I'll have a lot more to say about this in a later post. But I just have to get this off my chest. (h/t William Timberman in quick hits .)
On Tuesday, Michael Lind posted an article at Salon, "Are liberals seceding from sanity? The left is crazy to insult white Southerners as a group". In it, he used a brief blog post from Kevin Drum to tee off his whole argument. There's a whole lot wrong with Lind's post that I intend to get into later. But first I want to establish one simple point: the entire argument is disingenuous, as can be seen by comparing Drum's piece to the way that Lind misrepresents it. Lind ignores the simplest explanation of what Drum is saying, because otherwise he has nothing to hang his injured Southern pride on.
Here's how Lind sets it up:
In a recent Washington Post column, Kathleen Parker quoted Ohio Sen. George Voinovich's assertion that the Republican Party is "being taken over by Southerners" to suggest that the GOP risks becoming a permanent minority party of the old Confederacy. In itself this is a legitimate point that I and many other critics of Republican conservatism have made for years. However, at Mother Jones, the blogger Kevin Drum used Parker's political argument as an excuse for all-too-typical liberal Southern-bashing. According to Drum: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual Southern whites who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, Southern white culture is [redacted]. Jim Webb can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]." Drum did the redacting on his own blog post, explaining he'd blacked out the offending text "on the advice of my frontal lobe."
Drum's creepy bigotry becomes clear when other groups are substituted: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual blacks who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, black culture is [redacted]. Barack Obama can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]." Or maybe this: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual Jews who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, Jewish culture is [redacted]. The late Irving Howe can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]."
The way Lind puts it, it can sound pretty damning. "Bigotry" might even seem an appropriate label. But Drum was actually far, far closer to Parker--whom Lind claims to agree with--than Lind lets on.
editorial sloppiness--something that happens to bloggers around the world on a second-by-second basis. He wrote "Southern white culture" when he should have written "Southern white political culture", just because he should have known that someone like Lind would pounce on him, otherwise.
Here's the entirety of Drum's post following his quote of Parker:
Well, look, I like magnolia groves and bluegrass music too, but let's call a spade a spade. Parker never actually uses the word "white" in her column, but later on she makes it clear that's what she's talking about. Not "the South." Not "Southern Republicans." Southern whites.
Parker says Republicans need to "drive a stake through the heart of old Dixie," and she's right. The rest of us need to help.
NOTE: Penultimate paragraph redacted on advice of my frontal lobe.
Clearly, Drum is saying that he doesn't hate the South, or even White South per se. It's the political culture he's talking about here. That's what "old Dixie" means. And one most certainly can critique an entire political culture without slurring or slandering anyone. It is true, for example, that Jewish Israeli political culture is profoundly racist, whoever tries to pretty it up. The evidence for this statement is simply overwhelming, and the best Israeli Jews are tortured by the knowledge that it is true. This is proper sort of analogy that Lind should have used for his argument, since "Jewish Israeli" is precisely the same sort of cultural-geographic group term that Drum used. Not "Jewish culture", not "black culture," but "Jewish Israeli political culture."
But if Lind used a term like that, his entire argument would fall apart, because there's a world of difference between sweeping derogatory statements about "Jewish culture" carrying clear implications of an essential biologically-grounded evil, and much more focused, factually-defensible statements about "Jewish Israeli political culture", which carry no such essentialist implications.
Let's be clear about what's going on here. Lind is a White Southerner, and he's feeling more than a little bit defensive. With good reason, I suppose. But it's time for him to let it go. The White South is politically screwed up in a way that far surpasses the rest of nation, as screwed up as other places may be. And it would be truly cathartic for him to finally be able to admit it. Maybe then he could see clearly enough to start doing something really effective to change things.
Because that's where Drum and I-and all the other progressive folks Lind goes on to slander in his article-differ from the bigots he says we shouldn't offend. We believe that people can take charge of their lives, and fundamentally change who they are. We know there are millions and millions of bigots born and raised who have thrown off their bigotry-many of them in the White South today. Those people have a lot to be proud of. We just want the rest of the White South to join them.
In fact, it's way past time we let folks like Lind pose as defenders of worthy downtroden Southern whites. First off, the better off Southern Whites are, the more Republican they are. So it's not the most economically downtrodden Whites who are the biggest problem (more on this in an upcoming post.) Second, nothing makes Southern Whites more downtrodden than the backscatter from white supremacy. It's progressives like me who stand in solidarity with Southern progressives of all races who are the real defenders of worthy downtroden Southern whites. And by that I mean those who've had the guts to reject the rotten political culture they were born into and raised in. They are the White Southerners worthy of everyone's honor and support.
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