Dixie’s problem with black Obama and Scotland’s monoculture
WHAT is the US South’s problem with Obama: Garry Wills wonders:
I was made aware of the odd mix of gain and loss when I went back to Atlanta to see my beloved grandmother. She told me not to hold change between my lips while groping for a pocket to put it in—“That might have been in a nigger’s mouth.” Once, when she took me to Mass, she walked out of the church when a black priest came out to celebrate. I wondered why, since she would sit and eat with a black woman who helped her with housework. “It is the dignity—I would not let him take the Lord in his hands.”
Tradition dies hard, hardest among those who cannot admit to the toll it has taken on them. That is why the worst aspects of the South are resurfacing under Obama’s presidency. It is the dignity. That a black should have not merely rights but prominence, authority, and even awe—that is what many Southerners cannot stomach. They would let him ride on the bus, or get into Ivy League schools. But he must be kept from the altar; he cannot perform the secular equivalent of taking the Lord in his hands. It is the dignity.
George Packer argues that the South is far from powerless:
Solidity has always beeon the South’s strength, and its weakness. The same Southern lock that once held the Democratic Party now divides the Republican Party from the socially liberal, fiscally moderate tendencies of the rest of America. The Southern bloc in the House majority can still prevent the President from enjoying any major legislative achievements, but it has no chance of enacting an agenda, and it’s unlikely to produce a nationally popular figure.
As its political power declines, the South might occupy a place like Scotland’s in the United Kingdom, as a cultural draw for the rest of the country, with a hint of the theme park.
Scotland is a monoculture? And, is it always race? Seth Mandel argues in the Washington Post:
This follows the general belief of the mainstream media that criticism of the Obama administration is racist unless it is sexist, though in some cases it can be both. . . . To the Post, if you are from the South, your motivations are immediately suspect. If you are from the South, you don’t have quite the same right as others to engage in public debate…
Posted: 27th, January 2013 | In: Politicians Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
