Most US regions have historic racial divides; but few have been as staunch as the political and economic system that began in the 17th-century South (at least if Lawrence’s excellent installment on early Southern history is to be believed). This division between black and white southerners constitutes a central axis in the history of the South, and has defined most the region’s important historical events.

Mmmmmm.... cultural influence....

But after surviving abolition, emancipation, and Civil Rights, a new development might finally undermine this old Southern dichotomy for good: immigration. While most Americans think immigration is isolated to places like New York, California, Texas, or South Florida; few recognize that a new wave of immigration is shifting away from these traditional gateways into more unlikely places.

Now it’s important to not overstate the issue – Mississippi is not a “majority-minority state,” like California – yet, even on a smaller scale, immigration is having a noticeable impact on some places in the South. Consider North Carolina. Between 1990 and 2000 the state experienced 274% growth in the percent of the population that was foreign-born. Below, you can see the growth in all state’s whose foreign-born pop.’s doubled between 1990 and 2000.

Click to read more…

The recent post on obesity in the South seems to have sparked an interest in exactly why Southerners are more obese.  In particular, the suggestive map showing that Southerners don’t exercise as much as the rest of the country caught people’s attention.

So digging deeper then, what might be some of the general causes for Southerners’ obesity?

Well, first lets start off by saying that Brian’s comment to the first post is correct: there has to be something explaining this beyond any over-simplified cultural argument.  It seems foolish to argue that Southerners have a peculiar cultural trait where they celebrate poor health and obesity.  Also, while the cultural love of fried foods has to be part of the story, this can’t be the end of the story.  Even with poor education, most people at least know that fried foods aren’t good for you.  So the answer to higher obesity can’t just simply be that Southerners choose to hurt themselves more than the rest of the country.

Looking beyond over-simplified theories, there are a number of other possible causes:

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So, to change the site up a bit, I’ve decided that my post-length comments are probably better placed in the “main feed.”  This accomplishes two of my personal goals: 1) Further the evolutionary propogation of ideas that come from me; and 2) Satisfies my desire to make the site as close to fivethirtyeight.com as possible by having “author response posts”.

To start this off, I’m going to post a response to Brian’s “Are there more guns in the South?“  Basically, I ran some stats on his hypotheses, and I think that what I found is worthy of “front billing.”

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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.

I grew up in a trailer (or, if you’re more politically correct, “manufactured home” or “mobile home”). This meant nothing until I began devising schemes of sneaking potential girl friends somewhere to make-out, and it was then that my house struck me as an embarrassment. I remember awkwardly laughing at the “Blue Collar Comedy Tour,” thinking of how I lived in a trailer, yet many of the descriptors of “trailer trash” seemed as appropriate for poor people generally as they were for people living in mobile homes. Who, I wondered then and now, lives in trailers? How many mobile homes are there in America, and in the South? Are more or less people living in trailers nowadays? Do mobile homes really suck that badly? 

It’s hard to find demographic data on manufactured homes by Region, but there are some. There are currently some 8,705,000 manufactured homes in the United States with about 7% of all houses. The South (composed of Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas) has 4,985,000 trailers, versus 1,586,000 in the West, 1,503,000 in the Midwest, and 631,000 in the Northeast. Click to read more…

Now I know the issue of racism is a bit heavy for one of our first posts.  Still, this topic is clearly something that a blog about the South must deal with.  So, in this first of two upcoming posts on the topic, I will address the issue of racism in the South.  (These are going to be longer posts unfortunately; as this is a knotty subject).

Let me start off by saying that there is no doubt in my mind that the South, including the Panhandle, is more racist than any other part of the country, and that it has a long history of racism.  Also, I cannot speak for the other contributors, but personally, I don’t buy arguments trying to limit the egregiousness of Southern slavery and racism by “putting it in a historical context.”  In my mind, the South was a driving force in the evil practice of slavery – and far more so than any other region of the country.  I also do not buy arguments about how “the civil war was really about economics” or other such nonsense – most of the confederacy supported slavery, was fighting to keep slavery, and one cannot separate this out from their other motives.

In short, neither I, nor this blog, are apologists for the South’s racism.  None of the authors here want any part of racism.  That being said, racism (like the history of racial struggles in the US) is complicated, and so I think it deserves attention beyond just the simple platitude that “the south is racist.”

Why is it more complicated than that?  Well, let’s turn to some numbers.

Click to read more…