As a child of the South, I learned early on about the Lost Cause myth, except I didn’t know it was a myth.  And I watched Jim Crow laws and customs subjugate the descendants of those my ancestors and many others had enslaved. And, as I have written before, it took me a long time to appreciate how heinous were the effects of the Lost Cause myth and Jim Crow on millions of Black Americans. I wrote about the evolution of my feelings in two posts that concerned my Southern education. Here are the links if you need a refresher.

 

https://thequixoticdeacon.com/uncategorized/revisiting-my-southern-education/

 

https://thequixoticdeacon.com/quixotic-thoughts/my-southern-education-a-confession/

 

However, I must admit that, despite the sordid history of the states of the old Confederacy, I harbored a belief that racial relations in the South were not so different from those in the rest of the country. After Georgia elected two Democratic senators in 2020, one of them a Black man, I thought I was seeing real change. Of course, one of the main reasons for that change was a re-migration of Black families from the industrial north to the south – a mini reversal of the Great Migration of the 20th century. 

 

I was also heartened by returning to live in the South and finding a much more integrated society than I had gotten used to in more than 45 years living in New York and Rhode Island. The north is very segregated.  Of course, New Orleans is not typical of the South and is majority Black; so I should have known better than to become optimistic about southern race relations. But, my thinking had evolved to the point where I was tempted to regard racism in the US as a national problem, not only a Southern one. 

 

Well, recent events have jerked me back to reality. The South is more racist than the nation as a whole. The actions of all the states of the Confederacy in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act are proof positive that the southern states are ripe for a return to Jim Crow. If you buy into the Alito view of the world, the protections of the Voting Rights Act – heretofore used to protect minority rights – are now needed to protect the rights of white people. This is an long-held goal of the Republican Party and the Heritage Foundation. They have been hell-bent on eliminating any supposed advantages granted to Blacks under the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act. Affirmative action has already been made unlawful. Now Article 2 of the Voting Rights Act has been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. According to Justice Alito, the days when Blacks deserved a leg up are past. Everyone’s equal now – no more disadvantage to being born black.

You cannot buy into that line of BS and know anything about income inequality, education inequality, wealth inequality, or inequality in access to affordable healthcare. You could not visit Bryan Stephenson’s Legacy Museum in Montgomery and subscribe to Alito’s rosy view of the opportunities for the Black community. You cannot be intellectually honest and subscribe to Alito’s ideologically driven decision. 

 

However Alito’s right wing agenda is not a Southern phenomenon. (Alito is from New Jersey. In a little known quirk of history, he matriculated at Princeton in the fall of 1968 at the very same time as your author. We never, to my knowledge, met.) It is the immediate reaction to Louisiana v Callais that causes me to recognize that, yes, the South is more racist than the north. And, it seems, the Republican legislators that dominate the legislatures of the South are not shy about demonstrating their determination to keep Black southerners from electing white or black candidates who their community supports. The majority minority district in Tennessee that includes Memphis has sent a white man to represent them for many years. Yet Tennessee Republicans are in the process of redistricting it out of existence in order that their Congressional delegation can be pure white Republican. The stench of racism this occasions doesn’t seem to bother them at all. 

 

In the state where, regrettably, I pay taxes,  Governor Jeff Landry immediately stopped an election that was already in progress. The legislature will obediently and with relish eliminate the offending district which, (surprise!) elected a black man to represent them in Congress. They will then draw a new map assuring that Louisiana sends only one Black man to Congress despite the fact that the State is 32.8% Black. That is one out of 6. And, as of this writing, there is a proposed new law that has passed the Louisiana House by a 78-14 vote. This new law would mandate that the state return any historic statues (i.e., Confederate statues) to public areas around the state. So, in addition to saying to Black Louisianans, “we are going to reduce your representation by 50%,” the State Republicans are also saying “and we are going to reinstall the offensive Confederate statues that were taken down.” Of course the statues were a prime product of the Lost Cause movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So reinstalling them is an overt racial slap in the face to ⅓ of the residents of Louisiana. I don’t think this would happen in states that were not formerly part of the Confederacy. 

 

It seems to me that the Callais decision ripped the bandage off the festering wound of racism that the Southern states have kept somewhat poorly camouflaged since the Civil Rights era. Republican politicians from Richmond to Austin appear to be falling over themselves to cheer on the assault on voting rights. No one seems reticent to take overt public actions to reverse any and all of the progress that the Voting Rights Act was passed to accomplish. 

 

But shouldn’t the emphasis at this moment be on the one party that has facilitated all this backsliding into racist policies, the Republicans? Of course it should. But I think it unlikely that Republican controlled state legislatures outside the South would make redistricting to eliminate a majority minority district a priority as it is in the South. So, I am going to stop trying to defend the South against charges of racism. We’ve earned the reputation.

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