I worship at the altar of Johnny Cash, I think Dolly Parton is a genius and as far as I am concerned "Sweet Home Alabama" ought to be our national anthem. But most of what currently passes for country music has always left me cold, which is why I confess I am unfamiliar with the ouevre of Mr. Brad Paisley. He's got me riveted, however, with his latest song, "Accidental Racist."
It's about a white Southern guy wearing a Lynnard Skynnard t-shirt encountering a black guy who views the shirt's Confederate flag with distrust and dislike. It's a song that sums up everything I find both exasperating and endearing about today's Southern culture: its friendliness, the willingness of blacks and whites to attempt to talk about difficult subjects--and, not least, the abysmal ignorance most Southerners today outside of academia have about their own history. Let us deconstruct.
Just a proud rebel son with an old can of worms--Okay, that's a nice phrase...
I’m proud of where I’m from but not everything we’ve done/And it ain’t like you and me can re-write history--Wrong! You can rewrite history. We've done it! Robert E. Lee barely had time to re-plant his posterior on the back of ol' Traveler at Appomattox before Southerners got right down to doing just that. What was the war about? Going in, it was slavery ("Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world"--the Mississippi Ordinance of Secession, just one document out of many contemporaneous pieces of evidence); after the war, it was about states' rights. The Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, formidable lobbying groups in their day, devoted the next three or four generations to making sure that this "correct" version of history was the only version taught to schoolchildren in the South, and they worked their will on both public education, Southern universities and educational publishing for the next 75 years or so. It's highly likely that any Southerner who reads this will have been the recipient of some version of the Lost Cause myth. I was. It was a hell of a PR effort, and the damage that it did is with us still. A good place to start to read about this is David Blight's Race and Reunion, which has the single best summation of exactly how the UDC did it in chapter 8.
Moving on:
They called it Reconstruction, fixed the buildings, dried some tears / We’re still siftin’ through the rubble after a hundred-fifty years
Wrong again! Thanks to the UDC et al., generations of Southerners have grown up with the delusion Mr. Paisley still labors under--that it was a disaster perpetrated on a defeated South by thieving Yankee Carpetbaggers and Southern Scalawags who cynically manipulated those simple-minded darkies to gain money and political power for themselves, destroying civil society in the process. There was corruption during Reconstruction--it was the dawn of the Gilded Age, an era of rampant political corruption everywhere, and come to think of it a lot like today--but Reconstruction was not an unmitigated disaster for the South. The destroyers of civil society were the Ku Klux Klan, which came into being the instant it became clear in 1867 that Congress was going to give former slaves the vote. The record of racial and political violence perpetrated by the Klan and their Southern Democratic allies over the next four years is so vast it takes up 13 volumes of testimony before Congress--which you can find online today at the Internet Archive, a non-profit open source website for scholars, under the ponderous title Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire Into Conditions in the Late Insurrectionary States. Never heard of it? That's because the Lost Cause folks made sure that most of anti-Klan witnesses were discounted as drunks or thieves or "nigger lovers" or any one of a dozen other all-purpose epithets of the day. At the same time, people in the North were getting heartily sick of that pesky "Negro question" and were more than ready to write off the whole thing as a gigantic Redneck Brawl. The result: all the investigations came to nothing, and the testimony fell into more than a century of oblivion.
Mind you, the Klan didn't just intend to put former slaves back in their place. They also hated public education, anybody who voted Republican, anybody who dared to try to teach former slaves their ABCs, and any preacher of the Gospel of Christ who dared to propose that white and blacks were equal in the sight of God. In this they made no distinction whatsoever between white and black. And when I say "hate" I don't mean writing nasty letters; I mean terrorism of the kind that the Taliban is doing in Afghanistan today. They tortured. The burned down schools. They castrated. They killed. They ran law-abiding people off their land and left their children to starve. The only reason they went away (only to come back later, in the early 20th century) was that in the hotly contested Presidential election of 1876, between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes, Southern Democrats made a devil's bargain with the northern Republicans: we'll let you steal this election if you take your soldiers out of the South and let us run things here the way we want to. The result was something we know now as Jim Crow.
I know Mr. Paisley is busy touring, so I have little hope he will delve into any of this. But before one more white person from the South gets up on his high horse to defend "Southern pride," I wish to God (pausing here, to bang my head against my keyboard) that they would take a look at the actual historical record to make sure they know what they're professing pride in. Southerners do indeed have much to be proud of, chief among them the fact that black and white Southerners are generally on cordial terms these days; moreover, the record of our contributions to American culture, literature and music fill many libraries. But for a people who profess to love history, we have been tragically misled and tragically incurious about which history we choose to love. It is time, for God's sake, to get a clue.
Here endeth the rant--except one last thing, directed to all those snobs out there who delight in taking such opportunities to start trashing my native region as a land of bigots and hicks. I say this with all sincerity, and in the nicest possible way: Fuck off.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." —Samuel Johnson
Monday, April 8, 2013
Monday, April 1, 2013
This just in, from Salon:
The chairwoman of the Georgia Republican Party fears that if same-sex marriage becomes legal, straight people will enter into fake gay marriages in order to fraudulently receive benefits.
“You may be as straight as an arrow, and you may have a friend that is as straight as an arrow,” Sue Everhart told the Marietta Daily Journal. “Say you had a great job with the government where you had this wonderful health plan. I mean, what would prohibit you from saying that you’re gay, and y’all get married and still live as separate, but you get all the benefits? I just see so much abuse in this it’s unreal."
So, just thinking out loud here, let's say I have this great federal job with the fantastic federal health care benefits, and I have this friend, let's call her Marcia, who needs health insurance--and of course! We'll get married! Because why wouldn't a person enter into a fake but legally binding arrangement with another person that they'd have to get out of in case they ever met somebody they'd actually want to marry, if not for major medical? And who cares if this opens them to potential liability if their spouse gets sued over something, or if they have to decide whose house gets to be the primary residence for income tax purposes? Heck, people are probably queuing up right now to find some same-sex partner with a federal job that they can marry so they can cheat the government. You have to wonder why nobody has tried this with plain old heterosexual marriage before.
Oh, right. It's because the whole idea is as weird as it is possible to get.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Two Stories About Race in the South
I get interesting mail these days from people who have read my book, and one particularly interesting one came today. I won't use my correspondent's name, since I haven't asked his permission to do that, and in any event the point he raises is more important than who he is. He has taken issue with the way in which I portray the attitudes of many white Southerners throughout the 20th century when it comes to confronting our region's history on race; the gist of his argument, I think, is that I am being over-the-top politically correct and laying on the white liberal guilt pretty thick. In hopes of getting me to reconsider my position, he said, he was including a brief story, "in hopes that it might make people with good intentions begin to rethink their philosophy about how to save blacks from themselves, and the "feel good" guilt-driven liberal philosophy that is pervasive in our institutions."
Okay, I thought; fair enough.
Their mother knew that Jesse could have died and
she took a long time to get over what happened.
So that Marty would never, ever do anything like that again, once a
month she would get the two boys together in the kitchen and tell Jesse what a
terrible thing his brother had done. She
would retell how sick Jesse was and how he almost died.
End of story. And I thought it was a terrific story, though not for the reasons the author probably intended. I thought it was terrific since it so perfectly explains how guilt and defensiveness can stifle honest conversation, and how this "hardening of the heart" Marty accuses Jesse of can look an awful lot like psychological projection. So in answer, I wrote this alternative proposed ending:
But here's the thing: I don't like the ending of my story any better than I like the ending of the first one. Is it possible that at some point in the 21st century, somebody will come up with something better?
Okay, I thought; fair enough.
This is a story about two
brothers, age 5 and 6. Marty, the older
brother, did not treat his younger brother, Jesse, as he would like to be
treated. He went so far as believing
that he was better and smarter than his younger brother, even though this was
not the case.
One day, Marty did some
terrible to his younger brother. Their
mother had just made lunch for the boys and put their sandwiches out in the
breakfast room. Marty noticed that Jesse
was still outside playing and he began to think about how he could hurt his
brother. Marty had always been a little jealous
of Sammy, so this was his chance to get even.
He knew that Jesse was allergic to peanuts, which made his Mother worry
all the time about him. She never seemed
to worry much about him. So, when nobody
was looking, he crushed a few peanuts and placed them inside his bologna and
mustard sandwich. That would do the
trick!
Well, Jesse ate the sandwich
and got sick, real sick. He had to go to
the hospital and got his stomach pumped.
The Doctor said he might have died had he not gotten treatment as
quickly as he did, but he did get better and soon was able to go home. Marty realized
what happened and felt awful. He did not
understand that what he did could have caused so much damage, maybe even killed
his brother, so he told Jesse that he would never do anything like that
again. And, he really meant it. From that day forward, Marty never did
anything to hurt Sammy. He never put
him down or made fun of him. And soon
enough, Jesse forgave him for what he did.
[As the years passed--I am editing for space here--these re-tellings would get more elaborate and detailed and embellished, since the boys' mother wanted to make sure Marty never forgot what he had done wrong.
Although Marty felt awful and
had never treated Jesse bad after the incident, Jesse eventually grew to resent his brother
for what he did.,,,Gradually, over time, he began to feel a
bubbling hatred towards his brother. He
did not really know how it happened, but he felt like he just didn’t want to
have a brother anymore.
Going on twenty years now, Jesse
has never spoken to his brother.
Marty still loves his brother
very much but has moved on, knowing that he can’t do anything to change his
brother’s heart, which has hardened with hate.
Jesse still lives at home
with his mother, who loves him very much, and takes care of him.
After Marty did this terrible thing to his brother, he realized how awful it was and vowed never to do it again. In fact, he was so deeply ashamed of what he had done that he also vowed to put the whole painful incident behind him and never, ever mention it to a living soul again. Over the years, Jesse had some lingering stomach problems associated with the peanut incident--nothing fatal, more of a continuing reminder of how he had almost died--and it bothered him that from all he could see, Marty had totally forgotten about what he had done. He not only never apologized for it, he never mentioned it or even said "that's too bad" when Jesse didn't feel so well. Jesse didn't want Marty to wear a hair shirt for the rest of his life; he just wanted Marty to be able to talk about what had happened and to own what he'd done. Instead, all he got was "Aren't you over that yet?" After awhile, this really began to eat at him, and this was bad for both brothers: it put a wall between them, and it also affected Jesse's sense of responsibility for managing his own health and well-being.
Today, Marty thinks his brother is a casebook example of learned helplessness; Jesse thinks his brother is a casebook example of the power of psychological denial. They are both right.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Thank God for Mississippi
So no sooner does Mayor Bloomberg in New York get behind a city ordinance that would ban the sale of sodas over the size of sixteen ounces than Mississippi comes back with a law that that would ban municipalities from enacting such bans. Mississippi, the state with the highest obesity rate in the nation--and high rates of cardiovascular disease and diabetes to show for it--is taking a courageous stand against any legislative attempt at curtailing marketing techniques that foster obesity.
What, you ask, were they thinking? I know exactly what they were thinking: "I'll be damned if any sumbitch gonna tell me what to eat." They were thinking from that lizard brain all Southerners have, located directly at the base of the skull, which bypasses the frontal lobe altogether and rises up in outrage at the mere suggestion that they might knuckle under to any edict, no matter how well meaning, from some dern Outsider. Hell, yeah, us folks in Mississippi are fat! So what? You folks in New York City eat fish bait on little bitty rice cakes!
It is in the nature of Southerners to see threats to freedom everywhere--everywhere outside of our own immediate environs, that is. It is not in the nature of Southerners to perceive that their freedom may have already been compromised by advertising wizards and focus groups who are so fiendishly clever at coming up with more and better ways to cram more "mouth feel" and calories into that bag of Doritos or bucket of KFC. Southerners love guns; we do not excel at introspection.
Actually, I confess that I too sort of bridled at the thought of Mayor Bloomberg telling me I couldn't have a 32-ounce soda if I wanted it. One of those things is cheaper than four 16-ounce sodas at the movies, and when I go with my husband and kids we often get three or four straws and pass the Vat o' Coke back and forth. (Actually, I'd be fine with just one straw, but my kids think Mom has cooties.) We don't keep soda in our house, so this is one of those occasional treats--and who's to say we can't have it? Apparently a judge in New York thought the same thing, since he struck down the Bloomberg law. I forget the exact legal rationale, but it was something along the lines of how the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
In a way, this little episode is the story of democracy in microcosm: a nation's struggle to discern and pursue the common good despite the determined resistance of its citizens to submit to anything of the sort. Oh well. As we say in Georgia: Thank God for Mississippi. If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, then knee-jerk redneck contrarianism comes with the territory.
What, you ask, were they thinking? I know exactly what they were thinking: "I'll be damned if any sumbitch gonna tell me what to eat." They were thinking from that lizard brain all Southerners have, located directly at the base of the skull, which bypasses the frontal lobe altogether and rises up in outrage at the mere suggestion that they might knuckle under to any edict, no matter how well meaning, from some dern Outsider. Hell, yeah, us folks in Mississippi are fat! So what? You folks in New York City eat fish bait on little bitty rice cakes!
It is in the nature of Southerners to see threats to freedom everywhere--everywhere outside of our own immediate environs, that is. It is not in the nature of Southerners to perceive that their freedom may have already been compromised by advertising wizards and focus groups who are so fiendishly clever at coming up with more and better ways to cram more "mouth feel" and calories into that bag of Doritos or bucket of KFC. Southerners love guns; we do not excel at introspection.
Actually, I confess that I too sort of bridled at the thought of Mayor Bloomberg telling me I couldn't have a 32-ounce soda if I wanted it. One of those things is cheaper than four 16-ounce sodas at the movies, and when I go with my husband and kids we often get three or four straws and pass the Vat o' Coke back and forth. (Actually, I'd be fine with just one straw, but my kids think Mom has cooties.) We don't keep soda in our house, so this is one of those occasional treats--and who's to say we can't have it? Apparently a judge in New York thought the same thing, since he struck down the Bloomberg law. I forget the exact legal rationale, but it was something along the lines of how the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
In a way, this little episode is the story of democracy in microcosm: a nation's struggle to discern and pursue the common good despite the determined resistance of its citizens to submit to anything of the sort. Oh well. As we say in Georgia: Thank God for Mississippi. If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, then knee-jerk redneck contrarianism comes with the territory.
Friday, March 8, 2013
Lunatics of Georgia, Unite!
I love being from Georgia. This is because Georgia lawmakers are a never-ending and rich source of amusement, living as they do in an alternate reality of their own devising. Where else, I ask, would you have discovered a serious legislative consideration of something called the Traveling Electric Chair? And yet this was a serious proposal at back when I was a reporter at the Atlanta Journal Constitution; the idea was to put the state's execution apparatus into a van and hold executions around the state at the site of the crime. I mean, why not? They make extension cords, don't they? (To be fair, this wasn't a new idea, just an old idea resurrected; states in the South used to do something like this all the time.) It was while this proposal was being debated that the AJC ran two of my favorite newspaper headlines of all time: "Traveling Electric Chair Clears House" was one, followed the next day by "Traveling Electric Chair Passes Senate Panel." No, I am not making this up. No, there is no record of how fast the traveling electric chair was going at the time.
Oh, but that was decades ago, you protest; things have gotten better. No, they have not! Georgia legislators, in their finite wisdom, are now considering a law that would allow people who are mentally ill to carry firearms. In light of massacres at Newton and Virginia Tech, both perpetrated by people whose mental states should have prevented them from getting anywhere near a gun and yet who found it appalling easy to do so, Georgia legislators decide that the answer is: loosen the few pathetic restrictions on gun ownership that we have now! More Marshal Dillon wannabes packing heat! As Mao Tse-tung might have said if he'd been a member of the NRA, Let a thousand bullets zoom!
This is of course lunacy--yet as a potential beneficiary of this law (I am a certifiably crazy person who has been hospitalized for a mental illness, and I often visit the relatives in Georgia), there is a part of me that says, Right on! For one thing, crime statistics show that mentally ill people are far more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators of it. And in Georgia, they clearly have reason to fear not just the criminals who routinely prey on them, but also the inmates who are running the asylum they call the Georgia General Assembly. It's an arms race, people! Allons, enfants de la patrie! --target practice starts at eight.
Oh, but that was decades ago, you protest; things have gotten better. No, they have not! Georgia legislators, in their finite wisdom, are now considering a law that would allow people who are mentally ill to carry firearms. In light of massacres at Newton and Virginia Tech, both perpetrated by people whose mental states should have prevented them from getting anywhere near a gun and yet who found it appalling easy to do so, Georgia legislators decide that the answer is: loosen the few pathetic restrictions on gun ownership that we have now! More Marshal Dillon wannabes packing heat! As Mao Tse-tung might have said if he'd been a member of the NRA, Let a thousand bullets zoom!
This is of course lunacy--yet as a potential beneficiary of this law (I am a certifiably crazy person who has been hospitalized for a mental illness, and I often visit the relatives in Georgia), there is a part of me that says, Right on! For one thing, crime statistics show that mentally ill people are far more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators of it. And in Georgia, they clearly have reason to fear not just the criminals who routinely prey on them, but also the inmates who are running the asylum they call the Georgia General Assembly. It's an arms race, people! Allons, enfants de la patrie! --target practice starts at eight.
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