Wampum

No Cartoons Please

Fred Clark, the Slacktivist, has a post up about Alabama voters defeating a referendum which would have removed a racist relic from the state constitution. Link via Kevin. The Washington Post story is here.

According to the Post, the amendment would have removed language from the Alabama Constitution that required separate schools for "white and colored children." The amendment would also have eliminated "references to the poll taxes once imposed to disenfranchise blacks from the state constitution."

The measure lost in a close vote.

The Slacktivist notes a quote from the Post piece:

"There are people here who are still fighting the Civil War," said Tommy Woods, 63, a deacon at Bethel [Baptist Church] and a retired school administrator. "They're holding on to things that are long since past. It's almost like a religion."

"Almost like a religion" is exactly right. And the specific religion which it is almost like is Christianity. This almost-religion, this pseudo-Christianity, has become so popular and so successful that it is outselling the authentic original.

Many pundits are convinced that John Kerry lost the election because he was unable to talk comfortably about his faith and thereby to appeal to values voters. But talking about his faith -- he's a churchgoing Catholic -- wouldn't matter to the devotees of this almost-faith. Their almost-religion is not an ecumenical creed.

Leading the defense of Alabama's segregationist statutes were the bishops and archbishops of the almost-church, including the Christian Coalition of Alabama and civil-religion celebrity Roy Moore. They claimed their vigorous defense of segregationist language wasn't really a defense of segregation per se. They claim that they were merely opposing the possibility of future tax increases to fund Alabama's public schools.

You know, the public schools where all the black kids go. See, they're not old-fashioned racists. They're next-generation racists who don't think white people should have to pay taxes to educate black children.

I have lived my entire life in the South (except for those few years in Virginia). Clark is right to note that racism, both the old and the new, still exists throughout much of the South.

Clark's claim that Southerns are practicing a phoney form of Christianity will have to stand on its own, without comment from me, for two reasons. First, I am in no position to judge what real Chritianity is or is not from a theological perspective. I just do not know enough about theology. Secondly, I prefer not to characterize other people's religious beliefs. I have a hard enough time characterizing my own. That said, I read the Slacktivist every day. Fred Clark, perhaps more so than any other blogger, expresses a morality arising out of his religious beliefs to which I subscribe almost completely.

I do think Clark has fundamentally misread the nature of Southerners when he paints most Bush supporters as longing for a return to Jim Crow.

President Bush got a bigger share of the vote in Alabama than did the "no" vote on the amendment, which shows that not all of Bush's supporters there are nostalgic for the days of Jim Crow. Not all, just most.

I do not believe for a moment that most Bush supporters in the South "are nostalgic for the days of Jim Crow." Not even close.

The Alabama referendum was to remove a relic of racism not to remove a current foundation of racism. Federal law long ago invalidated the Alabama Constitutional provisions at issue. Voters were not choosing whether or not to have segregated public schools in Alabama.

A ballot measure to actually return to Jim Crow would fail in every Southern state and in the states with which I am most familar, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, it would fail by huge majorities, on the order of 80-20 or 90-10.

I know lots of Bush supporters. I can not name one who would support an actual return to Jim Crow. Southerners realize that a return to Jim Crow would be a disaster, morally, economically, and culturally. We are past that and we are not going back.

The South has many problems including issues of race, gender, morality, culture, and economics. The failure of the proposed amendment amply demonstrates some of those problems. Still, there is no need to overstate the problem in order to make the point.

If Democrats, liberals, and others make policy and political choices based on a cartoon version of the South, they are unlikely to choose wisely.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at November 30, 2004 01:19 PM | TrackBack