, our Queens born Chief Exec is following the same playbook.
14
Lincoln should have let them go when he had the chance.
22
@Drew
And in doing so consign the 3 million African-Americans in those states to slavery in perpetuity?
1
It is perhaps the minority of decent Southerners who keep the South's majorities from having their way and finding out where that way leads. The South's current majorities are learning, if they do not already know, that cities are foreign bases that encroach on Southernness, and will discourage the growth of cities even if cities are also engines of economic development.
3
As a life time Southerner, I agree with Ms. Kenkl's remarks. But, a little prospective is in order on most of the USA: Trump's election required racially fueled voters in many non-southern states. The following states had a higher percentage Trump vote than Georgia (some much higher): Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, and W. Virginia (not really Southern). Trump also won: Utah, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
I'm not commenting to provide anything resembling praise for the South, but I believe the above states are no more racist than a minority portion of folks in FL, Ga, and NC, at least, if not more so. (A black female narrowly lost the GA gubernatorial election, and only due to election fraud). While there are racial killings, racist postings, etc. as Ms. Kenkl stated, I think a scientific review of incidents the past several years would show many, many are also occurring outside the South.
14
Born and raised southerner here. And guess what, I’m a white democrat (*gasp*). Yes, the south clearly has its problems and it’s very troubling to hear all the news coming out of it recently. However, it’s really disappointing to see all these comments completely writing off the south, saying we should secede, etc. As someone that’s lived my whole life here, I can confidently say things are changing. Yes, we take steps back sometimes, but having the other half of the country give up on us WILL prevent these necessary changes from occurring.
9
What you say in fact is true.
I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. That city was never part of the Deep South. I wrote an academic history of the city and in the final chapter quoted Benjamin Mays who said : "Atlanta is not the typical South. it is better." Maybe, but i remember it had warts.
I went off to college at Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 1962. I encountered regional bigotry for the first time aimed at white southerners. I will never forget being asked by the son of the chief justice of the New York state supreme court if I wore shoes when I went home. He quickly added that he was only joking because he knew I was from Atlanta. What if my hometown was Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee?
That town was the birthplace of Ralph McGill, the Pulitzer winning editor of the Atlanta Constitution. McGill was writing in favor of civil rights in the 1940s. His son and I went to high school and college together. At Wesleyan the regional bigotry really got to him. He hung a big Confederate flag on his wall. Students who filed past his room on their way to the freshmen dinning hall heard him play his guitar and sing Dixie.
My point is that there is plenty of bigotry of all types in this country.
g
10
Thank you for your article. I'm a northerner, a NY'r who grew up in N England. I remember parents' friends being from every bkground, being taught never to judge someone by their features or colors. Yet I still picked up prejudices that I consider prehistoric. Now I try to meet people as individuals, the only way to live safely and peacefully. You've helped me add more individuals to my thinking.
3
" I know that Southern hospitality is a real thing, and that it isn’t race-contingent. "
I have never understood the people of the south using the term "southern hospitality" in the face of the number of lynchings on record that have occurred over the last century and a half. What hospitality? It's like the travesties of racism didn't happen to real people, or is that just another way of saying blacks just don't count as human beings?
16
Oh my, how sweet. Everyone waiting in line to bash and condemn everyone in the former Confederate states. I think it is a good idea to look in your own mirror- there is just as much-if not more-wrong committed in other areas as there is here. Why does anyone believe they have the right or permission to judge as though they have been ordained as such? What a joke on all of you.
7
@David - When my blue state dollars no longer fund red state ignorance, bigotry and injustice I'll stop judging.
17
@DR California, Nevada,Wisconsin, New York, Ohio, Vermont, Maine, etc. Are all more dependent on the federal government than North Carolina and Virginia.
Your list is blatantly false. The deep South (with Alaska) is the biggest group of federal tax takers in the country.
3
I am rather isolationist and feel no animosity towards southerners, or anyone in the US, as long as they don't try to inflict any hateful policies on me and those I love. If people are trying to vote for my President, let them vote, don't suppress them as that wounds me. If Mitch McConnell wants control Kentucky legislation, let him. But I don't get to vote for him even though he is, to a significant extent, controlling my environment. Keep the christian version of Sharia law where it belongs - in the church. Etc.
The sad fact is that, despite efforts that you describe, hateful policies coming generally from southern legislators affect me, despite living in the bluest of the blue. There is no escape as long as I choose to live in the US, and I do resent that.
18
"White Southerners in power have been trying to keep black people from voting ever since they got the right to vote."
They didn't "Get the right to vote." The right to vote was extended to them when they were eventually acknowledged as human beings, not property, after a brutal war to keep them enslaved. There was no gentle evolution at work.
10
Decades ago I spent a summer in a small town in Georgia. Two things I can relate are: southerners are correct that virulent they said racists exist outside the South; and also, if you aren't from the South and think you understand it, you don't.
7
Thank you...sometimes it is easy to hear or see only what is broadcast in the headlines. We are ALL Americans; what causes us to find bridges across our differences is what binds us together.
6
One of the stereotypes that northerners have about white Southerners is that too often they display a certain cluelessness about how their words are heard by many. Here’s an example: “I’m tempted to say there’s never been a worse time to be a sentient human being in the American South, but I know that’s not true. I spent my entire 1960s childhood in Alabama, and I don’t care how bad you think it is right now, it’s nothing to the days when Bull Connor and his ilk still walked the earth”. What about the days when sentient beings like Washington and Jefferson walked the earth?
2
What the South does to itself really doesn't concern me much. It's when Southerners move elsewhere and bring their willful/hateful ignorance with them that does concern me.
Trump's Wall is in the wrong place...
13
Fight harder, struggle harder good people of the South, because politically your region is run by white men with regressive mindsets. Lindsay Graham can subvert the national good in a terrifying and transparent manner. We have South Carolina to thank.
13
@John R
When it comes to subverting the national good (and national character), just don't forget to put Mitch McConnell into the mix.
19
@N. Smith. or, Peter King, Lee Zeldin, John Katko, Tom Reed...
3
The last 70 years since the civil rights movement should have been a golden age for liberalism. The conservatives were proved wrong on race, wrong on Vietnam , wrong on Watergate. So what happened to ruin liberalism's success? They not only embraced abortionists, but removed abortion law from democratic control in order to rig elections in their favor. Apparently they thought opposition to abortion would atrophy once people couldn't vote on it. Big mistake.
2
@Charlesbalpha Aaaah, yes, those nasty liberals. Extending the right to women to control their own destinies. The shame!
1
Let's be very clear: Social/Cultural/Political issues in the South are not primarily driven by economic concerns. As any number of recent studies and well-researched books have indicated, they are primarily driven by the racial fears/grievances of white people.
True, some of those fears/grievances may have economic undertones but, in the end, even they go to more primal/tribal themes such as social/cultural mobility and dislocation; i.e., the maintaining of---or, fear of losing---one's "standing" or, better, "place" in the prevailing hierarchy that orders the surrounding society/culture.
Such a dynamic explains why, historically, almost every era of minority gain in the U.S.---because it's not just the South, folks---has been met by a succeeding era during which white power sought to and usually succeeded in rolling back many of those gains. Those reactionary eras were not, I assure you, driven by economic issues.
Hence, when I hear friends question why "white people who vote for Trump would vote against their own interests," I suggest that they're asking the wrong question. They might, instead, want to reconsider their assumptions about what the primary "interests" of those "white people" actually are.
Want to take the paradigm further? Add the element of white patriarchy to white supremacy---especially in the South. What you come up with is that photographic collage of Alabama legislators who voted for the abhorrent anti-abortion measure last week.
17
@Rusty Inman
Thanks. I think it’s easy to blend power over with money. If you don’t have money, but you do have power over; that’s something quite valuable. I don’t think, given my lesser status, that I fully understood the value of power over. You’ve given me stuff to think about. I deeply appreciate it.
1
My husband and I spent three weeks in March driving from Minnesota to and around Alabama. We visited the 16th Street Baptist Church and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute as well as The Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery. We spent a day in the Alabama historical archives near the state capitol building. We talked to many people, black and white. What came through was the intelligence, resourcefulness, dedication to harmony and progress, and yes, the over-arching hospitality and good nature of the people of Alabama. We need to understand in the United States that the extremist views of some need not overwhelm the decency of most. The 25 Republican men who voted to control the reproductive lives of women will not prevail in the long run. Neither will the racial hatred cherished by those who despise themselves and seek ways to project their own feelings of inadequacy onto the most convenient target.
10
Thank you for this beautifully written thoughtful piece. I guess depth is the dimension we miss the most in this era of instant social media. It is important not to miss the humanity in people—not seeing other people as full humans is how we get into these messes to begin with.
7
It's interesting that all these comments use the term 'Southerners' to describe only white Southerners. Here in Mississippi, 37% of the population is African American, and we have the highest proportion of black elected officials of any state. Jackson, the capital city, is 80% African American.
6
@rgrant
Fine. I'll bite. Out of all those African-Americans how many are in positions of socioeconomic power or legislative authority?
Case closed.
6
@N. Smith
Do your own homework.
Plenty of southern and Deep South blacks are elected as mayor, sheriff, city and county council, DA, school board superintendent...
1
@Maggie and state legislators
In more than one way, Ms. Renkl's sketch of the "post-modern" South's social-economic landscape puts flesh and sinew on Karl Marx's prescient admonition in his "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte":
“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”
7
I have enormous respect for anyone living in a red state who is fighting the malignant plague of Trumpism.
19
@Kip Thank you! I appreciate it. And I am fighting it.
10
i am a recent transplant to the south. i have not yet seen people standing on street corners holding hateful signs. i have been to a number of social and business events where people of all races attended(blacks, whites, asians, equally distributed) and have not noted any instances of division, anger, discourtesy or signs of an ongoing inter-racial struggle. part of the answer may be is that in today's electronic society saying mean, hateful things on twitter, email or these hollowed pages (not a context error), does not have the same consequences as saying mean, hateful things in person. are there wacky people out there? yes, but they are an infinitesimal minority (know any nazis, kkk members?) and they certainly do not define our society.
6
I sympathize with the author's feelings that the south is unfairly attacked, but all those very fine people in the south keep bringing us Mitch McConnell and these horrible laws.
22
@SDC
Yes. There's that -- and then there's all those years of Slavery and Jim Crow laws that made someone like Mitch McConnell possible.
10
@SDC
Kentucky is more a sibling of Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania than Georgia, Alabama, or Mississippi.
1
The whole US has a lot of wretched politics and politicians, and racists galore. The South is not unusual in that regard.
The South is not intellectually dead. U of Texas has the foremost US cancer center, Alabama has rocketry, FL has the space center. Northerners flock here in large numbers Nov - April, Jan-June to escape the taxes going on in the North. Or they move here permanently and tell you Connecticut is unliveable.
5
No wonder why southerners don't like northerners and can you blame them? They are looked down upon from these so called sophisticates who are anything but. The southerners posses more sophistication than most New Yorkers will ever know. They say it is a nice place to visit but can't wait to leave. I don't blame them.
1
@KMW - Feel free to go join them.
7
As a lifelong Mississippian I never anticipated that much of the ugliness I run into from time to time around here can be laid at the feet of a man from Manhattan/Queens who inspires it daily: Donald Johns Trump. I first started despising DJT when I became convinced he is channeling our late segregationist era Governor Ross R. Barnett (e.g., the Birther conspiracy he promulgated, his disparagement of people of Mexican origin). I've seen it before; it is all too familiar around here. The loud voiced Demagogue. Now we get a dose of it daily via Twitter from Washington DC.
9
When I was serving with the Marines during the Vietnam war one of my best friends from the deep South explained to me that “the only difference of racism in the North and South, is that in the South you could see the hand that throws the brick.” During the Trump administration, that distinction has been dramatically blurred.
15
If you think your Northern states think badly of you, you can’t imagine how the rest of the world think of you. The Southern accent is equated with the most violent kind of racial violence. When I hear it I have to give myself a moment to breathe and then remind myself that not all Southern Americans have participated or sanction those acts.
Is that hard to read? With the latest American politics, I more and more am starting to believe that the rest of America is much like or becoming more so like your South. The casual violence that Americans inflicted on other countries and on each other is unnerving. Watching Game of Thrones is much the same as watching American politics. Only there are no white walkers and Winter is not coming, Global warming is.
10
All I can add is: Global warming is here.
2
The North should have let the South succeed. They are a different people and culture. They are currently holding back the country and will in the end be the demise of the Republic.
10
@Ed Fechter
That’s exactly what I have been telling the Yankees who have flooded my city and state over the last quarter century. Thuggish municipal unions, rampant corruption at the local and state level and sky high taxes are a small price to pay to avert “the demise of the Republic." How selfish can these transplants be?
2
@Ed Fechter.
I guess you would like for all foreigners to leave as "they are a different people and culture"? In a previous post I stated I'm a life-long Southerner who agrees with Ms. Renkle's comments. But, it's the ignorant, racist, backwards voting of a large segment of the U.S. population that may be the demise of the Republic. The problems and incidents of racism and abortion restrictions, etc. are the result of those who think like Trump-Southern or not. (Of course, Trump couldn't personally care a drop about abortion, except that the expense might be too high).
As I posted:The following states had a higher percentage Trump vote than Georgia (some much higher): Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, and W. Virginia (not really Southern). Trump also won: Utah, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
While I haven't found state by state polling on the issue, I have no doubt that the white vote in many liberal jurisdictions was shockingly lower than one would think for H. Clinton. My guess is there's about a 10-15% difference among all voters- liberal v. conservative-between, for example, GA, NC, FL & NY. Unfortunately, a moderately larger number of ignorant morons gives us the New Yorker Trump, the buffoon GA governor Kemp, Mitch McConnell, and the numerous nut jobs from the Mountain states and the Midwest, etc.
I think Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. summed up this situation succinctly -
"History will have to record the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."
I believe that the number of people who are fair-minded, believe in equal treatment and equal justice, would help anyone in need, etc., outnumber those would not. I believe that the "Moral Majority" is neither moral nor makes up the majority in this country. And it's time for people of good will to step up in any way they can. Join a group that's taking positive action, write to your government representatives, join a conversation about an issue. Get out and vote. Don't sit silently or do nothing. This means everyone - regardless of your color, your religion, your country of origin; it may sound silly, but we are all brothers and sisters - what we have in common is greater than our differences.
To paraphrase another clergyman - John Donne (1572-1631) -
"No wo/man is an island, entire of itself; every wo/man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. Any wo/man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in wo/mankind."
4
@the more I love my dogs
This sentence begins with “the more I see people”, the more I love my dog. I can’t agree more!
1
@Susan
The more I'm forced to deal with my northern neighbors and their 24/7 barking dogs, the more I cherish my serene and peaceful cats, non-northerners and definitely those with no dogs.
1
From the time going back to the 1960s when The Republican Party implemented their southern strategy, in many respects that has never really changed to this day otherwise, why do they keep voting for and electing the politicians they do? In many respects one would believe that many southerners never stopped fighting for the ideals of the civil war.
When the author talks about a more advantageous cost of living in the south in fact, when I tell my American friends, if you are going to continue to pay those at the "low end of the totem pole" a paltry minimum wage or none at all and pray they don't get sick because they have no healthcare, of course, your cost of living is going to be considerably less!
5
The South will be impacted early and hard by climate change. Much of the southern seacoast is low-lying. Hurricanes and flooding will unequally pummel the south with increasing ferocity (if not frequency).
Heat alone will cause the greatest damage. Water will evaporate faster, crops will need more irrigation, and heat waves will kill more and more people.
The "southern way of life" philosophy will increasingly be a "way of death" and "way of hardship" for more and more--with the misery concentrated on the very people now voting to pretend none of this exists. The price of ignoring the hard truths of science may be slow in coming--but it is inexorable, and exceedingly high.
20
@Mark Johnson
Hurricanes, snowstorms and nor'easters slam the north all the time, just like more tornadoes flatten the midwest, with non-stop wildfires whipping through the west.
The culture of discrimination and religious bigotry has no boundaries. It is alive and well North, South, East and West and is present in every corner of the Earth. The North may have fought the South but, at bottom, had the same values, the same discriminatory impulses and kindred prejudices. The impending implosion of the United States -- due to hubris and a worthship of money -- is merely bringing these impulses to the fore among the "new dispossessed": people who have no place in a global technological future where Americans are not "exceptional".
6
A courageous piece of writing.
Seems no matter where we live the struggle for what we thought we had won for a more equitable and safe community has to be started all over again.
6
I'm a northerner who relocated to the South 12 years ago. Racism and sexism is a rampant part of the culture here. There's a store here where the upstairs has a devotion to the KKK. The locals suggested that we visit and give them our business (I'm white) because they are on hard times. They say that they're not "that bad" people, but actions speak louder than words. No one believes they're racist, but racist many of them down here are.
18
@KB
Why stay, then?
1
There can be no question that there are wonderful, fine whites whose roots are Southern. It is just that, seemingly, there are not enough of them to amend their region’s despicable history and elect leaders who truly subscribe to democracy, the Constitution, and particularly the 14th Amendment, equal protection of the laws. Having lived in Florida (Orlando metro area) for 20 years, and after having lived most of my life in PA and NY, I can attest to the reality that overall and predictably, the South is different, and too often not in a good way. The political culture is despicably radical right-wing and unfathomably antediluvian, more regressive rather than progressive. What can be said of Florida whites who, after the horrific Parkland tragedy, chose to re-elect a radical right-wing NRA-obedient legislature, Trump acolyte Ron DeSantis for Governor, and install Tea Partier and Koch Brother foot soldier Rick Scott to 6 years in the U.S. Senate after electing this Medicare grand fraudster twice as Governor. There you have a classic portrait of the South, folks.
32
I noticed that the writer barely mentioned the main reason for the South's troubles. Religion. And especially Evangelicals. They cherry pick the bible to justify their twisted views and then scream about repression when they're called out for it. I think their is a direct correlation to the fact that the most religious part of America has the worst record on racism, the lowest education standards, the highest drug addiction rates, the highest infant mortality rates and the greatest number of churches. Religion poisons everything and the South still believes they won the Civil War because God was on their side. Their beliefs and morality are all based on a poorly written bronze age science fiction novel. Maybe we should have let them secede.
37
@markd
Please note that the Evangelical movement is alive and well throughout the nation, not just in the South. I
1
@markd
White Southerners chose their religion (or rather religious interpretation) because of their racism, not the other way around. (Southern African Americas, it must be remembered, are also Christian, though their version of Christianity bears no resemblance to the wholesale rejection of Christ's compassion that the white Evangelicals practice). If a brand new religion, with a brand new name, centered on white male supremacy more completely than their brand of Christianity does, I have no doubt that we would witness the largest mass religious conversion in human history..
If there are so many who are trying to change things in the South, why are these laws being passed? Why are so many lawmakers white males? Why is it all under the guise of religion? Why does it feel like nothing has changed?
454
@Mimi - Let's face it, the white females being elected aren't any better. Take a look at Ivey in Alabama.
58
@Mimi
Why? Ultimately, it is ALWAYS the responsibility of the voter to understand who they are voting for and why. Like Trump, it seems to be a case of the voter hearing what they want to hear, not understanding the reality of the situation around them.
When President Obama stated that many in these constituencies are primarily interested only in their guns and religion, he was severely castigated for saying it. In reality he was correct. The Republican Party is more than willing to provide these two items, meanwhile, in exchange, they are more than willing to take away everything else from these same people.
106
@Mimi
Why?
1) Gerrymandering
2) The Electoral College
3) Voter Disenfranchisement
Any other questions?
52
The South should be boycotted, and heavily and zealously. It wasn't in '63. It should have been. I don't see any marches. I don't see much resistance. King said, and I paraphrase,
"don't be silent. Silence only helps the oppressor. Take a side.' So I don't care if there are good people there. They aren't in control of anything. The people in control are regressive racists and homophobes. They intend to "win" the culture war by any means necessary. We should intend to accomplish the same thing. We are on the side of justice. They are not.
13
Woman to Alabama woman: how is it that you can stand by a law that says its ok for your husband, your father or other close male relative to have sex with your daughter, your niece your granddaughter then force her to have said child. You would punish the doctor but not the man that commits this crime?
How can you support the men that would consider this a moral evil but also condone putting your child in jail for not wanting to bear this child?
Open to hearing your side of this?
33
Renkl declines to include UGA's acceptance of a black professor who voiced his view that white people must die to bring needed change. She doesn't mention Abrams by name but here is what you need to know: She lost an election to a better candidate by the book. No one was prevented from voting. (Prove it Ms. Renkl!) Abrams, a bullying poor loser keeps mouthing a lie over and over and is a media darling kinda like Ms. Renkl herself. The south still has an undeserved reputation and self-serving and dishonest writers like Renkl are part of the reason why.
5
Purging inactive voters. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, Georgia, under Mr. Kemp, purged 1.5 million voters from its rolls between 2012 and 2016. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that an additional 665,000 Georgia voters were purged last year.Nov 3, 2018
5
@Jon
Many of them dead or otherwise no longer a resident of Georgia.
Ludicrous. As a matter of fact, while far from perfect, life in the South is by far the best it's EVER been - unless you want to go back before 1492. And Ms. Renkl, while I admire your writing, I hope you see the irony in using the term "sentient human being" living in the South. The new laws in Alabama and Georgia offer more protection for sentient human life than there's been in a very long time.
6
Since you are pro life, you must be against the death penalty as well. That is a human life also, so I hope you put the same energy into repealing it as you do being pro life. Unfortunately your state government thinks otherwise.
6
no it doesnt it is designed to punish women for having sex and then destitute them by forcing a baby on them. i don't know what science class you took if you took one at all but a fetus isnt a baby until born.
mass murder has a gender and it isnt female.
6
@Christopher B
Yes, I am 100% against the death penalty. And I think the morning after pill should be free and available everywhere.
1
I really appreciated this essay! Thank you, Ms. Renkl.
I want to recommend a website, bittersoutherner.com, for those who want to learn more about the people and the positive movements in the South that don't get national attention -- ``for the sake of the story, for the love of the South.'' A friend in Nashville turned me on to it about a year ago and IMO it's a gold mine. I was born in North Carolina, have lived in Missouri for many years (where we're fighting an ongoing, uphill battle), have family in Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky, and loved visiting family who lived in Milledgeville, GA, for 10 years. One side of my heritage is Southern, and I'm proud of that and conflicted about it at the same time. Bitter Southerner has become ``family'' for me.
I also highly recommend a new book by Robert W. Lee IV, a descendant of Gen. Robert E. Lee. The book is ``A Sin by Any Other Name: Reckoning With Racism and the Heritage of the South.''
4
It always amazes me that every time there is backlash against a southern law or person, someone comes out with an article extolling the south. Begging the rest of the world to not paint everyone from the South in that manner. Sorry, I don’t buy it. The writer mentions all the social justice work going on in the South. Despite that, reread all of the reasons she feels life is bad in that region. The state of Alabama is at the bottom of the barrel among the US states. Why would anyone want to move there? And they aren’t. Save it for next years fundraiser, full of song and poems. I’ll be quite happy to fly over y’all and be thankful of that
15
@Thomas G. You could also ask why anyone would choose to live in Detroit or Chicago.
6
@Jackson
Because living there is preferable, in toto, to living virtually anywhere in the deep South.
8
Racism exists in the birth but it is just more subtle. There are many segregated schools and neighborhoods but it is not discussed. The liberals push for civil rights but then practice a not in my background sort of lifestyle. They are not the ones to speak about racism in the south when it occurs up north.
3
Correction: Racism exists in the north
1
Freudian slip
1
Thanks to the author for saying this. As a Tennessean expat, I field all manner of snide remarks from people in California about my place of origins ("Oh good for you; you got out."), and most of the time there's little I can say. After all, the things about the South that make the news cause me a lot of anguish. But we are not all like them, and the South has plenty of decent and reasonable people who can be incredibly generous in doing right by their fellow man, regardless of their skin color or religion.
4
It is a mixed bag for us that do not live in the South. The Coastal States have benefited enormously from may of the good people who have migrated out of the South and the rest of the world for that matter. Still what we see is what is left behind in the South. For one, each State has two Senators and if they would just concern themselves with improving the conditions of their states that would be one thing. But they don't stay home they come to Washington they are bought by American Oligarchies. The South is not the only place this happens of course North Dakota , South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming hardly have the population of one large Urban center. California has More population than some 23 other states combined. Most all of the Southern states take in more Federal spending than they pay out in Federal taxes. And while there is way too much racism in the whole country it's a Southern branded product and it shows up with your logo on it Stars and Bars. So I think we all know that there are good people every were in this country most of the time it's really hard to see from were I sit.
4
@Edwin Cohen
Your contention that South’s racism has spurred natives to “[migrate] out of the South” is laughable. According to a February report by the Pew Charitable Trust, in 2018 the “Northeast and Midwest were home to all but two of the 15 states with the slowest population growth.” Among the top regions losing population, according to this same report, were New York, Illinois and Connecticut. Maybe you can impart some advice to “what is left behind” in those deep blue states.
1
The point is to get Alabama and other southern states to move into the 21st century, and the only way to do this is by voting that has been made easy and fair. How are the citizens who care deeply about fairness in the south dealing with this? How will state houses get turned blue or even purple without fair voting?
6
@AT. I love it when liberals think blue means fair. Why don’t you work on New York’s many problems - housing, crime, high taxes.
2
Dear Ms. Renkl,
Your piece brought tears to my eyes. Your allusion to the incoherence of the pro life position was demur and a point well taken. Thank you for braving the avalanche of know-it -all commentators you have brought upon yourself.
4
I believe a most profound weakness in American society, bringing us untold pain and tragedy, is the inability to see nuance. Or is it refusal which is currently more dangerous. We continually insist on viewing things as all good/all bad, as black/white, all or nothing, etc. We might well grow if we could just learn to entertain the thoughts of others without feeling personally attacked. Why aren’t Americans taught to think? Too many of us don’t learn how to evaluate, weigh and gain insight. Tragic.
10
@Hortencia
Would this be critical thinking? The internet has altered our brains.
1
We should have let the South secede. We might actually be better off as three countries. Northeast, South, Midwest, if only California, Washington and Oregon were closer to NY..
12
@Samantha Kelly. I would rather give California back to Mexico.
3
@Jackson I'm willing to bet money that you've never been to California.
5
The fact that Trump supporters apparently believe the US should give California, the world’s fifth largest economy, to Mexico—out of spite—says a lot about how why we are stuck with this moronic abomination of a president.
7
You negate everything you say about the “good people” fighting for social change in the South by listing all the organizations that HAVE to be in the South! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they didn’t have to exist at all in the South? The day they close shop because they are no longer needed is the day I think the South May be redeemed.
7
So, to recap, we're all clear on the problem. We know how bad it is. Those of us who live in the South really know how bad it is. We're not in denial!
The practical question is: how can we change things? What will help? My father was a fan of minister, civil rights activist and author Will Campbell, who ministered to Ku Klux Klan members and murderers. And rich people. And he changed some hearts, although he wouldn't take credit for it.
Writing off a huge portion of the country as irredeemable and willfully terrible has not worked. Deciding to try something else does not minimize the problem, it's just admitting that knee-jerk and lazy dismissal is not an effective way to create desperately needed change.
It is possible to address the historic, psychological, economic, and political underpinnings of racism without excusing or sanctioning it. For example, Southern statehouses are full of Republicans at least partly because of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and, many believe, electronic voting machines. If you damn the entire South as un-saveable, you can't address this very real and practical problem.
Treating everyone as an individual who is worthy of love, even if they need a radical transformation, was Will Campbell's message. It's worth a try.
http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/rolling%20stone/920S-000-031.html
3
@Hdb What I wish I had said: many of us are feeling a lot of anguish over the injustice and suffering that many, particularly minorities and women, are subjected to. It's shocking. Or not shocking, but bitterly expected. It is frustrating to feel that we have little to no power to stop it.
I have a friend who says that you can't go straight from accepting that you have a problem to fixing it. You need to sit with it first. And sitting with it means something more than letting time pass while the problem gets worse. I guess it means letting yourself be open to your full feelings about it and admitting that you are powerless -- in the sense that you can't solve it by quick, easy, clever manipulations. There's no simple self-help tactic is going to solve bigotry. (Anti-bigot-bigotry doesn't help either.)
If you are thinking that comfortable white liberals putting on erudite events in luxurious locales is probably not going to be the solution, I agree. Small numbers of dedicated activists are also not going to be enough. A large-scale change of heart is needed, and a corresponding change in political power.
Congratulating ourselves on being better than racists is not going to be enough. Our institutions, our comfort and our often self-righteous glibness (guilty) are part of the problem. This is what we can work on.
This is what I got from Will Campbell who told a wealthy church they should leave the doors open at night so "winos" can sleep there.
Margaret Renkle, it’s a pathetic commentary that the organizations listed in your article are even still necessary in the 21rst century in the south. I know how bad this country was in the 1960’s, especially in the south. I also know how many innocent non whites this government has killed in this country and around the world since WWII. Only if you are an American white male or female in a commercially viable metropolitan center are you delusional enough to think life is better in our time.
7
While politics is important, change doesn't only happen through politics and political activism. How we act and live in our community, how we treat others, what we do to care for others can have a huge impact.
It can be as simple as helping an elderly neighbor with her chores, tutoring and mentoring disadvantaged children, volunteering at a drug rehab center or homeless shelter, working with a church/synagogue/mosque or other charitable organization to help revitalize neighborhoods and communities.
There's a lot of work to be done in our country and that work goes well beyond just the South. It's easy to point fingers and criticize other regions and groups. Much harder to look around us, roll up our sleeves and change our communities for the better.
4
Very nice piece. One thing to mention though - something that highlights some of the thoughts of people in the Northeast and West Coast - is purely economic. Simply look at the money flow of federal tax dollars from blue to red states. It is one of the engines of divisiveness. Southern states can drive themselves into a cultural and economic corner, fine with me. But I don't want to pay for it.
18
85% of the white voters in Alabama cast their ballots for the one and only Roy Moore. That is the relevant data. That is the true South. Give me a break. The South has some decent people, but not all that many.
48
Last time I checked, Ohio was north of the Mason-Dixon line.
5
True. But I maintain Ohio is a right leaning moderate state that is and does send Democrats to office. Ohio sent Obama to the White House recently. I’ll take Ohio race relations over Louisiana and it’s church burnings. So no, Ohio is that “Fire and Brimstone” South.
Ohio isn’t that Mississippi, Confederate statue venerating, Gone With The Wind, Roy Moore electing conservatism.
2
@Practical Thoughts None of that matters if you live in Ohio and need an abortion.
2
This country was built on expropriation, murder and slavery. One group thrived on the stolen labor of another or harvested the stolen land of others. Old white guys are threatened by those facts and suppress their teaching along with the teaching of science. So we have the Charter Movement and the Voucher Movement. Teach the white boys the myths of Manifest Destiny and Inalienable Rights while skipping over what actually happened, the First Law of Thermodynamics, Evolution and climate change.
Murder and genocide are treated as cultural peccadilloes by the dominant culture of the South and interior states. Southern hospitality is predicated on guests not raising disagreeable topics. Now we add the crime of climatecide. Maps showed that the SE US had escaped the brunt of modern temperature increases. So it was not 'denial' exactly. But nature bats last and it may be that a relocation of tornado alley will teach lessons about vorticity, instability and Rossby waves to a population that thinks that God will protect them from the worst impacts of climate change and their GHG emissions. Are they taking notes?
It would be fun to watch white privilege with its science denial destroy western civilization except that there is no planet B. It is not simply another cruel religious war. "Y'all come back soon. You don't mind if I destroy your grandchildren's climate do you?" "Welcome to Golden where the West Lives - and where Climate has Always Changed and Will Always Change."
9
I can feel the anguish of the writer and know inherently that there are good people (Southern whites and blacks, men and women) who are doing what they can to set things right south of the Mason-Dixon line.
I think that the real tragedy is that so many of us who are not from the South and (may have had only a few interactions down there (in my case, visits to New Orleans, Memphis and Atlanta)) have written it off. It's not even in our consciousness as part of the nation. Whatever bad things happens down there is simply taken as part of being in the South.
Our resentments are that your elected officials at the federal level affect our progress and your societal backwardness costs those of us in the North, Midwest, West and Pacific a lot of money. If your people were more grateful, then we'd be OK to bail out your environmental, fiscal and health crises but the opposite always seems true.
All this sounds, and apologetically are, chauvinistic and belittling. I'm sorry that this is the case, but the less I hear about the South the better I think of the state of affairs of this country.
11
There is no cure for willful ignorance. And one of the most basic treatments for disease is isolation.
Seriously.
25
I have a good friend who grew up in Kansas and she tells stories of the racism there (against Native Americans and African Americans) that make my head spin. I seem to recall that a white Kansan was making plans to bomb an area settled by refugees. So tell me again who you want to isolate?
2
I too am a cultural infidel, a progressive in the Panhandle of Florida, where apparently it is ok to say we should shoot asylum seekers at the border. I attend gatherings where people say absolutely insulting things to me, with no qualms, and no one else is even slightly troubled by broad offensive remarks. It bothers me not in the least, if you get offended by ignorance around here, well bless your heart, you would never be able to enjoy a single day.
The ignorance they display comes from having chosen poorly for news feeds, it is not all their fault. When you get 3 hours of people telling you the same thing, you will believe it, especially when all your friends watch and parrot the same sputum.
But then again, when was the last time a Democrat came down here and fought for their confidence and vote.
4
@steve - Choosing faux news is their fault. They are willfully ignorant and there is no excuse for this.
12
Every Democratic candidate for President comes to Fl. Over and over again. My congressman, former Governor of Fl, used to be a Republican. I’m not sure what goes on in the “panhandle “ but I am not subject to insults by my neighbors or co workers
1
Panhandle is different, though, than the rest of the state. Southern Alabama, the Redneck Riviera. Florida has the rare distinction of getting more Southern the further you go north.
I grew up in NY and California, lived in Germany for a decade, and then moved to Florida to be near my parents, who retired there. Seven years was enough for me to see that things were getting worse, not better. Out of the frying pan, into the fire, though - we wound up in Austin, which is one of those liberal oases in the desert of the red south. My Texas-born friends insist that Texans aren't really that bad - forty years ago Barbara Bush led Republican women to support Planned Parenthood. And don't forget Molly Ivans (who died how many years ago...?) They keep reassuring me that Texas is just going through a bad patch, and that voters will come to their senses. But after a brief period of improvement - mostly instigated by federal laws - the South is reasserting its ugly self. Gerrymandering, Big Money, and mega-churches keep the liberal cities under the control of right-wing religious fascists (see Dan Patrick), who do everything they can to maintain their political power and to prevent anyone else from getting it. Writing, calling, protesting - none of it has any impact. If anything, the situation has gotten worse in the past six years that I've been here. The anti-abortion laws, the lack of healthcare, the underfunded schools, the blending of religion and state ... it's all worse. The only thing that will pry those weasels out of the seat of power is to pass federal laws that supersede state laws - and have the federal government enforce them.
21
Not that any of this is good for anyone, but I do wonder about your own stereotypes: http://worldpopulationreview.com/states/most-racist-states/ . Their map does not follow from your assertions.
1
Yes and there were good Germans. Of course there are plenty of fine people in the south, but racism, bigotry and anti-intellectuallism are durable realities. It's great that you're fighting back but doesn't it give you real pause that you have to? A lot of people have grievances with the south, but I don't see them meeting up in the woods plotting retribution. The animus directed at a general us where us is not them is remarkable.
11
I too have a negative vision of the South, which I try to dispel by referring to Southerner expats who are friends, neighbors and part of my community. Racists exist everywhere, even in super-blue Massachusetts. And as much as the South strains to keep the mantle of racism and backwardness, this reeks of desperation, playing to a dying base that *knows* the tides are turning. And frankly I'm tired of it, and am tired of paying negative attention to our Southern brothers and sisters. They like to remind us that "The South will rise again!". Well, please do. We need all the help we can get to throw the tyranny of a minority out, and forever.
4
If you want to help the "South" keep the Southern Baptist Church out of politics. Actually all Churches out of politics. For what they want is nothing different From Iran. A country controlled by the Christian bible and their appointed savior trump.
17
"We" deserve what "we" get, but "others" and "those people" don't. This is a truism everywhere.
Shared educational experiences, public service, and integrated work forces help.
Disparagement of the "public spaces" that we all enjoy and holing up in gated communities and private country clubs are where the "otherisms" are most rampantly expressed.
You can find racists, misogynists, and bigots anywhere. Finding common ground is a first step. Every generation has a lot of work ahead before we can make MLK's Dream come true.
3
There are definitely good people and bad people all over,you go to upstate NY and you will meet a lot of Trump nation there, whose attitudes towards minorities or LGBT people is very similar to backwoods Alabama, same for the farm areas of NJ down in South Jersey and Warren and Hunterdon counties. The difference is that because of NYC, in both NY and NJ a lot of the power resides with the more populated areas, that tend to be more educated and a lot more live and let live. Places like Atlanta and the research Triangle and Charlotte and Miami and Memphis and Nashville and Austin are like the suburban areas of NYC and NJ, but they are an oasis in the middle of a lot of the hard right, mean attitudes we associate with the South. Yes, Southern Hospitality exists, but it generally in my experience extends only to people like themselves, and while there are people fighting the good fight in the south, the problem is they are blocked by a large block of people who look only back, and refuse to accept reality, that the world has changed, then they will wonder why tech companies and the like don't bring jobs to where they live. And no, NY and NJ are not necessarily non racist, there are a lot of problems here, talk affordable housing and they immediately point to Newark's housing projects, talk integration and they are like "if you can afford to live here, fine", while making it impossible for a lot of people to live there, through restrictive zoning
4
I find it a bit amazing that the event the author gives the most space to is a performance at a university that did not de-segregate until the mid-60s, and, moreover that the performance appears to be by an all-white group of middle-class women. So, the author's dismissal of the rampant racism that continues to fester in the South rings pretty false to me. As La Rochefoucauld observed, "We all have the strength to bear the suffering of others".
10
Thanks for the reminder for a Northerner not to paint all Southerners with the same brush. It is hard not to do that this week when there is so much horrific news coming from down south.
1
the south lost the civil war after committing treason so they could keep buying and selling people and they have never gotten over it. their religion is a religion of hate. their politicians buy and sell their preachers. it is a deeply sick region.
25
Read "The 11 Nations of North America" and you will understand why the Deep South is a nation unlike any other, and, more importantly, why their founding culture (slave holders from Banana Republics) still determines how the people of the Deep South view the world. And the other nations of North America.
When the basic premise of your culture is that owning other humans and working them to death is just fine and dandy, you can understand why the Deep South is still the massively screwed up place it is today. And that it will never, ever change.
9
Social change organizations aside, the opening of this opinion piece reads like the litany of the damned.
4
Having grown up in the north, I have lived in several small cities in the deep south for over twenty years. While some things have changed, much of the hospitality is indeed a very thin veneer. I have had neighbors leave dinner at my home because I stated liberal beliefs out loud. The difference between a Yankee and a Damn Yankee is that the Damn Yankee lives in the south. The ideologies that engendered the Civil War are as thick as the humid atmosphere. Discrimination--racial, religious, xenophobic and political--is omnipresent. Although I have chosen to live here in the south, I often wonder if Abe Lincoln was mistaken: maybe he should have let the south secede and be done with it.
21
It's seductively easy to use stereotypes about any group: Southerners, New Englanders, Texans and so on. All of us have a desire for ease in thinking. The problem is, too broad a brush paints over vital details. Vital people.
I worry for my neighbors in the South. I fret. I'm anxious. The citizens are getting a very raw deal from their government.
For me, respect is for the respectable--but who is respectable might be different. I respect the activists trying their hardest to preserve the dignity of the least among us. I respect those who put their lives on the line for a more respectful, more peaceable society, one where women are still fully human instead of subordinate servants as soon as they are pregnant.
I look, and I fret, and I worry. And sometimes I hope.
7
Ms. Renkl,
I consider my home state of Ohio to be "The Alabama of the North." Maybe less violence, but still the same mindset. When I look at Ohio today, I sometimes think the North won the battle, but lost the war.
9
I have a love and hate relationship with the south. I know my ancestors did. I recently considered relocating to Alabama with a job transfer. The fact that my child would grow up and attend school in Alabama really bothered me. When I go (for work) I meet many nice people and the food is good. I hope the south can evolve, keep the things that makes it great, and get rid of some of the mess. Really, anywhere, you can not just paint everyone with the same brush. Nevertheless, there is a certain overall "culture" of what is accepted. It is crazy how "segregated" the North and much of the country is. Nowhere is perfect. As a minority you really just have to choose your poison.
2
Read H. L. Mencken's famous article on The South - it is a valid now as it was almost 100 years ago.
And THAT'S appalling.
8
@Bob
It is called "The Sahara of the Bozart". Another great read is The Mind of the South by W J Cash.
"It’s not that I don’t understand the anger. The fury of a blue-state outsider can’t possibly touch the fury of someone like me — someone who lives in one of these states, someone who is actually subject to these dangerous laws." Oh is that right? The whole purpose of those laws being passed was to get them to the SCOTUS to overturn Roe. When I am forced to then accept your states version of national law youll forgive me for not believing that youre more filled with fury than I am.
7
I spent my childhood in the south, where I was subjected to a lifetime of racist malevolence.
I am imprinted with a deep hatred for the region.
People leaving Syria for Germany; Rohingya fleeing Myanmar;
The list is long. I am fully sympathetic.
9
Your heritage of white supremacy, stars and bars, Jim Crow, rebel statues, bad schools, and contracted prison labor scare this person with a good tan and a Spanish name.
9
What a beautiful column!
2
How similar the author's experience to that of all Americans ashamed by the present administration! I sincerely hope the rest of the world realizes we aren't all bad.
4
As US deals with a flood of oppressed people from other nations seeking asylum here, this article raised a question for me.
When is enough, enough? When do we stop making excuses and making pollyanna forecasts for US as we become a more oppressive society almost daily? Much of the South is really messed up, and the mess seems to be not abating , but increasing or spreading to other parts of our country.
Will the tide turn? Will the residents of US become a flood of oppressed people seeking asylum in other countries? This used to sound like a silly idea, but not so silly any more.
8
One of the greatest hypocrisies EVER! "I am Pro-Life!"
6
I truly believe the South should become it's own country. The blue states are civilized. The red states are marginally civilized and now that they've all shown their true selves in regards to abortion, maybe not so marginally but truly uncivilized.
Oh, and no foreign aid from the blue states of America. Not a penny.
15
@sophia. says the woman from the state that elected LaPage twice.
3
Y'all need to fight hard and speak louder because I'm not hearing anything about your so called crusades to wipe out the injustices. Vote people! Vote!
4
@Michael T - Agreed. It would be nice if the NYT et al would publish some articles about the social justice groups she spoke of rather than endless articles about Trump supporters.
4
But how do you explain that in 1860, Southerners would not accept the idea of equal rights for Afro-Americans, and that in 2019 they vociferously reject equal rights for pregnant women?
The 1860 solution was that the South wanted a constitutional amendment to protect the "rights" of slaveowners, which was never going to happen. The 2020 solution appears to be that the South wants a constitutional change to take away the rights of female persons in order to transfer them to non-persons.
It appears to be the same basic lack of respect for fundamental human freedoms, which would not exist had the South won the war. What, other than lack of basic human respect, explains church bombings?
Does it matter at all that Southerns are ingratiating, and mannerly and warm when not behaving badly and dangerously?
7
Thank you for this. I am weary of the constant onslaught of cultural racism toward the South. I was born and raised here, left and came home. I've lived all over the country. Plenty of conservative and racist attitudes from Cleveland to New York, to Los Angeles -- all places I have lived.
Just none of the charm.
I'm glad to be home and like everyone else in my neighborhood..fighting the good fight.
2
@Jay Strickler - I'm glad you're fighting. Several of my Southern friends have had enough of racism and ignorance and are leaving.
2
Ms. Renki's thesis - that there are good people everywhere - is a non-sequitur. Obviously there are, but that's true everywhere. Just as tacit acceptance of racism leads to normalization of racism, the fact that right-minded southerners don't speak out more publicly and forcefully against the poison of southern conservatism, helps to perpetuate a broken culture. I grew up in the south, and it's not the conservative evangelicals that I grew up with who leave me seething, it's the others who should know better, but don't want to "make waves."
466
@Eric
Southern hospitality is a real thing, but so is its corollary: Politeness.
People (everywhere) generally want to get along and not upset others. Politeness takes that to a higher level, leaving unchallenged those things that most require discussion and dissension. Difficult and important conversations can't be repressed or suppressed indefinitely and the people will eventually protest and revolt...and then there is blood. It is the history of the South and, I fear, will also be its future.
9
@Eric This was an entire article about Southerners who speak out publicly and forcefully against the poison of southern conservatism... ?!
7
@Eric
There is more racism is the North than in the slave states of the South.
There are good people everywhere and I don't doubt anything written in your op ed. However, what do you expect people who don't live in the South to think when these acts, and particularly the acts of your legislatures, take place? Do you think it makes us more anxious to come visit the South? To spend money by being tourists? I grew up in Chicago but boycotted going to Wisconsin following the actions of the legislature and the voters in 2016. How else do we show that we simply don't agree with what is happening in a region? What support to you seek from those of us who live in places with vastly different views of life and laws? Please let us know what you think we should be doing.
5
Now you know how we folks in North Idaho feel, still tainted with the stink of the Aryan Nations. But with the help of the SPLC, we sold the compound and burned the buildings to the ground, and established our Human Rights Center in downtown Coeur d'Alene. The difference is that the hatred they expressed did not originate here.
5
It's getting a little tiresome after 230 years to be lectured by the good persons of the south on how wrong the rest of us are when the rest of us mention the defining component of southern culture.
15
I want to believe you Margaret, but god it's hard. The people in the state houses and the fraternity houses and just the plain old houses (who want to lynch their neighbor? Really? In 2019? That's crazy) don't come from blue states and they're not coastal elites. They come from the states right there below the Mason Dixon line. And frankly, they've been living and dying the same narrative since Reconstruction. When is it going to change Margaret? When is it going to change?
9
I understand. My father and mother were born in Alabama, but since my father was in the USAF, I was whisked away to Arizona; to Spokane, Washington; to Riverside, California; to Nagoya, Japan; to Livermore, California; to Cheyenne, Wyoming. After Dad retired, we moved to Alabama, when I was 12 (1958) but I had known many people of many races and religions. Some of the local boys tried to readjust my thinking by beating me up, but I had learned that when toughness called, respond. I fought them for two weeks until they gave up. But a bigoted math teacher, Mr. Allen, ridiculed me in class. I developed a nervous stomach. Mother took me to see the only doctor in town, Dr. Brown. He questioned me about my classes and zeroed in on math, my first class after home room. He said, "Is Mr. Allen your math teacher?" "Yes, and he hates me because I don't hate black people." Dr. Brown excused himself, but he let a door fall open to his black waiting room, so I could see all the black people waiting to see him. Then he returned, closed the door, and said, "Here is some medicine that will settle your stomach. When you are in Mr. Allen's class, just do the work and don't react to anything he says. Remember, he's the one with the problem, not you." I am grateful to Dr. Brown who showed me that not all Southerners were filled with hate toward black people. My mother and father, of course, had been examples of that, but I had never been confronted by bigotry before I was 12.
8
I am always disappointed at the arrogance and tunnel vision displayed by writers in the Times and liberal writers in general. If someone has a different view of the world than them you are called names:
"false promises and...lies peddled by snake-oil salesmen masquerading as leaders"
"The news emanating from the American South this year has been one long litany of assaults against human decency. "
"things can be “better” and still be shamefully, irredeemably bad." (irredeemable?!)
How about, MAKING AN ARGUMENT, without the name calling.
2
@Raz - I'm sorry but when people treat others like second class citizens based on their gender, skin color etc. they are racists, bigots, misogynist etc. That's a fact and there is no way around it and no nice way to put it.
3
In 2010, when the World Series was between the Texas Rangers and the San Francisco Giants, the joke was the two governors bet on the game. Rick Perry, Texas, bet that if the Rangers won Texas could secede from the Union; while Arnold, California, bet that if the Giants won Texas had to secede.
I have not spent a lot of time in the South but I have noticed while driving through the rural parts (Midwest too) that almost everything needs a coat of paint and some repairs. It feels like everyone gave up.
Voters from these areas have been voting against their own best interests, and for politicians who tell them abortion is the only real issue, for a long time. What is less apparent is that these people have also been voting against my best interests, and my kid's best interests, and your best interests as well.
Until red state voters stop electing these plantation throw backs, or when red state politicians stop taking tax revenue from blue states, I will spend only the amount of money in a red state that it will take to get out of that state.
6
"As if every person in the entire state can be painted with the same brush."
I'm tired of this type of defense of white people. Really. If white southerners don't want to be labeled by others, then do something to change it!
This column by Ms. Renkl is nothing more than another verse added to the horrendous song, Sweet Home Alabama. Going deeper into the analogy, Ms. Renkl, a lot southerners, yourself included, could learn a lot from the Allman Brothers Band, who not only detested Lynyrd Skynyrd and that song (see the late Butch Trucks' writings on that band - it's an easy Google search), but began singing Southern Man in their concerts over the last years of their performing careers. They walked the talk.
4
"I know that Southern hospitality is a real thing, and that it isn’t race-contingent." What a strange comment. Do black people know this?
Like a lot of liberals, I am very challenged by the idea of giving my heart to the deep red places. They voted for their predicament for decades; voting to gut social services, voting to enslave women, voting "to keep the government out of their lives." Well, guess what? They got what they wanted. And now somehow it's the "elites" fault?
I can empathize with the rage the author feels at being reduced to hillbilly, flyover status. I can empathize, because for the past twenty-five years, there has been an entire industry dedicated to stoking resentment of coastal liberals -- you know, the ones who want you to have health care and just wages. It is profoundly disingenuous to suggest this is a one-way street.
I have no idea if there is hope of the South joining the present, let alone the future. They seem to vote to set the clock back at every turn. But I suppose if there is hope for the region overcoming its earned reputation, it lies with people like the author.
6
What makes anyone think things are really much better up North?
@John Harrington I haven't yet seen a Northern state trying to outlaw abortion.
8
I was born in Louisiana and came of age there during the corrupt Edwards years. I was so very glad to leave the state forever almost 20 years ago. I will never live anywhere in the south again; thank goodness my family also left the state. I don't "find myself bristling as stereotypes of redneck Southerners fly around the internet" because even those who are not overtly in that group are still voting to keep in office the uneducated, corrupt, and prejudiced politicians that maintain banana republic status for the state.
4
The LAST time I was in Alabama. A gas station attendant said there was no need for MY kind there. I still don’t know what he was talking about but I agreed.
18
@John - Your comment made my day. Thank you and best wishes.
3
It would be good for any Alabama or deep South bashers to go to a Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit concert. There is room in the South for all sorts of people. Some of you Yankees might just “deplorable” us into another 4 years of Trump with your predjudice. Who made you all the ultimate arbiters of right and wrong?
1
@Dr. Zen
Yankee President Kennedy's dignified 11 June 1963 Civil Rights Speech just one example.
7
To the author of this article:
If so many wonderful people live in the south, which i"m sure they do, why are these racist, misogynist things still happening there?
As a teacher here in Arizona, we picketed, and struck for better working conditions and higher pay and we have achieved that.
Maybe you all need to be more vocal or start a strike or boycott?
5
Unfortunately, what we see today is a reflection of the leadership style of the trump administration. A government by lies, hate, pettiness, and anger.
4
"... never been a worse time to be a sentient human being below the Mason-Dixon line ...."
Maryland, DC, and Virginia are below the Mason-Dixon Line. Maryland was Hillary's 3rd best state, after Hawaii and California -- bluer than any state north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
DC is a progressive heaven. Virginia is bluish-purple and getting bluer all the time.
These are three of the best places in the country to be a sentient human being today. Over-generalizations don't work.
2
@JustInsideBeltway
Maryland and NOVA are Northern places now- well Montgomery County Maryland is anyway. maybe on up to Frederick. Maybe.
In 1861 Northern troops had to fight their way across Baltimore to get to the Southbound train station.
1
@Lefthalfbach Yes, but Maryland stayed in the Union and her sons fought for it. There were some slave holders in the southern counties but they were not a factor. You need to update your knowledge of Maryland geography and politics. the Old Line State is one of the bluest in the country, much more so than many "north" of the Mason-Dixon line - a term that has far outlived its usefulness.
1
Maryland has a Republican governor.
1
Your opinion is valued be sure. However, working and living in the deep south for over 7 years, as well as in the country of South Africa for over a year, I found that the bigotry, racism and intolerance is far greater and much more hurtful in our deep south than it is or was in South Africa. Talking to one South Afrikaner his reasoning was simple. He claimed that since whites were the "minority" in his country, that they had to keep "the blacks under control". Not so in our deep south. South Africa wasn't or isn't as covert and hate filled as those of the deep south. If it wasn't for the south's embrace of slavery, it may have been good if the secession did occur. The Mason/Dixon line is right where the border wall should be built.
3
Why not relocate to the Northeast? Everyone would be happier I'm sure.
No doubt that the South has its share of decent citizens. However, what is troubling is that the Federally funded bridge connecting Savannah with South Carolina is named after Eugene Talmadge, surely one of the most racist and vicious politicians in Southern history. Why is it so difficult for that stain to be removed in 2019 and renamed after someone more worthy of honor? Say, like Frederick Douglass?
6
Glad to read you rightfully point out once again that the term "redneck" is an ugly and hurtful term.
Yes, the South has changed, mostly for the better.
So many who write about Alabama's (and Missouri's) terrible abortion bills just don't GET that for most its about religion. For Evangelicals and traditional Catholics, an abortion is the same as killing as real, live newborn baby. (I don't believe this, just reporting it).
1
In the north they’re too busy creating the 21st century versions of school segregation and redlining. It’s really easy to list off why a place is bad, the south is ridiculed because people in LA and NYC thinks Alabama is the Dukes of Hazard.
2
@Joseph Micallef - I've never seen the Dukes of Hazard but I've read quite a bit about the laws being passed in Alabama recently.
4
Just pointing out that Maryland and DC are south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Rebel flags in rural, upstate NY? That and all that goes with them. Nothing worse than a northern racist who never had a personal conversation with a black person.
5
"They explain what it feels like to be female and Southern and, most often, struggling in one way or another.
...
But the struggle is also what makes us tell funny stories and write gorgeous songs ..."
I found this section strange/confusing, who is struggling here? White women artists on stage in Nashville? Not Black people in remote areas?
And that part of the "struggle makes us mean, stingy ..." makes no sense. It's almost as if the writer is presenting people with massive privilege - white middle class etc - as victims, with no agency. It's amazing really how blind the author is to race issues when it comes down to it.
(White) people don't latch onto "false promises (and) fall for lies" in places like this. They CHOOSE to elect these politicians for a range of reasons; they're not duped into it because they're "struggling" (sic).
And that thing about hospitality/nice people in racist places drives me batty; it's not mutually exclusive, I know this as an Australian where white people constantly say how friendly and welcoming while committing all manner of atrocities via duly elected governments.
The NYT should have commissioned a Black woman to have written this, preferably from a non-urban center.
7
I am sorry to disagree. I just returned from south of the Mason Dixon line and although there are people who are upstanding Christian Southerners with good sense of ethics and justice, there are louder minorities. I witnessed Jew baiting and a pervasive sense of we want to stick it to them - them meaning the "other." Whites care about their jobs and status, blacks care about the same thing but it becomes a conflict fueled by bigotry and false bias.
I think the boomer generation is partly to blame for indifference and falsely thinking everything was alright when more work and understanding needed to be done al along.
3
I will soon be on a two-day road trip from Clemson, S.C. to Dallas to help my son move. We will drive through Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana on Interstate 20 and will eventually have to stop for gas, food and lodging. I have worked to determine how to support Democrat business owners in these states by tapping into local party websites — I do want to support those of us fighting the good fight in the South. I also discovered https://progressiveshopper.com but would love to know any other recommendations.
2
My therapist recommended a strategy to help me out. Yes, after Trump, I need a therapist lest I go mad. (It's preventative therapy as no amount of thoughts, prayers, or taking action (!) volunteering or running for office or marching against caging children or quitting and deleting Facebook was helping me feel any better. I take that last part back. Quitting Facebook made me feel MUCH better. It's a sewer and why people stay there is beyond me and that makes me sad and need more therapy.) First, I learned what I'm feeling is normal and common. Second, there just simply isn't that much I can do about it. Recognize it and embrace it. Third, just for a moment, close my eyes and accept, again, just for a moment, that things are exactly as they are. It's simple therapy. You know what else made me feel better? Working with kids to help them learn about the forest, what lives there, what the soil chemistry is like and why it is important, and to plant trees. Each kid planted a tree and then placed a stake with her/his name on it, and is responsible for that tree. That made me feel best of all. Racism in the south? I went to school in Florida at the progressive U of F, and was mugged and beaten for working in 4H club affirmative action programs back in the 70s. I left the south and never returned, not even for my high school reunions. Never. And I won't even consider a vote for ANYONE who helped bring us to this awful place. Biden, looking right at you.
2
Two comments: I'm a native Nashvillian. I think the death penalty is wrong, but the "deeply repentant Christian convert" just executed murdered his wife by stuffing a 30 gallon garbage bag down her throat. Think about her death throes while contemplating the carefully monitored death he got while singing hymns 34 years later. Second, if it's so abhorrent to you here then please stay home. Most of those moving here are from New York and Chicago.
Berkeley CA, can be as racist as the south. The white liberals here, however, practice discrimination with erudition, eloquence, and economic power. I watch black kids squeezed out of AP classes and Latinos gentrified out of their neighborhoods, while the scone and latte crowd ponder the meaning of it all at swank coffee shops wearing Barbera Lee buttons. Frankly, I wish they wore hoods and just came out with it. In a way, you are lucky to be fighting racism in the south. It is easier to see and you don't have to worry about being lambasted for eating fried food while you are at it!
2
To paraphrase Porfirio Diaz-pity the poor South, so close to God and so far from reality.
3
I'll just be feeling sorry for all of the good people 'down South' until the "true South" is a rights-conscious, race-and-rights respecting region.
Meantime, I'll be just plain sorry and sad when, for example, the 'god-fearing' Bible thumpers of Alabama have their prayers answered 'the second time around' -- giving Roy Moore the November 2020 votes he needs to add his peculiar 'brand' of god's love and infection to the ever-growing list of infections -- from the North, South, East & West -- 'plaguing' the U.S. Senate.
3
Excellent, needed commentary.
Balanced, reasoned, fact-based - an insightful sampling of reality.
Where do you get off portraying reality in such clear prose?
Don't you know there are middling-Americans on both sides that will disagree?
Makes the NYT worth reading.
This is sentimental slop. Actual human beings are altered and damaged by the voting population of these states. I am as indifferent to how the "progressives" among them feel about it, as your right-wing evangelical, racist, sexist voters are to the suffering they impose on their fellow citizens.
5
You mean being a liberal in the south today isn't as bad as being a slave in the 1700's or a black person during Jim Crowe? You don't say!
This, folks, is the absolute unyielding and boundless arrogance of the caring, loving modern liberal on display for all to see. What an absolutely amazing thing.
WOW.
3
The scenario plays out in every portion of our country and world. It plays out in history of man. Those in power are too often reluctant to give up power or lack appreciation for the harm they often cause. These ingrained characteristics now face off with a society that has more information, is less patient and less willing to suffer from injustices. At this time we are in great need of compassionate and intelligent leadership at all levels of government and society. Unfortunately, as the bar has been raised in terms of need skill sets those in the position of power show substantial regression in terms of ability.
Thank you for sharing that information and your views, Ms. Renkl. It's not a surprise to me, objectively, that so many social justice groups are active in the South, it's just not the first thing I think of when someone says Alabama. I have been guilty of tarring the entire South with the same brush. Not to the point of tweeting about it, because I don't tweet, but definitely writing it off in my mind. I will be more careful in the future.
I really wish you and your fellow travelers success. I belong to an organization called The Bitter Southerner that very much aligns with the efforts you outline in your article. Given, however, that in statewide elections last year, Marsha Blackburn was elected in Tennessee, Cindy Hyde-Smith was elected in Mississippi and Brian Kemp was elected in Georgia shows that there's a long row yet to hoe.
3
It's a struggle indeed, and on the political level close to a hopeless struggle for some years to come. The sovereign powers held by Republican state legislatures in the entire South, augmented by Republican governors in TX, OK, MO, AR, MS, KY, TN, AL, GA, SC, and FL, means that practically speaking all we can do is wait for enough older white Republicans to die, and for the Hispanic population in Southern states to grow enough, to make the Democratic Party competitive. And it's crystal clear that all the current anti-Hispanic, anti-refugee, and anti-immigrant talk by Republicans has everything to do with this latter prospect.
4
That the South needs so many organizations fighting for civil rights tells us something about the South. I was hopeful a few years ago that the South was making real progress.
Now I am not sure it has made any real progress. With Trump the old fears, hates and prejudices have come bubbling to the surface. It would seem that in the South the past is never dead.
8
Well, I never imagined any one aspect of the South meant the whole South unanimously. I just about never think that's true of anything, and it's really pretty astonishing when anybody demonstrates the contrary belief.
1
@Bob Acker I have never understood how "Well, not ALL [fill in the blank] are like that!" somehow passes as a defense. To me it is a weak and shameful defense. No, not ALL southerns are bigoted racists, but enough are so that the south is generally, and with justification, characterized as still a racist place. The fact that there are some good people there who do not fall into category does not negate the fact that a very many do.
5
I'm seeing a lot of "holier than thou" remarks here. All I can say is that there's not much work involved in being a progressive on the west coast or in the northeast. You're preaching to the choir in those places. The challenge is in being a progressive where you're in the minority. Don't hate us here. We're trying and it's not easy.
8
Thank you Margaret Renkl. We need much more reporting on this from our newspapers and news stations.
We are all in this together.
1
Last week a medical student friend was observing an operating room in Mt. Brook, AL. During the course of the surgery the doctor admitted that he and his wife are anti-vaccine, think all Chinese should stick to manicures and Mexicans to doing lawns. He applauded the state for passing such a strident law on abortion practices. My husband and I have owned a second home in Alabama for more than a decade, which after this recent turn of events, we will be putting on the market. The companies like Mercedes Benz who have huge operations in Alabama need to re-think why they are there. The poor, working class voted for this administration, too.No better way to stand up than with threatening their livelihood.
17
Keep fighting the good fight, Ms. Renkl.
It's folks like you that give us all hope that meaningful change will come one day.
2
Of course their are individuals and groups working for positive change in the south. And of course there is ignorance and racism in blue states. However in blue states we don’t elect a state senate that is overwhelmingly white, male and radically right wing. The results in both cases speak for themselves. If you live in Alabama and are fighting the good fight, you are losing. So what does that say about the political inclinations of the majority in your state?
7
Having read the article and a number of the comments, it is obvious that a very large elephant is being ignored. The south, and their predominant attitudes, are becoming irrelevant. The sad reality is that they are simply going to be ignored. Culturally, economically, and socially. The ability to attract talent remains the most important driver for success. If the goal of red state America is to make their future miserable. Why would the rest of us want to spend our futures supporting that failure.
5
Regressive, misogynistic and racist policies aren’t confined to the South. More accurately, we seem to have a growing urban/rural divide in many states, including Ohio. Here, a three-judge US District Court panel has recently determined that the Republican-controlled statehouse unconstitutionally gerrymandered our local congressional districts. Districts One and Two split the City of Cincinnati (Hamilton County) so that we are effectively disenfranchised. Our votes are diluted with scientific precision by right wing, rural voters in neighboring counties. In the last congressional election, an extraordinarily qualified candidate for District One , Aftab Pureval, lost to Steve Chabot, the long-time incumbent who has done next to nothing over the years. Chabot did lose to a Democrat in 2008. The District was then redrawn to assure Chabot regained the seat and he did. This past election, despite winning Hamilton County handily and by a greater margin than the last successful Democrat, Pureval could not win. We are captives of rural, regressive voters, which is especially galling given that Cincinnati is the economic engine of the area.
3
Yes, we are fighting back. Yes we can and yes we are.
As a child of eight my family spent one year in Montgomery, Alabama ( 1957) when my father was in flight school for the U.S. Air Force. During our year there, one of the wives of the pilots organized a cocktail party and invited all the pilots of her husband’s team, one of whom was black. She promptly began receiving death threats against her family. My mother told me she almost cried with relief when we moved to Canada. I have kept that childhood memory with me over the years and I have heard or read relatively little about Alabama to persuade me that I would ever want to set foot there again.
5
Red v. Blue or North v. South is to we who were born in the Blue but live in the Red a ruse designed as often to soothe the Blue, as to stain the Red.
Certainly, in overt behaviour, the Red can be seen as more racist, intellectually ossified and generally less intolerant than the Blue but in matters of spirit and aesthetics, I see the Reds as far closer in their true nature than Blue theoreticians would have us believe.
This has become a trap of us vs. them and it assuages the Blue that through addition by subtraction they are superior and in need of no more of the work that evolved persons must do daily.
To we born Blue and living in the Red, we can (and do) engage these overt beliefs daily but we also see the covert beliefs of Blue hypocrites as the more insidious enemy. The Blue's denial and hypocrisy wages guerrilla warfare upon enlightenment and tolerance; hidden in plain sight by self-satisfied sanctimony.
2
Thank you, yet again, Margaret, for speaking our painful Tennessee truths. Yes, we fight on!
2
You had me with you, until I saw the photo of four white women artists described as "capturing the region and its people" with a "feminist-literary country music" show.
And again, people wonder why there is such a thing as "white feminism" and "black feminism."
With the visual that you provided to illustrate this article, you chose four white women to represent how it feels to be Southern?
"Shame" is an apt word to include for the title of your piece.
5
While overall I agree with the sentiment of this article, I think it's doing a disservice to the reader. By portraying the South as the "problem area" of the United States, it minimizes the racist and sexist problems flaring up around the entire country, not just in the South. Abortion bans aren't just below the Mason Dixon line, and neither are racist cops. This systematic issue is certainly exacerbated by the South's history, but it's a nation-wide issue, not solely a Southern one.
4
Why is it that the wealthiest areas of the country are also the most progressive? Why is it the poorest areas of the country are the most backward looking?
The answers lie in the questions.
2
The next time a governor or legislator from the Jim Crow south, declares a desire, or demands, to leave the Union, let them go!
Ever since the days of the Reconstruction following the Civil War, the southern states have maintained their fond recollections of free labor through slavery. We have plenty of photographic evidence documenting the lynchings of black men and women as a social gathering well-attended by families with their smiling children gazing at the bodies hanging from tree branches.
White-on-black violence in the south continues with massacres in black churches and church burnings. You can't make this stuff up, or forget it.
The Jim Crow south has changed little, if at all. The Charlottesville riot involving a parade of tiki-torch carrying anti-Semitic, white supremacists speaks volumes about a region of American needing serious federal intervention, or expulsion.
5
The author said herself that what was going on in the south is irredeemable. I'm convinced of such. I've heard it over and over again since I was small that ignorance and racism in the south was something that would dissipate with each new generation. That's not what is happening. Bigotry is apparently genetic. Intellectually we all know that Alabama and other southern states are not exclusively inhabited by bigots and hateful individuals. But we live in a representative democracy and when the elected representatives of these states pass obscene and dark-ages-worthy legislation they are doing so on behalf of all of the citizenry. So, apologies, but I have no issues with reasonable people or internet hothead shaming an entire state.
3
I'm a child of the South and have lived here almost all my life. I'm weary of defending it, so I appreciate the author's efforts here. It's a hard slog.
As for why we are the way we are, I can only speak for my state, which is uniquely challenged. Alabama can't change because our state Constitution -- which I believe to be the longest constitution in the world -- removes from local authorities (particularly the big cities where the seeds of change are often found) the ability to legislate. We have no "home rule," which means every decision is made at the state level. If some tiny rural county in some nether region of the state wants to build a new fire station, the entire state votes on the bond issue to fund it. If Birmingham wants to raise the minimum wage, the entire state votes on it (and you know where that's going).
Our Constitution, which dates to 1901, is a vestige of Reconstruction, the disaster that did just about as much harm to the South as the Civil War itself. Now the corruption runs so deep in the Alabama state house -- among Republicans and Democrats, whites and blacks (sad to say) -- that there's little hope of real change in my lifetime. Good folks here have been pushing for a state constitutional convention for decades. The movement actually picked up some steam not too long ago. But it's been dropped. The New York Times and other outlets could do us the favor of covering that story. Without a new constitution, we're doomed.
6
I don’t buy this “southern hospitality” thing. I used to travel frequently from New York to Raleigh on business. The taxi drivers at the airport were among the most obnoxious people I have ever met.
They had, perhaps, liberated themselves from a confining stereotype. Ahead of their time and in the wrong direction, but more significant than I realized at the time.
1
Thank you for this. I confess that I when I read the news coming out of the south I think unkind, judgmental things and northeast snob all over myself. This opinion piece was the speed-bump I needed.
Well, this is the stated rationale for the 1901 Alabama constitutional convention, which established the 'document' that anchors the state government today:
"And what is it that we want to do? Why it is within the limits imposed by the Federal Constitution, to establish white supremacy in this State. This is our problem, and we should be permitted to deal with it, unobstructed by outside influences, with a sense of our responsibilities as citizens and our duty to posterity."
John B. Knox, presider of the 1901 State Constitutional convention. Source: http://www.legislature.state.al.us/aliswww/history/constitutions/1901/proceedings/1901_proceedings_vol1/day2.html
This is far more "Shame" than "Salvation." Conversely, to find this on the Alabama State Government (Legislature) web-site? Maybe there is no shame after all, *and* no salvation.
5
I grew up in Alabama in the Mid 50’s. I remember posted signs designating restrooms for “White Men” and “White Women” and a single restroom for “Colored” people. Our family moved to central New York in the early 60’s. The signs weren’t there, yet many of the same racist attitudes were just barely concealed; there were no black students in the private parochial school I attended. I now live in Louisiana, just a few miles from the burned churches. The problem of regressive white supremacy is found in every state, in every community. That said, there are remarkable people of good will in all communities across our nation who genuinely strive to improve society for all.
Unfortunately, those good people don’t get the major media “outrage” coverage afforded to frat boy bad behavior, rage-tweets from the President, or painfully evident stupidity of elected officials who don’t believe in biology. We are treated to punditry analysis of horse-race politics rather than expert discussion on the substance of policy. Anger, bluster, and bullying are far more entertaining than careful deliberation. Game of Thrones gets more sustained media analysis than police killings of unarmed black men. It seems the time of bread and circuses is ascendant; the lions are entering from Stage (alt)Right.
363
@Billfer
This comment is one of long observation expressed in rational, clear prose. This IS what it's all about.
31
@dressmaker
Excellent observation and comment. I Absolutely agree.
16
@Billfer
Well said, Billfer.
15
I don't agree with regional prejudice and I think Malcolm X was absolutely right when he said in America everything South of the Canadian border is South. The worst racism I've ever experienced in my life was in Boston.
That said, it's worth noting that her title Renkl ignores another S word, slavery. The history of black bondage remains a key aspect of Southern history, and as that great southern writer William Faulkner said, the past is not dead, it's not even past. Mississippi only formally renounced slavery in 2013, for example.
2
I flew to Charleston approx 10 years ago to meet my husband at the end of a cross-country cycling trip and spend the weekend there with him. We went on a tour of the older houses and that was lovely (so we do appreciate history) but we could not get past all the civil war statues. This was before the public's current attention to the issue. We both said we felt like we had walked out of the present and into the past and not in a good way.
5
Thank-you for writing and thank-you for doing. The longest journey begins w' all of our single steps and there are righteous, kind people walking towards the light in every state of our union. Those of you in some of the more backward states deserve extra credit, your path is steeper.
I was born and raised in rural Alabama, and as much as I agree that it is a beautiful place and that there are good, kind people there, I hope never to live there again. The poverty and hopelessness I saw there was suffocating. Alabama has never been on the right side of history. If the people supporting this evil law (and it is evil, isn't it?) were truly pro-life, they would far more worried than they are about the dismal state of education, opportunities, and healthcare for Alabama children (including teen mothers) who are already living.
10
Thank you Ms. Renkl for reminding us that there are ethical folks everywhere, and that generalizing a region into one broad negative is not how you leverage that embedded human resource.
Another point is that the natives of states like Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, etc. are uniquely qualified to be change agents in their home regions. They have the Southern 'street cred' necessary to get others in the region to listen, one person at a time. This is how change happens. Slowly, painfully, incrementally, one person, one family, one politician at a time.
2
In my work over the course of 3 decades I have spent months at a time in Biloxi, Atlanta, New Orleans and Nashville. On weekends I would often explore the surrounding countryside. I have met many wonderful, thoughtful people along the way. In fact, I have come to love the south. And it is getting better, but it still has a long way to go - just like the rest of us, and the rest of the nation. So let's not poke our ill-informed fingers at the south before we look at ourselves too. The entire nation has a long, long way to go.
5
The comments on this essay are especially good: eloquent, personal, and heartfelt.
2
I am chicken. I admit it! Every time I sense danger, I do my best to run away. "No stand your ground" for me!
Since I am chicken, I do not understand folks who stay in a hostile place. Even now, at an advanced age, I am contemplating running away. As a Type 1 diabetic, I feel under attack in this country. If I lived in my Mother's homeland of Texas, I would definitely have already escaped.
Why do good folks stay in a place that doesn't share their values? I suppose the trick is to get out before they become enmeshed in their location.
I congratulate all who live in the south and work to create better times. I hope all of you avoid burnout, or worse.
3
Speaking quite honestly, Ms. Renkl, I tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to the South and anything even vaguely associated with it -- And all with good reason because more often than not, the stereotypes are well-deserved.
Mind you that I'm speaking as a white person who spent their entire 1960s childhood in Alabama -- so that probably has a lot to do with it.
Nor is this to say that the hateful segregation, lynchings and Jim Crow laws commonly associated with the American South only exist there, because that would be a lie.
Prejudice and bigotry knows no boundaries. It's everywhere.
But there's no way to deny that it's still very much part of a culture, history and identity that represents pride to some, while representing degradation to others.
And Donald Trump hasn't helped.
With his indisputable preference for all things southern, Confederate and white, he hasn't done much when it comes to bringing about unity in a nation with strong racial, religious and geographic divisions.
So, thank you for your explanation and attempts to make the South a more accessible.
And just remember this one thing when talking of your southern compatriots.
You're not the only ones who are "fighting back".
4
Thank you for highlighting some of the organizations working for change. Rev. Stacy Rector, the executive director of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, spoke at my church yesterday. She has been tireless in her efforts to stop this unjust and moral abhorrent practice.
But organizations like those you mention are woefully underfunded and understaffed. The donation my congregation gave Stacy yesterday will be helpful but hardly enough to push back against the forces invested in retributive "justice" and executions. And the Tennessee state legislature's conservative supermajority is a constant roadblock to real reform.
What Stacy does most effectively is to keep telling the stories of people like Donnie Johnson, the most recent person executed in TN. No one, not even Johnson, himself disputes the brutality and horror of the murder he committed. But in 34 years on death row, he became a genuinely changed person (read the article linked to in the op-ed). If, especially those of us who call ourselves Christian, cannot believe in change and redemption, then we are truly lost.
3
I went to college in the South (Duke), even though I was brought up in New England and Washington, D.C.. I remember that one of my girl friends in college was amazed I was a Catholic because everyone in her town crossed the street whenever a Catholic appeared on the same side. She had never spoken to a Catholic in North Carolina before me. In fact, she was surprised I was like everyone else she knew. And, since I was white, most southerners were very hospitable and gracious to me.
I could go on and on. It was a great cultural experience but after graduation I moved to the West and never looked back. Recently, on an RV trip to the deep south, I found that many of the blacks still lived in fear of whites in Mississippi and Louisiana. By being forced to take the local buses from our campsite a half hour away from New Orleans, I talked with many local African Americans along the way. The buses, which many citizens used to get to work, were often 30 to 60 minutes late if they showed up at all. I would wait in disbelief and empathize with the everyday problems of living in this city which cared so little for their local residents. Two years after major flooding, furniture and soggy mattresses were still evident on the curbs outside local homes.
I found the American South, for all practical purposes, is a third world country as compared to the Northeast and the West. Rather than an American Dream for most African Americans and the poor, it is an American Nightmare.
29
@David Michael,
Wow, going to college at the University of New Jersey - Durham, then taking an RV trip to MS and LA must qualify you as an experienced explorer to that exotic 3rd world country called the US South.
This article is mostly nonsense, exoticizing and othering the South in a way that is all too common for elitist coastal types who would heartily agree with HRC in describing many americans as "deplorables".
Get out of your NYT bubbles and engage with the world, folks.
2
@Michael
One Myrtle Beach, "Deliverance" flick engagement enough.
1
Having grown up in DC with a parent from the north and a parent from the south, I started life seeing both sides. I have lived in the north, the south and the west. What you write is true everywhere, north, south, east, west, country or city. We have forgotten the things that we share and are allowing ourselves to lose what is good about us all in the us vs them culture we are living.
6
I'm happy that Ms. Renkl can find islands of light in the south, but all her examples seem to come from urban areas. Does the concept of decency extend into the small towns and rural areas that seem to be politically over represented everywhere in the country, including the South?
9
In family systems theory, the presenting problem, often expressed in a child's acting out, is referred to as the identified patient. The real underlying problem is embodied in the whole family system and the distorted relationships it creates. The only way to fix the identified patient is to address the underlying family problems. Family system theory works in organizations and communities just as well as families, and in that sense, "The South" is the identified patient in the American family.
3
I felt your pain living in Michigan where Democrats can only win in statewide elections, as all the precincts are gerrymandered. Life is too short to wait for change, I moved to the West coast where my vote actually matters. Republicans can take away your vote at the ballot box but not the vote with your feet.
8
These odes to the inherent decency of most southerners, or at least a large group of southerners, ring hollow.
Just read the first two paragraphs of the piece. It is more than 150 years since the Civil War and we still have these first two paragraphs?
C'mon. I don't care how hospitable you are as a region, these are very inhospitable acts. And they just never end.
I spent years down there and what always struck me as curious was the "graciousness" at the surface and the ugliness below.
10
@History Guy "I know that Southern hospitality is a real thing, and that it isn’t race-contingent." That one had me laughing out loud.
5
My wife and I dropped our oldest son off at UVM as a freshman in 2003 and then took a few days to drive into the NEK, something we had never done since taking the boys to a summer camp in Vermont. She said to me, that in two years his younger brother will go to college and she said she would then like to move away from the town we grew up in, and returned to after a number of years of college and working in the big city. She had her reasons. Sure enough two years later we dropped the younger on off at Yale, and on the drive home to SOUTH-CENTRAL PA, she said, okay where are we moving? First on my list was; nowhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line. The town we grew up in York, PA, was known as a "SOUTHERN TOWN THAT JUST HAPPENED TO BE NORTH OF THE MASON-DIXON LINE.
5
Prosperity depends on the education, talents, and opportunities of all people - women and men and all races and ethnicities. The south experienced better economic growth AFTER the civil rights movement.
3
In Ken Burns documentary about the Civil War, historian Barbara Fields said, "... the Civil War is still going on. It's still to be fought and regrettably, it can still be lost."
Fields was prescient. We are one election away from that loss!
21
I've lived Appalachia, Texas, Iowa, and now in upstate New York. I never make excuses for the horrific history of racial injustice in the American South, but the easy bashing of the South by the rest of the country exasperates me.
Racism is everywhere in this country. If the South is so inhospitable to people of color, why are so many African-Americans moving to places like Atlanta and Charlotte?
I live in Albany, NY, which--like so many cities in the Northeast--is deeply segregated. If racism is Southerners fault, why is my town so segregated? Why are the schools all over New York so segregated?
It's easy for people who don't live in the South to blame America's racism on the South. I call their bluff.
I urge all of us who hate racism to acknowledge and fight the racism in EVERY American community--and to link arms with Southern-based organizations like ones Ms. Renkl names that are doing the hard work necessary to make real change.
29
The South truly is a paradox, it has given America a substantial portion of the musicians, playwrights, authors, actors and other artists and at the same time has stubbornly remained out of sync with the remainder of the nation. Even waves of millions of relocated Midwesterners and Easterners have not moved the needle very much.
No region of the nation has benefitted from the Federal largesse of the New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier, and Great Society than has the old Confederacy, yet it is now a bastion of people who elect politicans who want to dismantle and roll back the entire Progressive movement. Prior to FDR, much of the South was many decades behind the rest of the country in infrastructure, economic development, education, public health and much more.
I would remind all that the family that has maintained the New York Times for generations came to the city from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and that many of the brightest lights of New York culture came there from various and sundry southern towns and cities. Jazz, Soul, R&B, Country, Gospel, Rock and Roll all have deep roots in this region. Faulkner, Baldwin, Williams, and many more came up from the Delta. Maya Angelou came from a town not far from Bill Clinton's Hope - Stamps, Arkansas. Helen Gurley Brown changed American culture with Cosmopolitan and she came from little Green Forest, Arkansas.
I really do not think one can understand America until you understand the South.
8
@David Gregory And you can't understand the South without confronting its white male supremacy head on. Unfortunately in modern America we see less of the South's cultural legacy and more of its legacy of hatred.
3
Having read the travel piece on Bosnia just before this one, I couldn't help but draw uncomfortable parallels with our South. Economic changes that result in war are not much different from wars of religion.
In both, the aftermath can live either in diurnal or crepuscular light, to borrow a phrase. An uneasiness amongst the natives coexisting in an aftermath, uncertain of future light.
I wonder when we will ever evolve from ignorance.
2
I appreciate your article and people like you who struggle to make things right in spite of such headwinds. To change though requires National leadership and legislation period. We have made progress in those areas but much to still be done. At the moment Alabama and other states ( not only in the South) are pushing back with the latest abortion restrictions. The courts ( I am not holding my breath) need to step in. This latest issue is a civil rights issue. I know many who are pro choice and no one who is pro abortion. That narrative needs to change.
5
Democrats in Congress have ignored passing laws that allow abortions without restrictions and laws that advance the social and economic environment of minorities. Ask any Democrat running for President how many such bills they have written to be made law. Probably none.
Dear Margaret, Thank you for your thoughtful heartfelt article. I live in Saint Paul Minnesota and the struggle is alive here too. When we northerners are honest with ourselves, we share in all those human shortcomings you describe. I am reminded by your writing that our region is also filled with people and organizations trying to bring compassion and progress into our lives and communities. May you be blessed and enriched by your work.
6
Thank you for this column, and this is from a long-transplanted Southerner. It still amazes me how otherwise-educated Northerners are often so clueless about a major region of the country. I once had a New York-born colleague tell me that she could not believe good medical care could be found in the South. Well, I could point to the University of Alabama for starters. Sheesh.
4
Alabama is a political nightmare. Some undeniable truths - the majority of its voters supported Trump and will again in the next presidential election and nearly a majority of its voters supported Roy Moore. But, there is hope. A review and comparison of the voting records for the urban areas as opposed to the rural areas show that substantial majorities of the voters in Montgomery and Selma voted against Moore while a similarly unbalanced percentage supported Moore outside of the cities. It may be easier to convince right thinking young people to move to the State's cities.
4
Thank you, Ms. Renkl. Yesterday I went to a rally for Bernie Sanders in downtown Birmingham, held in Kelly Ingram park, site of civil rights demonstrations and Bull Conner’s dogs. It is indeed sad that that the Deep South is held back, more today by a conservative, fundamentalist Christianity than racism, in my view, although it is certainly true that racism is prevalent. The attendees at the Bernie rally were a mixed group , black and white, but mostly young, all hoping for a South where prejudice is a rarity. As one who grew up in Alabama, I can attest that despite appearances coming out of the abortion war, Alabama has changed tremendously as far as racial matters go. If one observed the mixed luncheon groups in downtown Birmingham and thought of how that would’ve been uncommon in the past, and saw as well the mixed electorate which elected Doug Jones to the Senate, one could only recognize that much of the South has really changed.
3
I can't help but think that part of the reason that we often view states as cohesive units is the existence of the electoral college. The president (the only politician we can all name) wins states...not people. So when the rest of the country just sees red (or blue) they have colored the whole state with one brush...because that is literally what we do on election night.
12
@JAA Agreed. I live in Pennsylvania and despite a +0.72% margin Trump had over Clinton, everyone just assumes the state in its entirety is just one big blanket of red. So many articles the weeks after the election, most from less informed outlets, just perceived PA as a bastion of Trumpism. Its frustrating.
6
Thank you Margaret. I too live very near Nashville. As a northern WV girl who fled that state for Los Angeles, and then decided to move back this way, I applaud what you have written. We are a mixed bag here in Middle TN. My immediate family despairs about so much but all deeply love this state. I will vote, march, and fight, until my last dying breath, to hope for acceptance for all. I am surrounded by so much beauty and it gives me hope.
14
The politicians of the ‘Old South’ declared open war against modernity in 1948 when Strom Thurmond and his Dixiecrats States Rights Party seceded from the Democratic party. This was nothing less than their reaffirmation of Calhoun’s nullification theory. If a state objects to federal law they may simply nullify it.
Nixon’s Southern Strategy ,1968-1973, effectively granted legitimacy to nullification theory by pledging that when his Republican party was in power civil rights would not be enforced.
Now, seven decades later, the Republican Party of Trump with the assistance of the Republic Supreme court has again legitimated nullification without the inconvenience of a Civil War.
I accept that virtuous citizens devoted to bringing the South into the twenty first century exist in all the states of the old south. Why they have failed since Lincoln’s assassination is complicated. But, failed they have for 150 years. Until they are an electoral majority and those citizens vote en mass to disavow the South’s nullification of the twentieth century, their only practical strategy is to leave the South to those who wish to preserve the nineteenth century defended by Senators Calhoun and Thurmond.
17
thank you for this. i have been steadily losing hope that America will ever recover from the seemingly backwards trajectory of all the latest legislations. You provide a ray of badly-needed hope..
4
As a native Kentuckian who left in my twenties and only have come back to visit family and friends I agree that 'things' are far better than they were in the fifties and early sixties but not because the people changed for the better. The Federal laws changed for the better.
There has been some progress in the South but what progress has been made in the South process in the metro North has been greater. The South has not caught up and given the deep seated and tolerated misogyny, racism, xenophobia and almost overt hostility to science and education in a significant portion of the white people the South is falling farther behind the metro North.
I use metro North because in the non metro North which is losing population the same ignorance one finds in the South prevails.
Yes, gerrymandered OH and WI I am thinking about you.
13
Moved to Georgia from NYC less than a year ago. I am a 6'5, 40-something, athletic black man who earned a degree in EAS and works for the Georgia DEP. Here is my anecdotal two cents: the deep south is as racist as New York City. As for the abortion laws, I view the argument southern states are making to be righteous. When does life begin? New scientific evidence documents that a fetus feels pain. Roe vs. Wade was about privacy. However, lawmakers in the south are focusing on arguing about securing the life of an individual who is defenseless. This argument is solid.
https://lozierinstitute.org/fact-sheet-science-of-fetal-pain/
1
A human foetus is not an “individual.”
As for feeling pain, you should have a look at the research demonstrating that fish not only feel pain, they will avoid food if taking the food inflicts an electric shock on a fish in an adjacent tank. That’s right, fish feel pain and show signs of feeling empathy. Knowing that fish feel pain would never stop you from eating fish, would it?
Yet you are willing to colonize women’s bodies in service of your religious beliefs. The real agenda behind the so-called pro-life movement is to control women’s lives.
4
Then think of how painful it must be for the fetus to go through the birthing process which can be prolonged and often brutal.
2
@Jonathan you can only chime in when you grow a uterus.
4
"I spent my entire 1960s childhood in Alabama, and I don’t care how bad you think it is right now, it’s nothing to the days when Bull Connor and his ilk still walked the earth."
And I'm guessing the many decades before then were significantly worse for the non-white citizens of that state. So, all in all, there have been a whole load of worse times to live there, if they were lucky to survive and not be lynched, beaten to death and just plain murdered, to say nothing of being deprived of even the most basic human rights.
11
In Cleveland, MS, which has a sordid history of racism, there is a downtown skating rink/bowling alley that is fully integrated — I doubt there is anything like it above the Mason Dixon line. There’s a lot you don’t know that would layer your beliefs if you were willing to get below the surface and see how things really work.
4
@michjas Bragging about an "integrated skating rink/bowling alley" in 2019 is pathetic. Even using the word "integration" in the 21st century shows how little we have advanced as a society.
2
@Patti Jacobs. By fully integrated I mean 50-50 skaters in fact. Because of housing segregation in the North public facilities aren’t mixed like that. In the Bible there are fully integrated high schools. There are virtually no 50-50 schools in the North. Stereotyping is the enemy of knowledge.
@michjas I don't understand. "In the Bible there are fully integrated high schools." Um... they were Middle Easteners in the Bible - who were they fully integrated with? And when you say 50-50 integration for the US - are you counting Hispanics and Asians on the white 50 side, or where, exactly? And after the next census, when non-Hispanic whites become a minority, will you be able to adjust to the new status quo?
The South needed a Marshall Plan after the Civil War.
8
@PRRH
Actually Sherman should have finished mopping up.
2
Why do people from the South have to keep apologizing for racism. When it is not a Southern thing but a people thing. In Oregon it was against the law for blacks to live in this state at one time. Racist activities happen here all the time as well. So I believe the South get an unfair look when it comes to this issue and a lot of people like to think it's a Southern problem instead of a people problem. Maybe it helps them feel Superior origmore their own ignorance. Just saying
3
Four white ladies singing at an elite private university as evidence for change!? Well intentioned but....
11
I'm sure there are reasonable, even progressive, citizens in Alabama, and Mississippi, and Georgia, and even Kentucky, home of the Grim Reaper, but until ya'll stop sending sending hideous men and women to represent you in Congress, I'll have nothing to do with you. The Southern states, exemplified by McConnell, have America by the ankles.
39
Reminds me of the constant statements from politicians on the right: " oh, those no good Muslims" inspite of thousands, nay, millions who are decent helpful people!
2
There never was a New South. The ugly news emanating from the South has been a drumbeat for the last 400 years. Margaret Renkl is not a black person, persecuted today and persecuted back then, to tell us how much worse it was then. In any event, that certainly is no solace to young black people today who have their opportunities and their lives cut short by endemic white racists who have always controlled the South.
Of course it's not every single person, but the clear white hateful majority in the South has been winning elections since our country was founded. When the racist white American party was Democrat, they were Democrats. When the white racist party became the GOP after MLK, the same whites, en masse joined the GOP.
“a transparent form of prejudice itself.”???
The ultimate white defense of the South in modern times is that when you point out they are unrepentant racist place, with a long history of clinging to white racist behavior, we get this white indignation about how the person pointing out the elephant in the room is racist. Is there a minority of white Southerners who don’t believe in extremist Christianity and persecuting blacks? No counting needed. Those good people have yet to run Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia or Tennessee, at least not since Union Troops occupied the South.
White female and Southern is the issue. A white middle-aged woman talking about how the South really isn’t that bad…well we might as well ask Bull O’ Connor.
9
I can now say I don't have a clue as to what makes Alabama tick. On the one hand, it can elect a neo-fascist pedophilic Roy Moore twice as Chief Justice, then nearly elect him Senator, but elect moderate Democrat Doug Jones instead.
But it can elect a Senate with 25 White male Republicans, and only 4 women, that overwhelmingly creates a blatantly unConstitutional anti-abortion law that punishes a doctor who aborts a rape-victim's fetus far worse than the rapist. And is signed by a female governor!
If there are enough good people in Alabama to elect Doug Jones, why can't they throw out enough of those 25 men, and elect a decent governor? North Carolina and Wisconsin did. And, despite his dreadful past, Virginia's governor is also a moderate Democrat willing to support Progressive policies.
But are there enough good people in these red states to throw out the segregationists, the misogynists, the dogmatic evangelicals who insist everyone live by THEIR "sharia" rules? So far, there doesn't seem to be.
Yet, the rednecks keep ruling and so places like Alabama keep their stereotyped bad reputations. Until y'all kick them out!
12
Thank you.
1
The American south is all about hate, racial, ethnic and religion based. Oh, other than New Orleans and Miami, which have Caribbean cultures, nobody from outside the south books trips for vacations and such there. Wonder why?
7
@Cap’n Dan Mathews Get real. My little FL beach town is flooded with northerners every year from Jan - June
1
Commendations for fighting back but, while you eulogize the South, why aren't you winning?
Seems to me that racism is not only alive and well, but growing, in the Confederate states
7
@MacDonald
It's hard to win when you're outnumbered and/or gerrymandered.
1
Speaking in generalities about any regional, ethnic, religious, or political group of peoples is not helpful because it does violence to the dignity of our individual personhood. The author is right and true. The struggle has to be for human progress benefitting all of us.
Just pay attention on a daily basis to how you use generalities when speaking and you will be amazed how it seems to be almost the default setting for most of us, and usually with disdain or in a derogatory manner. I, for one, know I do it. It's not helpful to understanding ourselves or others.
3
I'm from Boston, and I just returned from Montgomery, Alabama and Atlanta, Georgia. In Montgomery, we saw the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (both of the Equal Justice Initiative). We also saw the first White House of the Confederacy and the Confederate Memorial on the grounds of the state house. Both in Montgomery and in Atlanta we saw groups that included blacks and white dining at restaurants and visiting museums. I can't claim to "know" the South, but what I observed would seem to be about both progress and not. On the progress side, I had several conversations with people who live there about the vision of justice they are working toward. They are the regular people Renkl writes about, and they are not giving up, even though the obstacles are huge.
2
I’m visiting my 25 year old daughter in Seattle who was born in Atlanta. Last night she told me, “I know you love Tennessee and the South but its so backward there and always has been.”
All I could say is, well at least it isn’t Alabama.
9
Imagine if, in the late 1940s and into the 1950s, every German town erected statues in the town square to the beloved local Nazis from that town who had died in the losing cause of racist fascism. Imagine if Hitler had not killed himself in the bunker but, instead, had lived out his remaining 24 years of life supported by loving followers.
Most towns in the old South have those self same town square monuments to local boys who gave their utmost in the 'War of Northern Aggression', as they so longingly refer to it. And Jefferson Davis lived a free man until his death in 1889. He had been jailed after the war but was released after less than 18 months. He received high praise and support from, among others, Pope Pius IX and Cornelius Vanderbilt.
The culture of racial animus and antipathy are so deeply ingrained in the Southern white populace that they constantly vote for politicians who promote policies which work to keep even the poor Whites poor, so long as they keep poor, and not poor, Blacks in the economic and societal back of the bus.
Fifty five years ago in 1964, Bob Dylan wrote a song called Only A Pawn In Their Game describing this exact same phenomenon.
Progress? The New South? Hope for change? Pardon me while I stifle a snicker.
7
Lincoln’s biggest mistake was keeping the Union together. I always wonder how much progress this country could have made if we didn’t have the millstone of the South and it’s racism, ignorance and religious fanaticism hanging around our necks.
15
Thank you, Ms. Renkl, for writing this and thank you NYT for publishing it. I really needed this now to keep things balanced. Just yesterday I was wondering about giving the South another chance to secede.
3
So now we have hashtag"notallsoutherners?"
I don't think anyone thinks that all Southerners participate in these horrible acts or share these toxic ideologies. But even as she says 'not all Southerners' she can't seem to leave the mythmaking about the South behind. More than anything, the article demonstrates true cluelessness, proclaiming that things have been worse in the south, and then talking about Bull Connor! True enough, but the centuries of slave labor probably were even worse than that. But somehow that doesn't make it onto the myopic radar here...so ingrained is the a-historical, white focussed mythmaking about the land of hospitality. Please, yes, keep going! We need southerners like Renkl and many others. But open your eyes.
3
As an admittedly discouraged progressive, the optimistic reliance on social activists making any difference strikes me as quaintly naive.
The Bull Connors never went away. They just bided their time.
Has anything, really and truly, changed in racist, misogynist, bigoted attitudes in Alabama since Jim Crow?
If not, will a few more marches change hearts?
Seems to me the answer lies in the ballot box, in regaining political power by those opposed to yet more backsliding. And, perhaps, like the Civil War, actual civil peace is another Glorious Lost Cause in the Deep South. Southern charm, magnolias, and mint juleps do little to address southern problems.
3
Well, Margaret, I guess you're just going to have to fight harder. Because you're losing.
6
I'm a native New Yorker now living in Alabama. Whenever I begin to despair about the South I recall the various bigots, racists, homophobes and general all-purpose small-minded provincials of my home state and take comfort in the fact that there are idiots and cretins in all corners of America. That they are in the ascendancy here is not for lack of resistance by decent Southern citizens.
It's easy to write off Alabama. But New York gave us Donald Trump.
28
@Jeff Hall
Not to put too fine a point on it but, Trump was pretty much thought of as NYC's village idiot and grifter-charlatan throughout his entire adult life. The state of NY did not go to Trump in 2016. They knew better than most of the country just what a liar and fool is really is.
3
@Jeff Hall
New York did not give us donald trump!! He may have lived there but he didn't win the state. There is not a single southern or southwestern state with the exception of New Mexico that didn't vote for trump. Not a one! Alabama voted for him by 62.8% to Hillary Clinton's 34.36%. If he had been a true New Yorker with true progressive values the south would have run screaming from him!
2
@Jeff Hall Trump may have grown up in NY, but he won neither the city nor the state in 2016.
1
Is it ok if you are TOTALLY wrong and evil about 1 thing and yet you are the sweetest person on the planet who loves children and helps neighbors and runs for office?
John Wayne Gacy was an upstanding citizen whom one would have held in highest regard...the day before his arrest.
In the south, yawl are all guilty of the same one thing: women and minorities are subjugated. I just drove through the south. What I saw was terrible American fast food and gas stations. Most with downtrodden women working, or black men. Not many white men. That means the 'decent' jobs are all hoarded and given to white men "wink wink".
I can feel a place like that. The veneer of politeness hides the evil lurking.
5
The South may or may not be hospitable but the truth is that that is reserved for "Whites Only", certainly not Blacks or less so Jews.
Racial resentment and anger is long apart of the fabric of the South. Nothing has changed in the decades since the civil war. Blacks were nothing more than a commodity similar to a mule.
Finally, to be fair to the South, tribalism and racism is alive and well in America and the World. Although, currently we have granted this anger and fear a megaphone before it was more covert.
2
Nonsense. The place is an unmitigated dump of poverty, meth, ignorance, racial hatred and fake godliness. Get out, don't ask me to help. Sherman should've burned y'all to the ground and salted it like the Romans did to Carthage. Don't speak of pockets of decency as if they amount to anything. To paraphrase Eliza Doolittle, "Don't talk of love, show me." So they no longer come at you with water hoses? Big deal! Confederates are not Americans. They are traitors, users and phonies. Any questions? It's important to speak truth to fantasy however harsh it must be. I revel in my prejudice against Dixie and will not apologize for it.
9
@sunnyshel
Spoken like a true American from Long Island where many Southerners would rather wake up dead than start the day in Long Island.
1
Margaret Renkl consistently brings us sane and intelligent reports from Nashville, the Madison, Wisconsin of the South. Let it be understood that one will find MAGA hats and Confederate flags in both these racially segregated cities--which although they are "blue" have enough internal and overlooked pockets of red to get Trump re-elected and re-inforce the views of the remaining white supremacists. The enlightened white North and the enlightened white South are both rather pleased with themselves where race is concerned and the culture of each is full of gestures. But there is good steadfast work and faith scattered throughout, so let us hope they win out. Gestures are harmless though they tend to speak to the choir.
2
If you don't like the south, then don't move there. I am sure the southerners will not miss you. You will be doing them a favor. I happen to think they are lovely people who display southern hospitality and manners . We could certainly use some of this in Manhattan. It has become so rude and pushy. They certainly could learn a thing or two from their southern neighbors.
2
@KMW - if you don't like New York, then why did you move there? At least we accept people who look, sound, love, and worship (or not) however they do.
11
I hear you, sister. I’ve lived in the South most of my life and I’m a Christian. I’ve rejected the term “evangelical” since so many support Trump.
I have experienced the same disconnect and angst as you.
2
Our daughter, a native Midwesterner, attended graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill. Our admonitions to her to be open-minded about the South were tested early on in a UNC study group in which our daughter expressed an opinion, and a Southerner in the group turned on her with the remark, “You’re just saying that because you’re a Yankee!”
BTW, this was a graduate class in urban planning, not a history class on the Civil War.
8
This puts me in mind of Lincoln's house divided speech. How long can we remain one country when the Constitution gives an illiberal minority a veto power in questions of race, religion and sex?
10
The "South" is just geography as intolerance and disrespectful behaviour is rampant in the entire USA. It's a bad time to be anything other than a white male in the United States of America. While it's true that states in the South have pushed through very restrictive anti-abortion laws, so has Ohio (not in the South). It's time to take a good look at the entire country in terms of intolerance and disrespectful behaviour, not just the South.
14
In late years, one has watched intimately-understood neighbors move South from up here for expressed euphemisms, always including but not limited to, “property tax,” which subordinate citizens’ substantial interests to sinful and petty interests. Beholders deserve perceived beauty, but one lived in Nashville long before the truth-seeking columnist arrived from Alabama and knows a larger minority of great people than the columnist has room to list and has seen low-hanging fruit and disreputable things in the eternal Confederacy which have ripened with ripening’s usual result. Self-serving Southern hospitality was an inoperative romance in 1861 and is indistinguishable from hospitality elsewhere. Southern hospitality is no defense for it is insubstantial social pretention and does not belong on a list of defenses. If removed from the list, progress might advance. Southern character cannot apprehend removing it. That is the reason behind “lead, follow, or get out of the way.”
2
I would point out that the improvements from the 50'sand 60's came from the federal government. Left to their own devices, The South would be little changed from that time.
It is very true that there are plenty of good people, doing good things. They are overwhelmed by the powerful who will stop at nothing to hold on to that power. The powerful are repeatedly elected by a large number of people who agree with them.
I understand how it feels, Ms. Renkl. I live in an extremely conservative community in Colorado. The county has declared itself to be a "Second Amendment Sanctuary" with law enforcement proudly claiming they will not enforce any law they deem unconstitutional. I can vote, lobby, write letters but the truth is, it is not going to change. Sorta like the South.
884
@uwteacher I disagree with your assertion that the improvements in the South from the 50's and 60's came from the federal government. The brave, often unsung heroes of the Civil Rights Movement put their lives and reputations on the line to force the government to obey the law. It was individuals rising up that brought improvements. Individuals rising up caused the world to pay attention, and forced the lawless government to try justice for a change. Your implication that somehow the people were passive is an insult to their bravery and their good name, and misinterprets what happened in the South.
72
@uwteacher
"I would point out that the improvements from the 50'sand 60's came from the federal government."
Looking further back, this is also true of the 1860s, a fact that seems to be still deeply resented in certain quarters.
82
@nicholas Great response - done with respect and truth and needs to be front and center.
19
My life has been shaped by the dominant social and political environment of Atlanta. However, I've lived and worked in other states (as an editor) and this thoughtful essay took me back to an observation by the late journalist Marshall Frady who maintained that the South is "America's Ireland." Having a tradition of music and literature as cultural bedrock is a mighty foundation for change. Dr. King recognized that what we had in common crossed racial divides and it was hard to hate someone and love their songs.
Also, King was an astute observer who knew how to touch hearts and change both attitudes and unjust laws.
Nothing works well when the government is corrupt. Gerrymandering produces lilly-white Republicans as does voter suppression. These evils are alien to democracy and corrode all that our Founding Fathers envisioned.
Things are not quite so bleak. Our mainstream churches have very diverse congregations. Too often, church leaders are reluctant to speak out when there is injustice. But, that is remedied by activist congregants demanding more courage from their clergy.
The suburban counties encircling Atlanta have become Democratic strongholds, an irreversible trend. Governors, like Georgia's Brian Kemp, are vestiges of yesterday and can be defeated.
Good journalism is a start but voting the rascals out of office works every time. Need some reassurance? Listen to Jimmy Carter, Andrew Young, John Lewis, Jon Meacham, Stacy Abrams and so many others.
496
@Doc That's a bit unfair to Ireland. Irish conservatism in the decades after independence was largely a result of an overwhelming social consensus and the influence of the Catholic church. As this influence waned, the country changed fundamentally.
But there is no history of voter suppression that I am aware of, the recommendations of the independent Constituency Commission, which assembles after each census to reconsider constituency boundaries are generally accepted, and Ireland's electoral system of proportional representation by single transferable vote, which has been in place since 1922, makes Irish politics highly dynamic.
All constituencies are multi-seat constituencies with 3, 4, or 5 deputies. No one's vote is wasted or in vain and an Irish general election count is something of a multi-day media blood sport. Few elected representatives can be sure of their seat in the way US politicians can. I still recall how a particular politician who I disliked intensely finally lost his seat in the 17th count in his constituency in the west of Ireland. And given that Ireland is a parliamentary democracy where government ministers must be elected to parliament first, this means that even a minister can be out of his or her job after a general election, even if their party still wins.
51
Ireland has become far more progressive in this modern era. Most Irish are quite appalled at the course the US is taking. Please find an updated comparison.
70
Excellent points. Kemp reminds me of Sonny Perdue, he's not a serious governor. Its like he's play- acting as a latter day Lester Maddox. He's laughing at and using the rubes, pandering to their fear of the modern world for short term advantage, all the while knowing that world is quickly pushing aside their precious "way of life".
35
Go. See for yourself. Bust through the stereotypes. When I went to Mobile, there were hundreds of people, black and white, dressed as elves in the central downtown park, trying to break a Guinness record. They fell short and vowed to try again. Bring your elf costume if you go to Mobile. You will be welcome and you will be contributing to a worthy cause.
4
I lived in Little Rock from 1964 to 1968 while on active duty in the Air Force. I saw first hand the horrible treatment of both Black and Mexican citizens, even while in uniform during this period. Conditions have improved significantly since the 60s and I know there are many people and organizations in the South that continue to work to bring equality and justice to the South.
Given all this, the citizens of the South continue to elect representatives who are taking away women’s rights, suppress the votes of minorities and other acts of discrimination. When our country doesn’t like the actions taken by other countries like Iran, we boycott and/or place other restrictions on them even though these countries have many citizens and organizations trying to improve conditions in their country.
I believe we should support the organizations like the ones you mention but for me, while the citizens of the South continue to elect legislators who enact discriminatory legislation, I will continue to “fly over” the region.
15
Remember that this isn't North against South, or the Coasts against the Middle. It is the cities against the country.
The cities in the South are nothing like the rural South. But the gerrymandered state legislatures (North Carolina, for example) and the remaining Jim Crow provisions (in Mississippi, if the candidate for governor doesn't receive a majority in a majority of the counties, the legislature chooses the governor) make it an unequal contest.
I expect that some day the South will become less a relic of the past. But that day is still far off.
604
@jphngraybeard. Exactly. Pitting people living in cities against small towns and rural counties is recipe for destruction. Everyone has same basic need, have a job that allows you to provide shelter for your family, enough food and some healthcare to avoid financial ruin as result of accident or illness. Gerrymandering is harming all of us.
98
@John Graybeard — I couldn't find anything online to confirm your claim that a Mississippi governor must be elected by a majority vote in a majority of the counties.
Every site implies that the governor of Mississippi is elected in the same manner as the governors of the other 49 states.
Moreover, the system you describe would likely violate principles enunciated in Baker v. Carr (1962) and Reynolds v. Sims (1964), which require one-person-one-vote state legislative elections.
What's your source for your assertion?
5
@John Graybeard
I hope that day is very far off. Southerners like myself resent the condescending comments from the folks who read the NYT. If your cities on the east and west coasts are so wonderful why is your population fleeing to the racist, misogamist Jim Crow south?? (bringing your rudeness with you) Before too long it looks like the homeless and illegal immigrants will take over LA and NYC. Then you will have nobody left to tax. Sad.
Anyway, please quit moving to the south complaining about the way things are down here. I think things are much better here than what I see on the nightly news on the east and west coasts. Work on your own problems. You have PLENTY!!
There are good people and bad people everywhere. (Like Trump tried to say once but was hammered by that comment in the NYT.)
4
I live in Indiana, which often feels like the south, so I appreciated your defense of the good people who live in these kinds of states. We, too, are watching a rear-guard action by conservatives in our statehouse. They are trying to hold back progress by putting antiquated ideas into law.
The most troubling trend are laws meant to stop laws that don't even exist yet. For example, the state passed a law that stops cities and the state from passing laws against plastic bags. No city in Indiana has actually passed such a law, but there's a law stopping them if they try.
We've seen these of "laws against laws" against sustainable energy, gun safety, and same-sex marriage issues. My guess is we will look back on these kinds of laws and see them as unnecessary and short-sighted.
Believe me, it can be frustrating living with a state government that is always trying to dig in its heels against progress. But, many great people live here. We have good conservatives and progressives.
We're just falling behind while other states are moving forward. I hope we can catch up.
452
@Crossroads
I live in SC. We're dealing with ban bans here, too. What's most interesting to me is that a lot of the same politicians pushing them are at least ostensibly fans of "local control." They're all just changing a few words on whatever "model legislation" their actual bosses, though ALEC, push onto them. They're cynical ringwraiths, and most of them aren't that smart. Unfortunately, enough of the people who are still allowed to vote are either also not very smart, or sufficiently selfish and/or bigoted, to keep them in office.
59
@Crossroads
We have those bills here in Montana too. A bill recently passed said that local governments could not pass local ordinances involving gun safety. The issue now goes to a referendum in 2020 where the NRA will swamp our state with money and imperil our Democratic candidates.
And it was a bill denying other local bills not passed yet ( except one town- Missoula). And I would add that it was Republican legislators voting against local control.
49
@Crossroads This former Hoosier (now a Garden Stater) remembers his high school civic's teacher stating that Indiana needed to be "pulled screaming and yelling into the 20th Century." That still is a perfect assessment of Hoosierland.
61
I'm a New Yorker who spent five years in North Carolina. The southern hospitality of which the author speaks was everywhere, but it took me no time at all to realize it's a thin veneer whose true function is to cover up an ugly, ongoing and vicious power struggle between men and women and whites and minorities.
What I took away from my experience of living in the South (and mind you, North Carolina is among the most liberal of the souther states) is that white men in the South will never, ever voluntarily give up their God-given right to rule the roost.
1158
@Emile
As New Yorker living in New Orleans from 75-79, and 83-85...traveling all around the south it was bad then, and is just as bad now, if not worse
It is exactly like you say!
The things I saw then, I thought were long gone
sadly they are not
you comment is 1000% accurate!
126
While visiting South Carolina, the multitude of “Thank you, ma’am”s and “How y’all doin’?” were completely undermined after visiting a gift shop and seeing the book “How to deal with Yankees; Make them go home.” Southern hospitality indeed.....
203
@Emile
Five years? Wow. You are an expert. I'm guessing you lived in a suburban area surrounded by other people from The North. I spent 29 years of my life in The North and have never known people to more insidious hypocritical bigots than those in New York, California, and New England.
44
I will never travel to the South ever again. It’s just too dangerous for me as a nonbinary bisexual and my transgender wife. There may be pockets of kind people, but that doesn’t make up for the risks for people like us traveling through the South.
4
The thoughts expressed here have occurred to me many times when my anger is kindled by the latest outrage coming from Dixie. When I hear a Southern drawl there is still a bit of automatic reaction to memories of Bull Connor and George Wallace and James Eastland and Jesse Helms, but there is still Sally Yates and Atticus Finch, and Molly Ivins. When I sarcastically commented that perhaps God was sending a message to the South with flood and tornado, I didn't forget that the victims of today's Jim Crow also live in those places. And as I hail from flyover land I am well aware that bigotry and race hatred are not unknown in Detroit and Cleveland, or even Boston where I lived for35 years.
So here is a proposal: let us split this already split country into 3 or 4 parts. For my own NE region I propose "NExit". Then all in Trumpistan like Ms. Renkl who have liberal sympathies can be exchanged for all those in this place that persist in bigotry, willful ignorance, and cruelty to the "other". Then we can go our separate ways: ours truly into the 21st century and theirs to the 15th or further back.
9
@jprfrog
On a bad day, I agree with you! I'd love to live in a place more accepting of the non-religious. But your taxes are more than our budget could support.
Ms Renkl, thank you for using your journalism to promote human connection. Many of us northern liberals are losing faith in the media, even the great New York Times, because so little of human goodness is ever reported. We thank you for helping lead the way.
4
I'm sure the author could find similar examples of racial intolerance in parts of the North, Midwest or West. Sad that she would resort to recreating Southern stereotypes to make her point. The NYT should rise above those base temptations.
1
I was right with Renkl until I got to the part about the fundraiser for Vanderbilt University's library. Really?!?!
Vanderbilt -- one of the most exclusive educational institutions in the country -- has an endowment of over 6 billion dollars. A bunch of white girls singing for one of the wealthiest institutions in the South?? How is this about "salvation"?
I don't care where you live -- make sure your money is going to an organization that is really supporting grassroots social activism.
9
In my 3 years stationed at Ft Campbell KY/TN, my experience with "southerners" wasn't the stereotypical Yankee vs redneck debate. I found most, but not all, white southerners whole sanctimonious, quick to judge, contemptuous of northerners, still fighting the civil war, bible thumping religious zealots, anti-intellectual, and possessing a terrible inferiority complex. Anything that didn't kowtow to their belief and value frames of references was repelled whole and in part up to including the use of violence.
8
@Veritas Odit Moras
If you were in the military long, you realize that the areas around military bases are not exactly representative of the whole of the state they are in - or the country, for that matter.
But you are definitely right about the bible thumping. I really don't get it, but I suppose it is a defense mechanism of some sort.
2
Most of the news from the territory formerly known as "Dixie" makes me think that my great-great grandfather's generation should have kept the South under martial law until the last great-grandchild of the last rebel soldier had died. That would have saved thousands of innocent lives.
4
I'm not up for feel-good articles if the actual truth is increasingly bad.
7
Despite its alleged hospitality and true natural beauty, the Deep South is rife with hatred, bigotry, and hypocrisy. So are lots of other places on earth. There are good, decent people living in the Deep South. Such people live all over the world as well.
The South seeks--relentlessly--to impose a cruel cultural homogeneity on its people. Especially women. Legislators there (and currently in some other states) additionally want to strip women of autonomy and agency when it comes to reproductive choices.
When Christian morality is invoked to criminalize humanity essentially what is undermined is autonomy and agency. These purveyors of intolerance resent and hate freedom. They want to abolish hope. In an Orwellian twist, they like to see themselves "pro-life" while regarding those who reject them as promoting "death". Meanwhile, everyone claims to be sincere.
Funny how Ireland recently rejected its repressive past even as the U.S. struggles to embrace an increasingly repressive future.
FYI, I am a Southern ex-pat.
18
You really need to do more traveling if you think the transcendent natural beauty of the south matches anywhere on earth.
7
@Alan C.
I've traveled a LOT, and while there are more "majestic" places, like the Rockies and the Alps, there is a lot of natural beauty here in the South, too. You have to be open to see the beauty around you, wherever you go.
2
Try the Shenandoah valley.
A few comments: I visited a friend of mine who lived in northern Georgia in about 1975. We walked to the local grocery. Ahead of us a black mother and child (My friend and I are white.) They stopped to let us go in first. When we left i asked my friend why they did that? I was living in New York. He said they would have been lynched if they went ahead of us. Hmm....as beautiful as the South was, I was extremely glad to leave. Even though I am white I did not feel safe from that kind of rampant bigotry.
Which brings me to question for Ms. Renki: Why stay in such a hate-filled, miserable place? Yes, there are a lot of people in the South who are decent, but they are not in power. The South is run by cruel, bigoted criminal gangs yearning for a return to 1850, of course funded by siphoning money from wealthy northern states. I wish the good people of the South the best of luck. If they become ascendant politically the whole country will benefit but it's not looking good, the more so since the Supreme Court is now controlled by like-minded bigots who will work to keep the South gerrymandered and poor.
8
@ronnyc
One big reason to stay is low taxes. A lot of people migrate here to flee impossible taxes where they live. My community is being flooded with New Yorkers, Californians, Kansans and Illinoisians. I am glad to see them, though many here fear the loosening of the cultural stranglehold of fundamentalist religion. (I hope so.)
Another is that it is, outside of some of the people, NICE here. Mild weather, short winters, and lots of outdoor recreation.
3
There aren’t enough southerners like the author. If so, they wouldn’t keep voting for Republicans.
3
Yet one can't help but to imagine how much farther along America would be if it wasn't dragging a kicking and screaming dead weight forward for centuries.
13
I am from Alabama, grew up in Tuscaloosa, attended the University there for two years, but then got the heck out as soon as I could. That was at age 19, almost 50 years ago, when my father, a native son and surgeon, asked me to pick any other college anywhere but just leave. He was embarrassed that I had black friends, had dropped out of the sorority at UA because of its extreme racism, and had refused to be a debutante.
I transferred to a college in the Northeast, and the minute I stepped off of the plane I knew I had come home.
I recently spent a lot of time back in Alabama during the two years that my mother was dying. Nothing has changed. It is a scary, dangerous place. The tiny pockets of right-thinking progressives are overwhelmed by the majority of angry, violent, christians-that-love-to-hate. Scratch the sweetest Southern lady and that veneer evaporates immediately. Those angry white men in the Alabama Senate are just more honest.
35
@Barbara Shamblin I attended UA at about the same time and also got out of there. Goons beat up our pastor because we had black people at our church services.
I also returned to Montgomery for 2 years because my mom was dying. Her neighborhood was now mixed black and white, everybody getting up and doing the right thing.
Then a few streets away, young black guys began shooting up the place, killing toddlers in their yards, etc.
I wrapped up her affairs as quickly as I could, put her in the car and returned to Florida.
Isn't it just amazing what social stories bullies, intent on exploiting lives and stealing money, will invent to chastise good people.
I think it ignorant to assume this failure - puritan failure - is geographic in nature. Bullies are operating everywhere and whether they will draw strength and inspiration from anything from the obvious (skin color and/or gender) to the ephemeral (Glittering Jesus' prosperity gospel).
It is not like the south was the worst place; it brought us Jimmy Carter with his solar panels on the white house and Bill Clinton, whose romances included efforts for universal health care and whose ugliest accomplishments were the result of the so-called Republican realignment in 1994.
And don't forget that Dick Cheney was from Montana; Paul Ryan hails from Wisconsin, Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes come from California and Donald Trump and Rudy Juliani come from NYC.
.it is certainly a misreading of history to assume that the south had any kind of corner on the exploitation of the laboring masses for fun and profit.
I think it absurd to assume that exploitation using race or even sex is anything other than the so-called pillars of society making a conscious effort to keep the masses divided and fighting among themselves.
To tap into the feeling of the moment, I would post "For what it is worth" by Buffalo Springfield in an effort to inoculate us all from the fear and paranoia used by these clever bullies ... everywhere including the south.
7
“a deeply repentant Christian convert...” Why the “Christian”? Why does that appellation matter in the least? Also, how is “deeply repentant” remotely objective? I could claim to be “deeply repentant” about anything. Especially if I had an ulterior motive.
This is what made me stop reading. It made the whole piece suspect.
2
When the abortion laws in Alabama changed I immediately took Alabama off the bucket list of states that I would like to travel to. I am a lifelong resident of California and sincerely appreciate the political environment of my state but have always been curious about the South. Life is too short to waste my tourist dollars on a place whose backward and narrow minded policies are so repugnant
10
Here we go again. Every now and then the Times publishes a thought piece about the South. The inevitable result is an onslaught of self-righteous Northerners and Westerners tripping over each other to see who can best roast the benighted backwater.
1. I don’t deny that the South is more culturally conservative and more (explicitly) racist that the Northeast and the Pacific West. Point granted.
2. Still, I would argue that the progressive nature of the Northeast and the Pacific West is largely an urban phenomenon. Look at a map showing the results of the 2016 presidential election by county. There is plenty of red in upstate New York and the interior regions of the Pacific Coast states. Where are the jeremiads against Spokane, Bakersfield, and Utica?
3. Pennsylvania.
4. Michigan.
5. Wisconsin.
6. Donald Trump is Queens through-and-through.
7. Why is the criticism of the red South not extended to the red regions of the Rocky Mountain West, Great Plains, and Midwest? (Only two midwestern states, Minnesota and Illinois, went for Clinton, and in those states the blue votes were concentrated in the Twin Cities and Chicagoland.) The South doesn’t elect Republican presidents on its own. We get a lot of help from Idaho, Montana, Utah, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Ohio, etc. The reality is that most of the counties in the US are red. It’s the cities that are blue regardless of the region.
8. What about the recent anti-abortion laws passed in Iowa, Missouri, and Ohio?
16
@Kyle Hudson counties don't elect people, people elect people. There are more blue voters than red voters. That our system is set up to disenfranchise big states like CA, IL, NY just to name 3-- is just one reason some of us question the validity of the United states.
4
@karen
Of course counties don't vote. Of course the Electoral College has twice in my lifetime awarded the presidency to a Republican who lost the popular vote. My point is that it's wrongheaded to hold, as many NYT commentators apparently do, that the United States is divided into a reactionary South and a progressive Everything Else. I cannot understand why this basic fact is apparently so hard for so many people to grasp.
BTW -- is the exorbitant cost of housing in the Bay Area not a form of systemic racism?
1
Thank you. Well written and true.
1
I'm glad you and other southerners are fighting back. Thing is, those who hate what you represent will come after you relentlessly and ruthlessly when you become pesky enough.
A perfect example is the laudable sanctuary movement, adopted by cities and religious groups around the country. They were unremarkable for years as they helped protect the undocumented using legal means to make a case for family integrity and merciful treatment at the hands of government.
Then came Trump and zero tolerance, Mexicans as rapists, crossing the border as a capital offense ("Shoot them" yelled to a smiling president in the Florida panhandle). Now cities and groups offering sanctuary are themselves demonized as criminal operations coddling violent brown people; the president offers the "sick" (Trump's word) option of dumping asylum seekers into sanctuary cities. The federal government has these entities directly in the crosshairs.
All that's left is a swing of public opinion against them, and, what do you know, it's happening!
Rest assured, any one of the wonderful groups you mention will be subject to the same depredations as soon as they become a burr in Trump's saddle, or, perhaps, an item on Fox News that captures his wandering attention.
Interracial murders make up a small percent of murders, but blacks commit more than 50 percent of interracial murders.
The FBI Uniform Crime Report shows that 576 blacks killed whites while 264 white killed blacks in 2017
This is not a one-year aberration. It is a decades-long trend despite the fact whites make up 76.6 percent of the population while blacks male up 13.4 percent.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls
1
@William Case
Always providing concrete statistical “evidence” minus thoughtful abstract reasoning.
5
@Sean
The unbalanced reporting aggravates racial tensions. Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof said he was angered by the news media's focus on white-on-black murders while ignoring black-on-white murders. The false perception that they they are disproportionately victims of interracial violence also angers black Americans.
I grew up in a small town, a border-state-clone, in the Central Valley of California. I shall hear in my head to my dying day racist words bad enough to get me busted.
You couldn't be neutral. You ended up for or against racism. I was a lucky one.
I picketed Woolworth's. I leafleted in scary Detroit for Robert F. Williams (look him up). Two of those who founded the Black Panthers used to meet in my living room. My best friend is now a revered founder of the Asian radical movement.
This isn't bragging. I bring it up, reluctantly, as my credentials.
A friend of mine, a fighter for fifty years, wrote an important book about Malcolm X.
To you machos with the vainglory to knock over statues of ancient wrong-thinkers, 150 years late, screaming "fascist" and "traitor" at the symbols of the traditional South: I defy you to match my friend's heroism as a fighter against racism.
And yet he believed in the unity of the Southern working class as the key to ending the horrors of the past:
White workers have to be won over to the struggle.
He wrote, "The worst racist Georgia cracker wasn't born that way."
The masses of the white South behaved inhumanly because they were ignorant. Just like the ancestors of our self-righteous Northerners.
To whom, let us say: the agony of the South isn't about you and your benevolence.
It's about the passage out of ignorance to understanding.
Many of y'all have a hate problem, too, y'know.
Tolerance is much more effective.
3
@alyosha
Your friend is right. People need to organize if we're to get out of this mess.
I think the term ignorance is the wrong word. Rather the root of this is a broader effort at misinformation and division.
Bottom line, the powers that be in the south have adopted a strategy of division within the masses on as many basis as they can muster. Racism, sexism, ostracization on the basis of religion, sexual preference, parentage, heritage, ... and eye color if they think they could prevent people from organizing in their own interests by that ignorant appeal.
People are just taught to discriminate on these basis as a practical matter. History shows it can work pretty effectively.
The good news is that at this point in time, more people understand these as dastardly tactics than ever before ... and so are at least partially immunized.
But we're a long way from the day when ignorance is eradicated. Maybe ignorance isn't such a bad word.
As an aside, consider the contribution of the Texas schoolbook selection process in the promotion of ignorance.
I was born in the South and lived there most of my life. The issue I take with the majority of white southerners isn't that I think they are hateful, uneducated, redneck racists. It's that the majority that I have met are apathetic to the struggles of others until it has an effect on their own lives. There is a disconnect that somehow dulls empathy. The people in the South are some of the nicest people I know, but niceness does not equal goodness. Talk and prayers do not equal acts.
But in all honesty, I see that in Massachusetts as well. It's just easier to ignore when you have such a small minority population.
5
Oh, boo hoo.
Considering Alabama to be a "redneck state" is a transparent form of prejudice itself? Let's de-amp the victimhood here.
We know there are wonderful people in the South, and that the culture and history there contain some great aspects. However, the deep South consistently ranks at the absolute bottom in terms of education, it tends to have the most discriminatory election laws, it routinely elects Republican nut-job politicians to both State and Federal positions, and it depends heavily on the welfare provided mostly by blue states. Across all its states, it was happy to elect a lying, cheating, boastful, ignorant, violence-inciting, groping, mocking, grifting con man to the highest office in our country. And look who it puts in Congress!
Don't underestimate the precision of our scorn. One hopes that the South will someday shed its conservative, religious, backwater views and fully join the modern world. In some small ways, it has certainly already done so. But, it has a long, long way to go.
18
@AM, There are 11 states in the South, 13 if you count FL and TX, which I do. I have traveled on business to 3 of the 13 and to 2 for pleasure. With the bans on abortion coming in a wave, mostly from the south, and the gerrymandering that prevents states like TN, GA and NC from becoming more progressive, I doubt I will ever take my tourist dollars to any of them, and I will hope I never have to go to any of the 13 on business again. I have many other places to spend my money; even thought I have an interest in a few of the southern states, in good conscience I will not go. I do not plan to change from the secular, tolerant, and environmentally conscious person that I am, and I do not want to enrich those states that are the polar opposite of who I am.
5
Thank you, anti-South commenters, for revealing that the North, the Mid West, and the West are presumably without blemish.
6
Fetuses must be saved so they can grow into healthy babies, toddlers and teenagers to keep school shooters busy.
1
God and guns--and guys, fragile guys.
5
The South does not have a monopoly on racism, bigotry and rednecks. You don't have to look far to find these blemishes on the human soul in every part of the country. Much of these prejudices is rooted in economic opportunity or the lack of it and the wherewithal to relocate to where opportunity beckons. You can equally find an abundance of goodness in all parts of the country. Too often it doesn't make the news. Politicians have become very adept at riling up fears and prejudice for political advantage that ultimately mires the country in stalemate.
2
Drive East 3 hours out of Los Angeles or 4 hours North East from San Francisco- you will also be in the Deep South.
4
I was born and raised in Connecticut. I can assure you, racism is far more prevalent in the North. It wasn't Charlotte that lost its mind over busing black children to white schools, it was Boston. Massachusetts. Charlotte sent people to Boston to teach white Bostonians how to interact with people of color.
Hartford, Bridgeport, CT; Springfield, New Bedford, Worcester, MA; Newark, Trenton, and Camden, NJ; Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo, NY; etc., etc., are containment areas for poor, brown people. Entire cities are segregated into neighborhoods by color, religion, or ethnicity. The North is an environmental wasteland of contaminated Super Fund sites. Schools in the North have had to be taken over by the states surrounding them because they are abject failures. I see Confederate flags and Trump stickers all over New England - rural northern Connecticut, western Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine love Trump. Look at the election results.
Speaking only about North Carolina, where are the legislators who enacted HB2 here actually born? Not "The South". What is "The South"? It looks and acts just like the states in the rest of the country as a whole. Nebraska, Kansas, Utah, Idaho, Ohio and Pennsylvania aren't "south of the Mason Dixon" line, but they were more "red" in the last election than Virginia or North Carolina.
4
@Mack
Pennsyltucky has been a thing for many decades.
2
Thank you, thank you, thank you, from Mobile, AL. I have had a love/hate relationship with the South for almost 60 years, but, today, I stay here because I can make a difference here.
7
@Valerie Mitchell
But a majority of them are haters.
Consider only that fact that Alabama's State Constitution bans integrated schools. And around 10 years ago its "not backward" voters voted down a Constitutional Amendment to get rid of that hateful provision. As they had 10 years before that...
I call upon every business, every woman in the country, every college and high school coach recruiting or grooming recruits to attend Alabama colleges or considering a presence or relationship with that State to consider what that State truly stands for and votes for.
2
Glad you are trying to make a difference. But from my view here, in the upper Left corner, I don’t have much hope for the South. They are very entrenched in their belief systems. Thank you, though for working for change!
1
@goerl, So I have a big job.
Today's southerners are quite up and coming and are not backward at all. They are intelligent and educated and well read. They have good jobs and like to travel. They dress in the latest fashions but with style and grace. It would not be a hardship if I had to live there.
It is quite a contrast to New York and not everyone is a fan of this city. People are leaving because it has just too expensive and crowed to be fun anymore. Many of the millennials have taken over and think they are the only ones who matter. You see this frequently and it does not always make city living pleasant.
The south has it high points and it is a lovely part of the country. They tend to be a bit more conservative but that is not a bad thing. I have found them charming and very appealing.
New York is so liberal and progressive which not everyone finds attractive. They can be quite closed minded if you differ with their politics. They think they are the only ones who are right. They often are not but don't tell them that. They will not listen to any other opinion other than their own. I know because I have had to listen to them.
8
I'm from the North and go to a small college in Tennessee, and I've noticed a similar opinion among classmates from Alabama, upset that people are making fun of their state: "Don't criticize the place, criticize the law."
I think that most of the "insults" to which Ms. Renkl refers (if the example given is taken as representative of the whole) are actually jokes, many of them in bad taste, but jokes nonetheless. Humor is a great way to deal with frustrating events, and while some of the recent jibes at Alabama and the South as a whole haven't been kind, it's nothing compared to the kinds of things I've heard some southerners at my school say about the North. Does this stuff upset me terribly? A little, but I know a lot of it comes out of frustration with what they see as Northern arrogance. If I, a New Englander born and raised, can have a thick skin about southerners making fun of Massachusetts without ever having been there, then Southerners should be able to tough out the nobodies on Twitter poking fun at their state for having a terrible record on women's rights and a racist history.
5
Natasha and I recently travelled to Monroeville, Al, Harper Lee's hometown, to see the local production of To Kill a Mockingbird. It took a dizzying effort to reconcile the generous warmth of the people with the harsh racial history so well illustrated by the play itself, which is a tale of injustice committed in the full light of day with eyes wide open, as well as the present reality of two prisons on the outskirts of town.
Recalling Faulkner's quote that the past is never past, I wonder if southern people, beaten in the Civil War and then reviled for their racism haven't been simply hungry for an issue over which they can revile others, and found one made to order in abortion.
3
Boris, thing is the “racial history” is still very much part of the South. That’s the problem.
1
Despite all of the good in the South, I doubt that any of those good people could help you if you needed it. My husband is Brazilian and I was toying with the idea of a road trip throught the South but then I realized that anywhere between Delray Beach FL (we now live in deep blue Fort Lauderdale) and the Mason-Dixon line we could experience harassment just for speaking Portuguese in public or for “not looking (pale, white) American”. I think that it is better for us to fly to Boston and rent a car, tour New England and a bit of Canada instead. We will be safer and less fearful for a relaxing vacation.
22
A recently released Congressional study, Losing Our Minds: Brain Drain across the United States, shows that America's best and brightest (as measured by where they are in the national education distribution) are, in general, migrating to blue states from red states.
This sorting makes me worry that progressives like Margaret Renkl are fighting a losing fight. I see a vicious cycle in play now--states like Alabama are driving away the kinds of voters that have historically stood up to racism, sexism, and revanchism. I don't see things getting better.
Here's the link:
https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2019/4/losing-our-minds-brain-drain-across-the-united-states
12
You are “fighting back”? Really? I’ll believe it when your state houses and local governments (including elected sheriffs and prosecutors) begin to enact the laws and to personify the values of the people and organisations you mention.
2
The two biggest jokes in this country are that Republicans are "conservative" and that so-called "evangelicals" follow the teachings of Jesus.
31
Research the donors of those people who hold in office both Federal and Statewide in those States. You will find an explanation and source for the ignorance and obstructive actions of those Republicans. As far as abortion goes it is more about women having sex and violating their abstinence rules. Men are exonerated in that regard. Both those men and women are the fun police. They are as reactionary as a Mullah convention in Saudi Arabia.
15
When I moved into Missouri from the Deep South in 1967 it was like I had finally come up for air. It no longer feels that way at all, and doesn’t even offer the old compensation of really good cooking that the real South did offer.
Here in Missouri the people voted in a “Clean Missouri” constitutional amendment addressing lobbying, voting, redistricting and other typical Republican abuses. The Republicans who own the state legislature have since decided that the people who voted for Clean Missouri didn’t understand what they voted for — of course they did ! —- and are approving ballot measures to reverse the one little progress we’ve made.
Seems like the only people’s votes that really stick are the ones, like Brexit, initiated and pushed by the neanderthals among us world-wide.
15
Thanks, Ms. Renkl, for this beautiful reminder of the complexities of the places we're from that others would over-simplify. Those idiots on Twitter who blame all the people of the region for the policies and politics of a few don't know the Southerners you and I do, so they'll never understand the pain or the hope. I grew up in northern Minnesota, in a deep blue county that is swinging red for complicated reasons even those who live there don't well understand. Until employment and education improve there, a percentage of the population will be drawn to the snake oil sales people and the politics of division.
8
I would like to see laws passed forbidding the use of confederate symbols and names on public buildings such as schools. Destroy the reb statues or move them to museums. Maybe that would help.
It sounds cosmetic, but at least the CSA would not be constantly thrown in the public's face. One would not go to a school named Jefferson Davis nor salute the flag of rebellion nor encounter a statue of a loathsome person like NB Forrest.
Meanwhile, the constant importation of Koreans, Latinos, etc. must in time effect change.
This doesn't mean the Dems are the saviors of any area. They create as many problems as they solve. They stand for huge taxes, municipal corruption and people living on the sidewalk, for example.
1
@Liz
Or drive over the Lester Maddox Bridge just north of Atlanta or drive on the Richard Russell Highway.
I think it's absurd to even suggest that it has never been a worse time to be a sentient human being in the American South. I was born and raised in the South. The incidents that the author mentions are rare exceptions. Fifty years ago they would have been the rule and wouldn't have been covered by the mainstream media. Believe me, I know. I was there. Unfortunately, outrage culture would have you believe that nothing has advanced significantly. That's demonstrably ridiculous. One thing we have to come to terms with...there's nothing we can do to stop it. People will continue to do vile, stupid, criminal things from now until the end of eternity. It will NEVER stop. It will happen less and less. That doesn't mean we should tolerate it or excuse it....we won't. But I'm sorry ...it's idiotic to even imply things haven't changed dramatically. In 1968 it was inconceivable that a black man could or would run for President and WIN in an electoral and popular vote landslide. We have come so far...we have achieved SO much...we will achieve more...we have further to go. We will get there. Maybe not as fast as some zealots want...but we will definitely get there. But Jesus lets acknowledge what we have accomplished....what we have achieved. Let's stop pretending the world is about to end every day. It isn't. We are going through a tough time in this country. But it will get better. It always has. I'm an optimist. In this day and age one really can't afford to be anything else.
10
Maybe we should encourage a second great migration. Similar to how millions of poor, rural black people moved north and settled in Baltimore, St. Louis, and Detroit - we can have another one of those.
Maybe this time though the oppressed migrants of the South can go to Boston, Seattle, Portland, Denver,
and Vermont. All are full of opportunity, but all are also painfully white and lacking in the kind of diversity that makes St. Louis, Baltimore and Detroit such vibrant places.
I think this is the only answer. Let the right wingers from the Midwest, Northeast, Asia and Latin America continue to settle in Dixie. They never deserved the generous governments they escaped to begin with. But let’s do what we can to help the oppressed escape to the more humane, more progressive North. The first great migration was a massive gift to the Northern cities that absorbed it. And the second migration can work just as well.
What we need now is for people in Seattle, Portland, Boston, and Vermont to send busses, open their doors, and provide a home. It can work! Help the oppressed get out!
@Cane
Looking forward to my migration to a new home recently purchased in Washington state. Can't wait.
1
@Cane: That is not feasible until places like Boston, Seattle, Portland, et al. build a whole lot more housing and roads.
@Cane Boston is lacking in diversity? It's slightly over half "white" (47% if you count non-Hispanics only) and 24% black, and has a huge international population there due to higher education.
But for the rest of your idea: Bring it on!
It’s nice to know there really are good people down there. But I fear they will be crushed in the end.
6
I believe you are fighting back Ms. Renkl – but are you making any progress? How is it that the southern urban centers, which are typically more liberal, and have a greater population than rural areas, still can’t overcome the South’s “proud” conservative agenda?
It’s not just that southern states inflict racial and sexist hate on themselves, and want to turn back the clock to an antebellum religious worldview – they are a drag on the rest of the country. Southern states take more from the government in federal funding than they contribute in tax dollars. Guess who makes up the difference? And these are the same states who hate government – until they want a handout.
I spent a wonderful week in Asheville NC last year, and then drove a few miles down the road to see relatives. As I drove down the interstate, I came upon the biggest Confederate flag I’ve ever seen flying over the road. It was a stark reminder of where I was. The “transcendent natural beauty of this region” was given a reality check - nice place to visit, but…
The South has produced some of the country’s best writers, and maybe the best of them all, Wm. Faulkner, famously wrote about the South: “"The past is never dead. It's not even past." But in 2019 the South needs to shake off its wallowing in the past, its self-imposed ignorance, and its stubborn pride that is a cover for its deficiencies and hypocrisy, and join the rest of the country to face modern challenges.
Otherwise – you’re on your own.
18
Alabama is ugly swamp country. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but if you think Alabama is comparable to the West or the North East in scenic views then you have questionable astetic judgement at best.
I say this as a native Floridian who drives through Alabama and has seen the major tourist spots. It's hellish in the summer and tolerable in the fall/winter I suppose.
But I echo the idea of "why visit?" There's no reason to go unless you want to be reminded of American racism. Places like Tennessee have all the 'Southern Culture' hits and less of the overt racism.
It's not as bad as the "roll tide" jokes make it out to be, but, I can't think of any Major reason to spend tourism money there.
9
@Anon I'm not disagreeing with you but many of us feel the same way about Florida (which I have always found to be ugly - just a lot of flat nothingness punctuated by billboards).
1
Good luck and let us know how things work out. - California
8
Ms. Renkl - I feel your pain.
I also feel it should be pointed out that while the south deserves condemnation for the "cause" of the Civil War, we don't deserve all of the blame for the very bad situation we find ourselves in. We've also been hard at work on salvation - had it not been for republican cheating, we'd have a black woman for governor (GA).
In the 2016 election, 19 out of the 30 states that voted for trump were not southern:
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
Idaho
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Michigan
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Dakota
Utah
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Nixon coined the term 'southern strategy' and took it nation wide. It's been very effective.
So I think there's plenty of shame to go around. It wasn't the south that put trump in office. It was a republican party that for fifty years has demonstrated they don't know the meaning of the word "shame".
45
Had the Union not prevailed in the Civil War, and the Confederacy separated, exactly when would slavery have been abolished?
13
@LM Northern industrialists would not have stopped profiting from it, so, never.
2
Margaret, my mom's family came from Texas, and while she moved to California as a young woman, most of the family stayed behind. Most of them, amazingly, are liberal (and wonderful) people. I know that, but it doesn't keep me from loathing the apparent majority that keep the state in the "benighted and backwards" column.
19
It is a myth that people living in the "north" all look down on and ridicule the "south." Unfortunately, FOX news and Russian bots have been working overtime to convince southerners of this belief. They want to stimulate southern anger and direct it toward the north and the Democratic party. For them it is a game for control, a simple strategy of divide and conquer. Southerners are used as pawns -- the more misery they experience with unemployment and a contaminated environment the easier it is to exploit them. Trump and the GOP have no incentive or plans to help the south.
25
@Nancy This is the NY Times promoting division. And, a contaminated environment? It's not our rivers that go up in flames or neighborhoods that have to be depopulated because of chemicals in the drinking water.
3
I have often daydreamed of what would have happened if Lincoln had simply shrugged when the South said they were going to leave the Union, and told them not to let the door hit them on the way out.
America, over the last hundred years, would have been a far, far more generous and united country. We wouldn't have elected people like Nixon and the George W. Bush administration, and...
Well, here we are in 2019, and all we can do is cherish those fighting for decency in the South, and look to the small children and hope fewer and fewer are raised in homes of hate. Oregon certainly has been a state full of racist hatred, so the fight also, to a lesser degree, is fought here as well. One does fear that the fault really does lie in human nature itself.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
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@Hugh Massengill Wouldn't have worked, as we would have been living next to a country in which slavery existed, and which was actively trying to expand the borders of slavery - even so far as taking it to South America. Just not feasible.
@Rena
One does wonder just how long slavery would have existed with four millions human beings locked in chains, the British Empire refusing to deal with any business that involved slavery, and the North engaging in a blockade of Southern State shipping if it involved slavery.
Five states had over 400,000 slaves, with Virginia, that bastion of freedom, leading the list.
Still, as a daydream, it is kind of heady to think of a US without those five states.
Hugh
1
@Hugh Massengill Well, I can't really argue with that. Although nowadays, there are a lot more than five states that I would like to get rid of.
If only Lincoln had allowed the union army to finish the war and treat the Southerners like they did the native Americans - long marches West to disperse them, putting small groups into reservations, ... Sigh. We may yet get another chance someday.
12
The underlying premise behind a hit piece on Southerners like this is that they are a somehow different (inferior) sort of human being than folks in the rest of the country.
Ms. Renkl is from Birmingham, my hometown, the epicenter for racial hatred and Southern cravenness, if the popular zeitgeist is to be believed. Yet I bet not one person on this board disparaging the South and by extension, Birmingham, knows anything about it. Not least that Birmingham has no antebellum history to speak of--it wasn't even incorporated until 1871. And it weren't Southerners who swept in to get rich off its iron ore, coal and limestone. It was what were called Northern Mules. And they brought with them Northern racial prejudices they expressed and exploited in doing so.
Northerners have been hating Southerners since the Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock. Southern aristocracy was English aristocracy, the very thing the Pilgrims and Puritans hated about their home country. Ms. Renkl is just one more Southerner who has found a niche authoritatively justifying the visceral hatred Northerners have for the South. There have been many.
Southerners are no different than Northerners. But they lost the War, and history is written by the victors, even 150+ years later.
9
@Stephen To be fair, I don't think anyone is talking about the days of the Mayflower. We write about what we are observing currently. The anti-abortion laws are happening in the South and they are happening today. Whatever "hatred" or merely anger you think those in the North are feeling is predicated on this fact - that it's happening specifically THERE and specifically NOW.
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@Stephen You're actually quite wrong, because those of us in the north didn't grow up thinking "we hate the south, we beat those losers in the Civil War, ha ha." The south was just another part of the country. It is the southerners, and their resentment towards the side who won, that have carried this hatred to today. No one has t-shirts and signs saying "The North won, ha ha" but there are plenty of t-shirts and signs that "the South will rise again."
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@Stephen
You omitted "Bombingham" from your history. I just fixed it for you.
2
There is no doubt that the South has a tremendous amount of work to do in terms of race relations. The examples that Ms. Renkl provided clearly illustrate the need for significant change. However, quite a few of the comments that I am reading are acting as if racism is only alive in the South. This is preposterous and is so telling of the current state of affairs in our country. NYC is certainly a center for progressive activity, but that would be difficult to tell someone that is living in absolute squalor in a public housing complex that is mere minutes from "Billionaires Row". Racist policies shaped our country and continue to do so. Coastal residents of large cities can claim that the South is the problem, but an honest look in the mirror should tell all of us that we as a country can do much better.
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I have spoken with some Southerners about national, international and local issues and it's obvious that we can't tar everybody with the same brush. Once you get past the knee jerk reactions of people who discount what you say because you are not from here you can have an intelligent discussion on key issues. And it cuts both ways. A southern accent in NYC sometimes automatically denigrates Southerners. A Brooklyn accent initially translates unfairly into loud, brash, brusque and ungracious in Mobile or even New "awlins" People these days are too quick to judge anybody who is not very much like themselves in appearance, speech, dress, religion. People like trump have made us distrustful of each other's differences.
6
North, South, East and West, you can go to just about every corner of this nation and find bigotry, ignorance, injustice, corruption, moral bankruptcy, and hypocrisy of one sort or another. Just about everywhere you go there are those fighting on behalf of making for better places: more just, more fair, more equitable, more righteous.
If things are bad now - and they are - then imagine how bad they would be without all those fighting on our behalf.
15
Stereotypism is easy, and misguided, a behavior (mostly) of the uneducated. For a closer to accurate picture one must look at the statistics: how many people in an area are nasty, say ? In which direction are the statistics moving ? Is the nasty to nice ration 80 - 20, or 60 - 40 ? What is it today compared to 50 years ago ? Statements like "Americans think ..." are meaningless, Americans do not act nor think as one, nor do Southerners or any other group. My observation is that the South is moving leftward at an increasing rate, signs repeatedly appear indicating increases in tolerance and fairness, and opposition to the likes of gerrymandering and racial prejudice. Look at the statistics not the stereotype.
2
The author misses the point of the disdain from the rest of the country. In a democracy, it is legitimate to judge the population as a whole for the actions of the government they elected. It's not the actions of one crazed bigot here or there - we all have those. It's the repeated actions of a literal majority of voters who keep sending to the statehouses and governors' mansions people who campaign on hate and bigotry. We are not wrong to condemn those voters, despite the wonderful work of the activists who try and fail to stop those bigots from controlling their states.
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Thank you for this. We here in the blue states live life in a bubble, eating our own and making assumptions about everyone else based upon, well, nothing really. It's so great to hear from you.
3
Thank you for your comments. It's good to know that there are people of conscience and intelligence in Alabama and sad to realize that there's so few of them.
1
It's good to hear that you are fight back. That's important. But know this, until the South gets its act together, smart, modern people and businesses will continue to look elsewhere when they are looking to move and many a bright young minds will seek desperately to get out of the South.
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"I was thinking about all this last month when I went to a fund-raiser for the Vanderbilt University Libraries at the historic Belcourt Theatre here in Nashville."
I love the Belcourt and am a member. However, why do the Vandy Libraries need a fund raiser?! Vanderbilt is number 24 on the top 100 richest universities in the US. The endowment is over $4 billion. On the other hand, what about Fisk, and HBCU just across town? Their endowment was just shy of $29 million in 2015. When was the last fund raiser for their libraries at the Belcourt?
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I am basically happy to live in Tennessee, home of several major universities, one of the world's top nuclear research facilities, the world's largest aeronautic wind tunnel, major music centers in Nashville and Memphis, and the transcendent natural beauty that Renkl refers to. However, our legislature passed several far-right bills this year, including a school voucher plan that may hurt our struggling public schools. And our Montgomery Bell State Park hosted a white supremacist conclave over the weekend, as it has for the last several years. Another one is coming up in late June, and I am shocked at how little attention the media have given to these events. I know we all have a right to voice our opinions, but I hate to see overt racists welcomed to a state park supported by my tax dollars.
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I believe you Margaret. I've lived in Georgia and South Carolina, have family in Alabama. Also lived in ID and UT, both with plenty of misogyny and racism. Always, everywhere, I met people who think like you and me, and who work for change.
5
Much of what the author says is true about good people and social justice organizations in the south.
I grew up in Louisiana and was lucky enough to escape 60 years ago to learn the truths about discrimination.
I’ve been back to high school reunions and found that my friends are all friendly, nice people. But except for those who left, all harbor the Lost Cause mentality, and have deep seated beliefs about black people being inferior, proven by the observation that they’ve been free for 200 years and look at them now: lazy, dumb, asking for handouts. And their children are being taught the same things.
The children are probably not all buying it, especially those that escaped. But the Obama years and now Trump have brought these hate filled prejudices to the fore.
My friends are still there in the context of when we did things high school kids do, proms, football games....but I stay away from politics and now just stay away.
9
@Grey: I hear you, loud and clear. Sadly, it isn't just the south where this mentality if prevalent. I went to a HS reunion in Michigan several years back. Very nice people, who happened to grow up in a segregated community. Those who left the area discovered the world was a lot more than that little bubble of bigotry. Those who remained, sadly, continue to harbor the same prejudices.
I don't think I'll be going back there for another reunion, either.
2
as a transplant from Chicago now living in eastern TN (which I am sure is even different than Nashville or Memphis) and a evangelical Christian, we as Christ followers have done a great job legislating but terrible job loving our neighbors which creates this dissonance and hypocrisy. Laws do not change the heart.
When you are never exposed to those different than oneself, they immediately become a threat to that which we are trying to maintain for better or for worse.
@Fred: "we as Christ followers have done a great job legislating but terrible job loving our neighbors". I'm not sure what legislation you specifically refer to, but I have my suspicions. Interesting approach you describe, though: serving poison with a spoon full of sugar. Somehow, that doesn't really impress me as something a true follower of Christ would countenance.
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@Fred You state that "as Christ's followers , you have done a great job legislating". You do realize that you are acknowledging you have passed laws that enforce the tenets of YOUR faith on all the citizens of your state(s).
How is this constitutional?
Although I welcome every bodies love, I demand respect of my tenants, or lack there off.
2
" . . . things can be "better" and still be . . . bad". The message of the left seems always to have a persistent undertone of disapproval and regret; their picture of America is fundamentally negative. Who wants to vote for and be led by people with long faces and a laundry-list of complaints?
2
@Ronald B. Duke: Ever hear the phrase "more perfect union"? That's what the American experiment is supposed to be about - constantly striving to be better. If you're truly satisfied with the state of things, then I feel sorry for you.
2
Thank you, Margaret Renkl. I am proud to be a Kentuckian, but so ashamed of the politicians. Me and mine continue to fight for "Black Lives Matter" and "Reproductive Justice" -- . . .
I long for the day when I can introduce myself to someone not from here and not have to say "I'm from Kentucky but I didn't vote for our current awful Senators...."
5
Well I don't know- I lived awhile in Alabama and I'd have to agree with the tweet. Hard to imagine living there long term- kind of like a "sentence". Not just the racism either- the place is boring and ugly, hot and humid, buggy, stormy. Not much good about it. Like Kansas, I've always felt it would be best to move the population and let it revert to nature and make it a national park.
3
Stereotyping a whole group or region of people because of the actions of their rich and powerful with their faithful duped servants, seems to be a good trick we play on ourselves. It’s the same trick to the minds and hearts of anyone racist, sexist, homophonic, or xenophobic in thinking that their lives are better off by hating, demeaning, harming, even killing “the other.” Stereotypes play so well they are promoted far and wide by those who seek to stay in power. Horror is easier to rationalize with a stereotype like, “The south will never change,” which makes it easier to do nothing. Or “immigrants take our jobs” which makes it easier to blame immigrants, and not see the failure of the billionaire bosses to care about you. What could we do instead? Reach across state lines, ( or national ones), build movements where they need to be, in solidarity with abortion rights activists, anti-racist fighters, unions fighting for $15 hr minimum wage at places like Walmart, etc. But stereotyping- that’s the lazy way out.
3
#BoycottFemaleSlaveStates
This attempt to turn women into reproductive slaves ought to be met with economic resistance. When the bottom line starts to suffer, the business people who pay for the campaigns of politicians will force a change in these nonsense laws.
Do not go to the colleges and universities in these states. Boycott the sports teams. Do not vacation there. Do not support the television shows and movies produced in these states.
Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah.
10
My mother was a southern woman from a long line of southerners all the way back to the 1700s. She never fully escaped the racism she was conditioned with. Her mother's parents held slaves before the Civil War. My mother's mother was one of the most egregiously racist people I have known personally. She was also super good to her family and took all kinds of sensitive care of us. Her back still bore the scars of buggy-whippings her mother gave her. Her mother was a harsh person forged in a harsh time. The south has a long cruel history I have tried to run from since I was a child. I too can be harsh and cruel, and I am sorry. I am glad to hear descendants of people from those terrible days are doing what they can now to stop cruelty and move forward. It will take a while. I wish you all the very best of luck. I wish us all the best of luck.
4
Hate has no boundaries or geographical home. My home states of CA and MI have plenty of hate groups.
Consider a very liberal or conservative state where 66pct vote for the majority. It still means 1/3 people vote for the other side. So a third of Alabama is just like many of us - but happens to live there. Many think its useless to vote. We need to figure out how to get them to vote, to increase turnout, etc. Maybe these sort of extreme legislative actions will tip the balance.
3
Giving up on an entire region of our country because of the cruel, hateful and bigoted actions of the gerrymandered legislators is understandable and telling. The option of giving up is one of privilege and selfishness, an assumption that one can know all there is to know about a place and its people because of an asinine law. If we don't agree with something we can just move on, disposing of the region as if it is a stained paper coffee cup. We cannot treat our country and everyone we differ with as just another non-recyclable product and expect to survive.
3
@Chris Clark Why not? The south doesn't want to be part of "us" - so give 'em what they want.
3
I'm sorry, Ms Renkl - but in spite of all the lovely people you describe, the people in your state who make the laws are the ones who are inhumane and bigoted. And you nice folks are not able, so far, to stop them. If I am a black woman, would I want to live in your state? Would I be as safe and free to be myself as I would be in California? I am a white woman who disagrees with the bigotry of the politics, could I make a dent? I was a white woman in North Carolina many years ago whose sanity was saved by my black mother, whose presence in my home allowed me to go to work and leave my infant son with a loving caretaker. A cross was burned on my lawn when the neighbors realized that black woman who loved and fed and cleaned and cared for my baby didn't go to black town to sleep at night. I'll stay away, thanks. If you good folks were as good as you say, Stacy Abrams would be governor now, and people would not be forced to hide their medical problems. I'd no more live down there than I'd move to Saudi Arabia. Some battles are not worth fighting.
7
Go right at the core belief: "Every white person is better than any black person." In eight words, that distills the attitude and the fear of those, in the south and elsewhere, who abhor the change in racial outcomes. The biggest problem with having a black President was that these people refuse to salute a black Commander-in-Chief. Their greatest fear is that they will arrive at work one day and find out they have a black woman for a boss. Barack Obama was likely better than them and they knew if, but they wouldn't accept it.
The source of the fear and anger in the Trump era is this change is already baked in. The resolute and active people of Alabama and elsewhere -- we got plenty in Austin -- have already won. No one burned them out of their homes this week, right? They can be open in their political choices and voices without serious consequence. Didn't use to be that way. When voter suppression is the last resort, we are watching an opera of "last gaspers" shake an ineffectual fist at the inevitable. Some time soon, the Supreme Court will hand down a decision regarding gerrymandering in Texas. If it rejects GOP maps that are a joke (and if they don't reject them, we will try again), then you will see Texas turn into a different state, politically, in two election cycles. Why? Because Republicans cannot refrain from antagonizing and scapegoating Hispanics, the fastest growing segment of the electorate in Texas. They hate, they overreach...they lose.
8
I always learn from your columns, Margaret. Thank you.
2
What a beautiful piece, what a perfect and necessary thing. For sure, while things -- big things, too -- have gotten so much better, the push-back of hate and loathing is profound. So, maybe it's not poverty, but hatred that will always be with us. Or both? Meanwhile, it is sad for anything anywhere to be tarred with a brush of only darkness. The South IS majesterial...and complex and various and nuanced as anyplace.
3
My parents came from the south seeking freedom and opportunities in New York. The racism ,lack of opportunities Corruption and the sheer fear of having your home burned down while you are in it was no way to live.
Fast forward to NYC yes there were many racial issues but nothing on the same level as the south, the horrors of Mr. Garner murder today are being shown across the country not hidden from plain sight. It has taken years but justice is finally coming for the family. Very small consolation to a mother who has lost so much but it is justice. So many minorities are being murdered by law enforcement the government can not pretend it isn’t happening.
In New York there is a will to vote racist out and in the south no one is held to account. Countless people’s, organizations have attempted to make legal inroads for decades of but nothing changes. Minority schools , health care the worst in the nation
Ms Abraham’s is a leader who has the support of the nation because we trust her. Under her leadership we will see change and maybe she is the gifted individual the south has been waiting for.
This is a scenario that will not change political and corporate commitment will of the people has never been enough.
2
I’d remind everyone that it’s pretty easy for the rest of the world to dismiss America about as quickly as urbane liberal Americans dismiss “the South” — if all you do is read about it. We’ve got a lot of problems. Many of our elected leaders and fellow citizens (all over the map) make us look pretty bad. I might decide I could do without, as well. The guns alone...,
Problem is, it’s my home. Seen from that perspective, I’m much more ready to see all that makes it beautiful as well as ugly. As Margaret Renkl does so beautifully here.
2
I'm no expert, but as someone who grew up in a reasonably large northern metro area and now lives in a purplish metro area in the south, I can't get over the way so many people take actual pride in the confederacy.
I always knew there were "proud southerners" with their bumper stickers and dixie bandanas and "heritage not hate" t-shirts, but what's truly astounding to me, having lived here for about a decade, is that even educated, thoughtful people who should know better let it slide when someone says something idiotic like "the war was about states' rights" or even "black people's lives were better back then."
Again, I'm no expert - my US history class was a long time ago - but I can't help but think a giant mistake was made way back when, when it was decided to let those in the south "keep their honor" rather than making it clear they should be ashamed of themselves. There's a nasty cocktail of resentment, entitlement, and (of course) white supremacy that runs just under the surface even in my relatively progressive coastal southern city. And it's all wrapped up with this bizarre PRIDE these people take in their hateful heritage. I can't imagine what it's like for people who live 75 miles west.
5
I invite y'all to come here to Maryland, a state below the Mason-Dixon Line, which is rather progressive, affluent, well-educated, and provides world-class health care etc.... Yes, Maryland, my Maryland, is a state below the Mason-Dixon Line which respects sentient human life. We have our problems, but who doesn't? Y'all are welcome. We'll provide the crab cakes and rainbow cake.
1
I live in Nashville now and have for the past three years. I cannot wait to be a bird and migrate out of this city of it or whatever it was designated by this very paper five years ago.
The repression, the obsession and the obfuscation of truth is a fascinating conundrum with the supposed declaration of this as a city of now. There is not a building, a park, a parking lot, a street corner that does not have a marker designating this as some sort of place of historical import. A place that caught in the past cannot live in the present.
This coupled by the real truths that only one-third of the population is educated, one quarter illiterate, health is in the lower percentile, the lack of voting with TN being at the bottom three. 53% of the population here identify as Evangelical, we have no municipality rule as any City bill or ordinance is immediately overturned by the State. Then we have massive laws that are largely hate bills from Gay adoption to Gays being denied therapy. The toilet bill has come and gone more times than I have gone to the bathroom and endless issues with regards to race and crime and particularly youth here in Nashville. All buried under a biscuit served with sweet tea. Sorry but I am out of here and don't feel safe, welcome or respected here in the least
4