A “New” Confederacy?
Democracy. Profunksticated’s starting to wonder if this system is all it’s cracked up to be.
Joan Walsh, the editor in chief of Salon, had this recent piece asking whether white racism will hurt Barack Obama’s chances to be elected President. Please don’t laugh.
Predictably, Ms. Walsh’s column set off a torrent of nearly 1,000 comments. I’m posting an excerpt from a letter, signed by someone called “Independent Liberal Contrarian,” that disturbed me. Maybe it shouldn’t have. I think that coming of age in the post-civil rights era has colored (no pun intended) my view of how white folks view African slave-descended black Americans.
In short, I’ve wanted to believe their view of us has improved since Jim Crow. But sadly, it hasn’t. Here is the excerpt (if you want to read the entire letter, go to page 30 of the comment thread, which is now closed):
I don’t think the Democrats could have chosen two worse candidates for president if they wanted to be competitive in the South. But since, we are talking about racial prejudice, I will I will reserve my remarks to the (any) black candidate.
Rest assured racism is very much well and alive throughout the south. There are many white people here that would sooner cut off their arm before they would vote a nigger in as President. No amount of words can convey the revulsion that a southerner naturally feels when they think about a nigger leading the country.
These are offspring of families that endured the “War of Yankee Aggression.” In the minds of many, the war was fought and lost but it is never forgotten. If Obama becomes president, I would not at all be surprised to hear from people in my state, a revival of a call to secede from the union. Racism is not a passion; it is a fervent belief.
I know southern whites who intentionally voted for Obama in the primary just so they would have the pleasure of seeing him go down to defeat to a Republican candidate in the general election this fall. In the 20 years I have lived in the south, I have yet to see a southern bigot change their thinking. It is like part of their DNA. It also cuts across all socio-economic classes. There are of course exceptions but they are almost a statistical anomaly.
First off, why does every candidate for president have to appeal to this region of historically evil knuckle-draggers? I mean, did Ronald Reagan know what he was doing when he opened his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the murders of those four civil rights workers? Or better yet, did he really believe he was doing the right thing or was it just a crass political move? Did Reagan sleep at night?
But what what struck me was the “secession” comment. We know Abraham Lincoln, who was no saint when it came to viewing Africans as humans, left no stops unpulled in trying to keep the southern states from seceding from the Union.
Just for laughs, say Obama’s elected and the white southerners go berserk and renew their ancestors’ calls for secession by the old Confederacy.
I’d love to see a President Obama say, “OK, I’ll see your secession call and raise you a constitutional amendment to KICK YOUR SORRY ASSES OUT OF THE UNION. After all, that’s what you’ve wanted for more than 140 years, right? And once you’re gone and we seal your borders, good luck in finding the money to get your government going again.”
I love “what-if” scenarios.
