How the South Was Won (and why Southern racism won’t matter in 2008)

I keep hearing that the Obama candidacy is a test of whether or not America is ready to elect a black man. The first presidential candidate I ever supported was Shirley Chisolm, both black and female and not very successful, so I’ve been ready in one way or another to support a black or a woman since 1972. I must say that Obama excites me less than Chisolm did and Clinton is not even in the same league (suffice it to say that it is virtually inconceivable that Chisolm would accept at face value administration pronouncements on weapons of mass destruction and then turn around and give a right-wing president carte blanche to make war at his whim and pleasure). Thirty-five years later, I find the whole “electability of a black man” canard laughable, especially when people say “The South will never vote for a black man.” Wake up people! It makes no difference in the general election what the South thinks of Obama’s race. If Obama wins the nomination, the only thing that will matter with respect to race is whether or not Northern racism will keep Obama from the White House; Southern racism, real or imagined, is irrelevant. The reasons for that are today’s history lesson:

How the South Was Won by the Republicans

Today’s lesson starts with a pop quiz. Quick, name three great American presidents…. Time’s up. Let me guess: Lincoln was on the list. The Great Emancipator was, of course, a Republican and, "racist" though he might be considered in today’s world (he believed in the essential inferiority of the negro races), he was willing to go to war to assert he principal that all men were created equal (and yes, the Civil War was about slavery, not some abstract principal of states’ rights). Having won that war, his Republican successors set about creating a more perfect union, fighting for the right of blacks to vote, go to school, hold jobs in the federal government and integrating the military. It is said that history is written by the winners, and for a time the history of Reconstruction in America was written by the winners. However, racism being a dominant force in our national politics, that history was eventually (basically from about 1890 to 1960), rewritten by the losers and Reconstruction was reconceived as a failure characterized by carpet-bagging Northern opportunists exploiting poor Southerners, while incompetent blacks were allowed into office and screwed everything up. That this version of history is merely the echo of racist Southern-dominated schoolboy textbooks is not something I will go into here, but if your image of Reconstruction comes from your high school history class and Gone with the Wind, then you should have to read Jim Loewen’s book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (2007 edition) before you’re allowed to vote again.

For my immediate purposes, the point is that the one result of the Civil War is that the white South became rabidly anti-Republican. When white Southerners succeeded in depriving blacks of the right to vote (remember, they had the right, then lost it), that meant that the South was solid Democrat territory. In order to keep it that way, the Democrats pandered to Southern racism and, let’s be clear, their own. We remember that Truman, a Democrat, integrated the military, but we forget that during the Civil War the Republicans had already allowed blacks to serve in combat roles. It was the “great” Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat and avowed white supremacist, who entirely segregated the government, effectively firing the few remaining blacks who held government jobs. It was the great Wilson who encouraged the resurgence of the Klan and who held up Birth of a Nation as an accurate portrayal of US history. Thus it was also the “great” Wilson who Hellen Keller called “The greatest individual disappointment the world has ever known” (Loewen, p. 24). Thus it was also the “great” Wilson who kept the south safe for Democrats and, by extension, unsafe for Republicans.

All that began to change first under Roosevelt and then under Truman. In 1948, for the first time in their history, the Democrats actually did something to stand up for equal rights in America: they added a modest civil rights plank to their platform (and at least formally integrated the military, even if it took longer to achieve in practice). Hubert Humphrey enjoined the party to "get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights." That led much of the Southern membership of the Democratic party, led by our old friend Strom Thurmond, to walk forthrightly out of the convention, reform as the State’s Rights Party, aka the Dixiecrats, and eventually finding their way into the Republican party in most cases. Still, it was not until Kennedy was assassinated that the nation suddenly found itself for the first time since Reconstruction with a president who cared personally about civil rights for blacks and, paradoxically, Lyndon Johnson was a southerner and a Democrat.

With the defection of the Dixiecrats and the ascension of Johnson, Republicans began to focus quite cynically on “state’s rights”, the idea that the federal government should have limited power to enforce law in the states, which is to say, no power to enforce integration and repeal of Jim Crow laws. Of course, the Republicans fought a Civil War and impeached their own president (the other Johnson) to assert the idea that the federal government could tell the states what to do and could prevent them from passing so-called Black Laws. The flip-flop to the polar opposite point of view was a power-politics play for the votes of racist voters in the South who opposed the Democrats new-found religion. As the segregationist independent candidacy of George Wallace showed in 1972, there was still a place for racist Southerners in the Democratic party, but by 1976, the party had once again chosen an integrationist Southerner to lead them. And Jimmy Carter would thus be the last Democrat to garner any meaningful support in the South. After Carter’s 1980 campaign, the South became solidly Republican territory.

That meant that the political map was entirely redrawn. The staunchly Republican North became the staunchly Democratic North and vice-versa for the South, like Reconstruction in reverse. As the race card became less powerful (though never to underestimated and let us just be thankful that Obama’s wife is not white, otherwise he would not stand a chance), the Republicans were increasingly brought into the orbit of the evangelicals who are so strong in the Bible Belt, thus hardening even further the geographic distribution of votes. In terms of presidential politics, Democrats are now largely irrelevant in the South and Republicans are largely irrelevant in the North. Al Gore, a Southerner but a Democrat, failed to win a single Southern state, but had he gotten an additional 568 votes in Florida (and of course, he probably actually did have those votes), he would have poached that state from enemy territory and won the election. Instead, Gore failed to win a single Southern state including his own. In the 2004 election, the balance moved further north: Kerry won New Hampshire, one of the last bastions of traditional Republicanism, and lost New Mexico and Iowa. Meanwhile, in the 2006 election, Republicans won exactly one (1) of the 22 contested seats in New England.

What That Means for the 2008 Election

So basically it appears that the South will not vote for a Democrat whether black, white, Hispanic or Martian, and more or less the same is true of Republicans in the North. How Southerners feel about a Democrat’s race is therefore far less relevant than how they feel about his party. The election will swing one way or the other based on the ability of a Democrat to swing a couple of major swing states in the South or Mountain region, or the ability of a Republican to find sympathetic voters in the North. The latter scenario could play out if it turns out that the North harbors enough racism to swing some tight races. Let’s remember, that in 1800, New Jersey had 12,000 slaves, and yet only on January 8, 2008, did New Jersey apologize for its role in the slave trade and became the first Northern state to do so. Meanwhile, five southern states including Alabama have already made formal apologies. Furthermore, most Southerners actually see black people, while most Northerners see very few outside of large cities. So those Southerners who are not overtly racist, are probably also more comfortable with African-Americans in general than Northerners are, which means again that the unexamined racism of Northerners is likely more of a threat to Obama than the overt racism of Southerners. Face it: the kind of Southerners who resent having the Confederate flag taken down from the Georgia state house are not voting Democrat unless George Wallace rides again. Meanwhile, in the North, there are some bad signs, notably the fact that Obama did better in the polls than he did in the voting booth — that perennial problem for blacks (people don’t want to admit they won’t vote for a black man, but they won’t). Meanwhile, in the West, I was listening to a show about the campaign in Nevada and an Obama voter said "People make jokes about having a black man for president, but I think he’s the best choice." They make jokes? Nevada and New Hampshire were both close elections and it seems likely that even in the primaries (perhaps especially in the primaries), race mattered.

Race does become a factor in the South in three possible ways, two of which hurt Obama and one of which helps him. In the overt racism scenario, the Old South of the Klan rides again and donations pour into the coffers of any white candidate that opposes Obama, no matter how terrible. I really resent what Southern influence has done to our national political landscape, but I do actually believe that the South will prove itself better than that if Obama gets the nomination. In the systemic racism scenario, black voters are disproportionately disenfranchised by all the things that disenfranchised them in the 2000 election and persisted still in 2005.

The scenario that helps Obama is quite simple. Even if Gary, Indiana is the blackest city in America, there are few blacks outside the cities in the North and, overwhelming, blacks live in the South. If Obama gets the nomination, barring Northern racism, we would expect him to carry the North. If Southern blacks turn out overwhelmingly for Obama, and their votes actually get counted this time, that might be enough for Obama to grab one big state (that is to say Florida) or a couple of smaller but significant ones and cobble together a victory.

So will race matter? Maybe or maybe not, but I don’t believe that the racism of white Southerners has nearly as much potential to hurt Obama as the simple divide between the Republican South and the Democratic North, and probably has less potential to hurt him than Northern racism in places like Ohio, where the battle is likely to be hard-fought.

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