Firstly, this is a diary about my new found deep love for the south...if you honestly believe that everyone (white) who lives in the south is a slave-owning, bigoted, lazy, fat-cat who longs for the ante bellum times, stop reading...now.
For those who are still with me, I want to blog a bit about what I, a "yankee" from Missouri, witnessed in the deep south, namely, the southern most part of central Georgia.
Of course, where would we be without our history lessons...lets take a brief glance back and see what we can see about the great division between north and south (there are plenty out there who are honest-to-god civil war historians who could do a better job, but here's a lay attempt):
We are predominantly taught that the south loved slavery, oh, man, were they ga-ga for slavery. Meanwhile, the sophisticated north abhorred the abomination of the south. The Missouri compromise established the boundaries of slave land vs "free" land. Did that mean that black folks up north got treated a lot better...well, not really...they still couldn't vote, couldn't congregate, couldn't do all the things that white folks could (shit, they still can't in most places). (As a side note, my perception of the slave vs free state titling is a lot like pro-life vs pro-choice...the northerners wanted a negative connotation for their opponents, and a positive for themselves...thus they were "free" states...anyway, if my logic isn't perfect here, don't worry, that's not the main point)
As far as I can reckon, and as far as I've read, history tends to be written by the winners. When the north "won" the civil war (now, really, let's be honest...nobody wins a civil war...there is simply no such thing as victory when you are fighting you own people.), those in power were allowed to not only write the story, but also to "reconstruct" the south. So, our modern notion of a battle over slavery was cemented early on, with Lincoln being branded a liberator, etc (mind you, the Emancipation Proclamation was/is one of the greatest things to ever happen, but it was a political tool more than a heartfelt notion).
Reality tells a different story. Wars are not fought over slaves, just as wars are not fought over beautiful women like another fanciful tale would tell us (seeing as I got my degree in classics, I have some trouble separating modern reoccurrences of past events...ie the connection between the Trojan war myth and the civil war myth...to the same effect, it romanticized the winners). It was a war fought over economics! Money...greed...LAND!!! These are the things that wars are fought over. The northern industrialists (ie big corporations...sorry folks...that's where the robber barrons hailed from) vs the southern agrarians (ie the family farmers, whether there were slaves or not). The south was tired of the north running the show in the big picture because the north had more industry money (ie Washington was a tool of the north), so the south wanted to try their hand at self rule. A lot of the problems that modern liberals have (with all branches of gov't being run by one set), and with the differences in culture and economics widening, the south felt they were exercising their constitutional right to do it their way.
The problem occurs that the North liked getting the products from the south for cheap, they liked having the control, so they wanted to keep the south in the union. So, civil war. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't effective, it was costly in lives and money, and now, we have this modern perception that the south is full of bigots who still want slaves.
Now, I love Al Franken. I love Michael Moore (so sue me). But these two have such a deep seated hatred for the south that it is astounding. As my wife said, how could such well-educated men be so far off. I tend to play the defender of the Franken/Moore diatribe and try to write it off as anger against only some parts of the south, and certain people who have national exposure. But it's so unfair to judge the entire south based on this. There have been loonies: Strom Thrumond, Trent Lott, Sonny Pardue, the current legislature in Georgia...but those are all outspoken, politicians! Not people. Ask the normal person in Georgia who their favorite political figure is and they will without hesitation say "Jimmy Carter". Hell, Al and Michael both spout their love for Jimmy...and really, except for idiots on the far right, who wouldn't?
So, what exactly does conservative mean in the south, because if one generalization is fairly true, it's that the south is "conservative". What I saw in south GA was a completely different kind of conservative than the Washington/politician variety. There are people who live on dirt roads and want to stay on dirt roads...they like the quiet of the country, and don't really want a lot of people driving by their houses at 70 MPH. That's a desire to conserve. Of course these are all generalizations, but the farmers who still live in Georgia, and they are a-dwindlin, work very hard to make ends meet. They miss the days when they could grow their peanuts, or cotton, or whatever, sell it, and live off of that. They would like to conserve the idea of a family farm, without giant corporate interests killing the land. That's conservative.
Next, the concept of racism must enter this discussion. Are there racists in the south? This is like asking, do trees have leaves? Of course there are racists in the south. There are people there who hate every one else except for people of their own color. NO SHIT! There are idiots everywhere! Let me ask the same question: Are there racists in the north? Unless you live in a cave, I imagine you can find instances of racism in nearly every city in the US, and that might extend out into the universe. North, south, east, west, there are intolerant people! Stop blaming it all on the south. Blame it on the Dutch, and the Portuguese, and the Spanish and the British, and the French and the Germans, and the African mercenaries and everyone else who partook in that oddity of human history that was slavery. The concept of skin color as a basis of domination was not forever the way of things. When the Romans conquered, they took slaves from the surviving losers...and that was the way of it for thousands of years. Suddenly, the Europeans, mostly white-skinned, came up with the idea to make a person of different skin color less. Thus, racism...sure it's more complex than that, but that's the general idea. So...it's not the south's fault.
There are also a lot of non-racists in the south. My wife and I visited the small port town of St Marys, GA in SE Georgia. As we walked down the warm, sunny sidewalk, a middle-aged couple passed us, holding hands, walking with their children down the street. So what, you say? It was an interracial couple. Out in the open. Not afraid at all of persecution or criticism. As they walked by and said their hellos, my wife and I smiled at the deep rooted "racism" of the south.
The other half of the slavery debate is how much better off were the workers in northern factories than the black slaves? They lived and worked by the company dime, and never had a life of their own. How different is that from slavery...oh, yeah, they made a couple of cents a day...whopppee. But gollee, the north sure does like to lord slavery over the south like they were the only ones to ever mistreat other people.
So, what's the point of all of this? Firstly, the south isn't the hotbed of hatred and neo-conservativism that it is portrayed to be. The representatives and governing officials tend to be radicalized versions of the reality of the south: there is a great deal of real Christian value (not the bullshit, "more moral than thou" type, but rather the "love thy neighbor" type), there are a lot of conservative minded people, and a lot of really sweet, traditionally minded folks who love their land, love their country (just like us crazy liberals), want the best for themselves, their families and their neighbors. From what I can tell, if the right democrats (and I don't mean right wing, or sell-out pseudo-rethuglicans) campaigned for the things that southerners and dems have in common (environmental concerns, desire for the small time farmers to thrive, keeping the government out of family decisions) - it's like George Lakoff says, if we can just use the right "framing" democrats could reseize the south. They love Jimmy Carter, and there are plenty more people who feel and practice like Carter...it really could happen...especially as the south becomes more disillusioned with the Washington style conservativism. Just as dems have made progress in the Mountain west, a simple message of real democratic values could sweep the south back to the good ole blue.