Resilience of Southern Identity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Cooper ◽  
H. Gibbs Knotts
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
American South ◽  
First Century ◽  
The South ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Remarkable Change ◽  
Southern Identity ◽  
Interstate Highway System ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The American South

The American South has experienced remarkable change over the past half century. Black voter registration has increased, the region’s politics have shifted from one-party Democratic to the near-domination of the Republican Party, and in-migration has increased its population. At the same time, many outward signs of regional distinctiveness have faded--chain restaurants have replaced mom-and-pop diners, and the interstate highway system connects the region to the rest of the country. Given all of these changes, many have argued that southern identity is fading. But here, Christopher A. Cooper and H. Gibbs Knotts show how these changes have allowed for new types of southern identity to emerge. For some, identification with the South has become more about a connection to the region’s folkways or to place than about policy or ideology. For others, the contemporary South is all of those things at once--a place where many modern-day southerners navigate the region’s confusing and omnipresent history. Regardless of how individuals see the South, this study argues that the region’s drastic political, racial, and cultural changes have not lessened the importance of southern identity but have played a key role in keeping regional identification relevant in the twenty-first century.

scholarly journals Industrialization and Two-Party Democracy

1991 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 100-112
Author(s):  
Eric M. Mackey
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
American South ◽  
Industrial Change ◽  
The South ◽  
Congressional Voting ◽  
Industrial Employment ◽  
Primary Finding ◽  
The American South ◽  
The Impact

This paper analyzes the impact of industrial change on partisan transitions in the American South. Using aggregate data from the decennial censes from 1940 to 1980 and aggregate election returns for roughly this same period, the primary finding is a weak and often contradictory bivariate relationship between industrial employment and partisan support in the South. The results were usually much worse for a typical economic development thesis when the dependent and independent variables were operationalized dynamically and when presidential voting and congressional voting were analyzed separately. Overall, the evidence in this paper does not suggest that the Republican party is necessarily or often a beneficiary of industrialization. Neither does it speak well for the possibility of pursuing industrial development as a means of promoting partisan democracy in the South or any other geopolitical context.

The American South and LGBT Politics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Barth
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
American South ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Personal Contact ◽  
The South ◽  
Lgbtq Rights ◽  
The American South

The cultural distinctiveness of the South led to a backlash in the region in the years following the rise of a national LGBTQ movement. In the decades that followed, political science research showed that the South remained fundamentally different than elsewhere in the nation in terms of attitudes regarding LGBTQ individuals and policies, both regarding overall views and Southerners’ imperviousness to personal contact with queer individuals in terms of reshaping attitudes. In electoral politics, explicit group-based appeals regarding LGBTQ individuals were often employed. And, policy divergence between the South and non-South was stark. While unambiguous shifts have occurred in the South in a more pro-LGBTQ rights direction, the region remains distinctively conservative when it comes to LGBTQ politics. Particularly striking are Southern attitudes toward transgender individuals and policies. That said, “two Souths” have begun to cement on LGBTQ politics as urbanized and suburbanized areas have diverged. Moreover, within the region’s Republican Party, a factional divide has begun to show itself across the South. The South remains consequential in gauging whether backpedaling on the dramatic progress made on LGBTQ rights is occurring in the United States.

2. Section to nation

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-37
Author(s):  
Charles Reagan Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Economic System ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
American South ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
The South ◽  
Southern Identity ◽  
Reconstruction Era ◽  
The American South ◽  
Sectional Identity

‘Section to nation’ examines how, by 1830, the American South had long had a predominantly agricultural economy. Its people soon idealized the agrarian republic that had taken shape after the American Revolution as the basis for an emerging sectional identity. Slavery was the basis of a productive economic system, in which the South was enmeshed with northern merchants and traders and the whole financial world of England. The American Civil War undermined southern ideology dramatically through the emancipation of slaves. The Reconstruction era would be nearly equal to the Civil War in forging a self-conscious white southern identity.

Southern Agrarians

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny LeRoy
Keyword(s):  
American South ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
The South ◽  
Robert Penn Warren ◽  
The American South ◽  
John Crowe Ransom

The Southern Agrarians were twelve writers from the American South who advocated a return to an agrarian-based economy throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In their 1930 collection of essays I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974), Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) and others attacked the system of modern industrial capitalism and its effect on the traditional way of Southern life.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Angie Maxwell ◽  
Todd Shields
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Christian Right ◽  
Family Values ◽  
Policy Position ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
The South ◽  
Southern Identity ◽  
Racial Hierarchy ◽  
Playing Field

The GOP’s Southern Strategy initiated the realignment of the South with the Republican Party by exploiting white racial anxiety about social changes to the southern racial hierarchy. However, the GOP’s success was not solely the result of its policy position on civil rights. Rather, that decision was part of a series of decisions the party made on feminism and religion as well, in what is called here the “Long Southern Strategy.” White resentment toward a more level racial playing field, for example, was intensified by the threat of a level gender playing field, and the promotion of “family values” by anti-feminists paved the way for the Christian Right. Moreover, Republican candidates did not just campaign down South, they became “southern.” Throughout realignment, the power of southern identity was rarely taken into consideration, but for whites who proclaim themselves to be southern, that has been the only party that really mattered.

Short-Term Pain for Long-Term Gain: The Logic of Legislative Party Switching in the Contemporary American South

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoine Yoshinaka ◽  
Seth C. McKee
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
American South ◽  
Career Decisions ◽  
Significant Risk ◽  
Political Ambition ◽  
Short Term ◽  
High Prevalence ◽  
Party Switching ◽  
The American South

One of the most important career decisions for a legislator is the decision to switch parties, and it raises a theoretical puzzle: it carries significant risk, yet sometimes legislators do change partisan affiliation. We elucidate this puzzle with the first-ever systematic comparison of the entire careers of state legislative switchers and non-switchers in the American South, where the high prevalence of party switching coincided with rapid realignment toward the Republican Party. Our analysis is the first to evaluate all post-switch career decisions (retiring, running for reelection, running for higher office) simultaneously, and it is the broadest in its scope with two full decades of career data. We demonstrate that converts to the Grand Old Party (GOP) pay a reelection cost. However, they are less likely to retire than Democratic non-switchers and more likely to seek higher office. This latter finding is especially strong during the earlier part of our study—when the Republican bench in the South was not as deep and competition for the party label was not as intense. Our findings suggest that political ambition motivates legislators to trade short-term electoral costs for a more promising long-term electoral career with the ascendant party.

Latinas/os in the Southern United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perla M. Guerrero
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
New Destinations ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
The American South ◽  
And Migration

Latinas/os were present in the American South long before the founding of the United States of America, yet knowledge about their southern communities in different places and time periods is deeply uneven. In fact, regional themes important throughout the South clarify the dynamics that shaped Latinas/os’ lives, especially race, ethnicity, and the colorline; work and labor; and migration and immigration. Ideas about racial difference, in particular, reflected specifics of place, and intersections of local, regional, and international endeavors and movements of people and resources. Accordingly, Latinas/os’ position and treatment varied across the South. They first worked in agricultural fields picking cotton, oranges, and harvesting tobacco, then in a variety of industries, especially poultry and swine processing and packing. The late 20th century saw the rapid growth of Latinas/os in southern states due to changing migration and immigration patterns that moved from traditional states of reception to new destinations in rural, suburban, and urban locales with limited histories with Latinas/os or with substantial numbers of immigrants in general.

“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done”: Southern Religious History in Retrospect and Prospect

1998 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald G. Mathews
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious History ◽  
The South ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Many

One of the most distinguishing marks of the American South is that religion is more important for the people who live there than for their fellow citizens in the restof the country. When this trait began to identify the region is surprisingly unclear, but it has begun to attract attention from scholars of religion and society who have hitherto been esteemed as students primarily of areas outside the South. The study of religion in Dixie cannot but benefit from this change. After centuries of obsession with thickly settled, college-proud, and printexpressive New England—an area not noted for excessive modesty in thinking about its place in the New World—students of American religion are turning to a region whose history has sustained a selfconsciousness that makes its place in American religious history unique. For studying the American South begins with a dilemma born of ambiguity: whether to treat it as a place or an idea. Sometimes, to be sure, the South appears to be both; but sometimes it is “place” presented as an idea; and sometimes it is a place whose historical experience should have, according to reflective writers, taught Americans historical and moral lessons they have failed to learn. Confusion results in part from the South's contested history not only between the region and the rest of the United States but also among various competing groups within its permeable and frequently indistinct borders. Differences between region and nation will, however, continue to dominate conversation even though the myth of southern distinctiveness may mislead students as much as the myth of its evangelical homogeneity. If inquiry about religion in the South should be sensitive to the many faith communities there, the history of the South will still by contrast provide insight into the broader “American” society.

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