In my first post on the subject of racism in the south, I argued that the South is more racist than the rest of the country – but perhaps less so than many would imagine.  In particular, I presented some cross-tabs showing the regional breakdown of the number of people harboring negative feelings toward African Americans in various contexts.  Throughout the cases I looked at, the Deep South consistently displayed higher percentages of people expressing negative feelings.  However, I also showed that the differences between the South and the rest of the country were often not huge (the differences were frequently just 10%, in terms of the number of people expressing negative feelings toward their fellow black citizens).

For those even mildly familiar with descriptive statistics though, there is something you might fault me for: there are higher concentrations of black Americans living in the South than in rest of the country.  “So,” this argument goes, “its not shocking that we don’t see as much negativity to African Americans as one might expect; because a lot of African Americans live in the South (and we’ll assume they aren’t as likely as white Americans to dislike black Americans).”

This is a very good point.  This is certainly an issue I would have to deal with if these posts were about doing “journal-grade” social science.  Yet, for my present purposes, I think this argument about population goes beyond a simple methodological “problem;” it brings out a point that underlies our understanding of the South.

The fact is that the South has always been heavily populated with black Southerners.  Furthermore, I would argue that the South belongs as much to these black Southerners as it does to white Southerners.  (There are even some people who say that the South belongs more to black Southerners, whose historical labor on plantations predominantly formed its backbone.  But I don’t want to get into that).  So where this issue of ownership brings us, is to one of the problems I have with the simple platitude “the South is racist”: it neglects to acknowledge that black Southerners also have ownership in the legacy of “the South.”

We should remember that the South is not just the home of George Wallace, but also to Martin Luther King, Jr.  Now you might recoil: “But MLK, Jr. wouldn’t have needed to fight so valiantly if it weren’t for the values of the very Southern region from which he hailed.”  Still, I would argue that King’s legacy was broader than just fighting racism in the South; he was fighting racism, and discrimination in general, throughout the US.  Moreover, I would argue that one of the most important contributions to King’s strength was a particularly Southern trait: his baptist Christian heritage, and the network of Baptist churches that supported him.

Now again, one has to be careful overstating the case.  I don’t mean to say that the struggles of the civil rights movement negate or exonerate those racist whites who live in the South.  What I do want to say is simple: “the South” is a region, not one group of people; and its heritage is as complex, and belongs to as many different kinds of people, as any region.

For instance, the “Catholic Coast” of Mississippi (influenced by the French and Spanish) is filled with many Catholics like my grandmother.  She was a women who abhorred racism, whose best friend was a black woman (not as easy in her time as it is today), who had a unionizer for a husband, and who would not stand for racism to be spoken in her presence.  (This often led to confrontations, most often ending with a racist becoming very quiet.  My grandmother was a force to be reckoned with).**

The idea that “the South is racist” also tends to ignore another important fact, beyond ignoring that some Southerners have actually been pretty cool when it comes to race (some of them white; though certainly fewer): black and white Southerners have more things in common than is often perceived.

Take the racial stereotypes of food.  I’ve heard too many times a sad joke about how black Southerners like fried chicken, watermelons, and collard greens (check this Chappelle skit for a spoof of this – I know, a white guy talking about Dave Chappelle, it’s a cliche worthy of “stuffwhitepeoplelike.com“).  Yet, what most people not from the rural South don’t understand, is that fried chicken, watermelons, and collard greens are beloved by white rural Southerners as well.  My grandparents (Dad’s side this time) grow collard greens every year in their garden, and love to eat them.  A farmboy at heart, my dad could not love fried chicken more than any other human being on the planet.  And (for civility’s sake) lets just say that my grandparents do not share the view of race more common among us younger generations.

Because this post is already too long, let me end with a coda on the subject of racism in the South.

1) As I argued in the first post, racism is not something contained solely in the South.  Frankly, when I hear many white peers say that “the South is so racist, I wouldn’t ever want to go there,” I think many of them are just trying to use the South as a whipping boy to make them feel better through where they currently live.  The frequency and consistency of this kind of phrase seems to confirm this.

2) Calling the South racist, as a blanket statement, ignores that many black Americans live in the South and doesn’t acknowledge they share in the heritage of positive Southern contributions (e.g. blues, Jimmy Carter, boiled peanuts, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc.)

3) Finally, calling the south racist ignores the sharing of cultural values across racial barriers in the South.  Many great Southern contributions are the combined effort of both black and white musicians, scientists, politicians, etc. (Although, to be fair, the contributions of black Southerners have been perpetually ignored).  Furthermore, there are a few surprising similarities that unite, rather than divide black and white Southerners (not everything, but a few things).

** NB: I don’t mean to try and exonerate myself of racism by bringing up my grandmother.  Even as a well-socialized “liberal,” I’ve had to deal with wrong-headed beliefs about race in the US (like most white people).  Not those vicious in-your-face kind of racial problems, mind you; but more the subtle problems of latent beliefs it takes a lifetime to fight.