Being both a crazy and a dorky guy, one year during college I decided to spend a Spring Break exploring the South, with another crazy and dorky guy. Specifically, our plan was to see as much of the Mississippi River as would fit into our week-long Spring Break.

After a bit of research, it turned out that this was pretty easy to do. The Great River Road follows Ol’ Man River for most of his length (by the way, I highly recommend driving the Great River Road; it’s a cool historical route). Anyway, by making a giant box to get there (see below), the two of us eventually made our way from Memphis, TN to New Orleans, LA, sleeping in a conversion van parked in various state and local parks.

Our Route

Now, the stories I could tell from this experience could fill a number of posts. We ate at diners in Tennessee, saw Civil War sites in Vicksburg, and surprised Lawrence’s family with a delivery of crawfish from Biloxi, MS. Frankly though, some of these stories are too inappropriate to tell publicly – for instance, let me just say that after a night in New Orleans, I woke up inexplicably at a truck stop in Mississippi – with no wallet – after laying all night on top of two umbrellas on the floor of my van. However, certainly the craziest highlight of this trip took place in Greenville, MS.

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My friend Rob sent me the article “Eric Oliver on the Bigot Belt” from The Freakonomics Blog. In this post, the author looks at Republic Counties that went more red in 2008 compared to 2004, a trend that is frequently cited as being due to racism (an issue that some of the posts on this blog have discussed).

Erik Oliver, a professor at the University of Chicago, argues that ”the best predictor of a county’s Republican vote margin is its white racial percentage relative to its state’s black population size. In other words, the counties where Republican margins grew the largest tended to be predominantly white places in otherwise racially mixed states.”

The author links increased Republic voting to racist attitudes, but not in what we usually think of as the usual picture of racists featuring “poverty, low education, and rural residence underlie white racial animosity.” Instead, racism only leads to higher Republic voting in a very particular context:

“These patterns are consistent with research on individual racial attitudes. Historically, the greatest levels of racial violence occurred within white enclaves near larger black populations, particularly when these enclaves are poor and uneducated. Even today, whites who live in poor, racially segregated neighborhoods within more diverse metropolitan areas tend to be more racially hostile than whites who live in either integrated neighborhoods or within largely white regions.”

This theory of racism by juxtaposition and segregation is food for thought, Panhandler readers.

Check out some of the comments on the original post, people get really intense.

Like my brothers in blogging, I’ve gotten some gruff for leaving the south.  Thankfully, I was never really seen as a southerner by friends and family anyway, but for other southerners, leaving the south is a crime that borders on treason.

Because of my crime against my brethren, I am often dismissed or naysayed by other southerners when I talk about or go back to the south.  While I expect this to happen because of this blog, it has already happened on everyone’s favorite stalking instrument, facebook.com.

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My Canadian roommate was watching professional wrestling on Youtube a few days ago, and I suddenly discovered that I was a wealth of professional wrestling knowledge. “Watch the ’87 match between Hulk Hogan and André the Giant . . . or the trailer-trash antics of the Dudley Boyz and beer-guzzling Steve Austin, or maybe Cactus Jack (later Mankind), or 1970s wrestler HIllbilly Jim.” 

Pro wrestlers Hillbilly Jim, Mr. T., and Hulk Hogan

Considering I never watched wrestling by choice, but seemed to have absorbed knowledge from my father’s relentless fandom and my school peers, I asked myself the question: is professional wrestling a Southern sport? How about compared to NASCAR? Click to read more…

Inspired by the previous post pulled from Strange Map; I thought it would be a good idea to give a tour of the Panhandle by its demographics (you can tell I’ve strayed too far from numbers in the last few posts – I’m jonesing for some statistical empiricism).

First, to quickly return to the subject of our first posts, let me sort out what I’m talking about when I say “the Panhandle” (abbrev. PH, from now on). The PH arguably includes the following counties:

Taking this area as my best guess at the geography of the Panhandle, the following things are most definitive of this region (some the following maps are taken from 2000 Census Data, which is unfortunately the best data on these subjects at the moment).

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The guys over at the blog Strange Maps have come up with a great display demonstrating a modern effect of slavery on the contemporary US.  Check out these two maps, one detailing 2008 voting patterns, and the other detailing 1860 cotton production (bluer areas represent voting Democrat, redder areas Republican):

Cotton and Voting

And now a juxtaposition of the two:

Strange Map Overlay

The maps kind of speak for themselves, but what is most interesting is the extent of the geographic correlation.  Furthermore, turning to the Panhandle, one can see suggestive evidence for why the Tallahassee area tends to vote more Democratic.

While my main field of historical research is Modern U.S. history, my secondary field is women’s history. I don’t really know how that happened, but my research topics for the past few years have dealt heavily with women’s issues, and so I responded by entering that field.

Anyway, I’ve been compelled since then to investigate gender issues in a more analytical light. One of the events that I think about from time to time, and one of my better southern stories, is what happened at the promenades I attended in high school.
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“He calleth me out of Seir:
Watchman, what of the night?
Watchman, what of the night?
The watchman said:
The morning cometh, but also the night.
If ye will enquire, enquire ye.
Return, come.” (Isaiah 21:11)

a

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Personally, as a sociologist, I know how easy it is to grow nostalgic about the place you study; to latch onto superficial differences that are hardly differences at all; and to miss those things that really separate one place from another. That’s why in my intro post for this blog, I pledged (like my compatriots) to resist waxing sentimental about Southern experiences. In the spirit of this hard-nosed approach, I’ve continually tried to ask myself: What things really are Southern? What would I find in the South that I really would have trouble finding elsewhere? And most important in this quest: What about me is actually Southern?

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The Law Turns 27

Happy birthday, and all that jazz.

In an earlier post, Brian aptly mentioned that strange situation we three panhandlers share: we’re “kind-of” from the South. Of course, this isn’t true from a literal, geographic standpoint – we’re all definitely from the southern portion of our country. I never in my childhood lived north of the Florida panhandle. Until I recently moved to Michigan, the “dead of winter” was signaled by 45° weather. Still, culturally each of us panhandlers exist in that liminal space where we aren’t quite Southern enough for Southerners; but too Southern for the rest of the country to be anything but.

Let me give you an example. I was talking to my grandmother on my cell phone awhile back, and the connection was bad. I said to her “I’m having trouble hearing you,” and she said to me: “that’s because you talk like a Yankee.” Ouch. Don’t sugarcoat it Granny.

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There are a few things I miss about living in the Panhandle, but perhaps the hardest one to replicate in the Midwest is the food.

Oh Lord...

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When I was in high school, I was already trying to apply my sociological imagination for my own benefit. By my senior year, I was very aware of the role football played in status and, thus, the role football played in one’s dating outlook. As an effort to gain the good graces of the cheerleaders at Suwannee High School and to gain attention more broadly, I spoke to the Suwannee County School Board in 2001 in protest of the decision to not allow the already-purchased cheerleading uniforms to be worn at school.

In one my earliest (and most failed) attempts at eloquence, I spoke to a crowded room of maybe 70 people about my own initial doubts concerning the importance or function of cheerleaders, and then discussed my stark conversion once the cheerleader uniform ban was revealed. The image of a school lacking such prominent reminders of this core tradition of southern education and tradition, football culture, was a devolution of our community feelings, I argued, and the long tradition of cheerleading uniforms allowing bare shoulders and slightly shorter skirts (which is required by the full range of motion in their routines) was an important mechanism for bringing school spirit to mind throughout the school day and not just at games that only a (sizable) minority attended. I also argued that I routinely broke dress code through my involvement in school theatre and playing varsity soccer (that’s right, varsity), as well as for Halloween and other costume events, all without recrimination. The Suwannee Democrat quotes me in their coverage of this debacle as saying, in reference to cheerleading uniforms during the school day, “It’s a symbol of our school, a tradition.”

While the uniform ban was not reversed, there was an up side: we had at least made the attempt, we had stood up and had been heard. Cheerleaders, parents, and I learned about the organizing for issues we believe in, and these skills are important for being good citizens.

And I did succeed in going on a series of dates with a cheerleader.