Slaveholders disappeared, too, a long, long time ago. And yet their attitudes continued being handed down. 150 years after they treasonously tried to destroy the Union. And yet the white-washing celebration of their treason continues today, with ever new embellishments, echoed by Haley Barbour, who in turn is defended by his Versailles cheerleading team friends, as s digby noted earlier this week:
Boy they must really, really like Haley Barbour in the Village. Andrea Mitchell and Chris Cillizza twisted themselves into pretzels today trying to excuse his "mess" and explain why he didn't mean what he seemed to mean, even as they both agree his words were "indefensible"
Which is why this segment with Rachel Maddow was so refreshing last night:
For me the most important point made here was the role of this sort revisionism and other similar racialist discourse in shifting the "political center" ever further to the right, so that someone like Mike Huckabee could run on virtually the same policies, while coming off as a "reasonable centrist". And, of course, it should go without saying that folks like Mitchell and Cillizza are absolutely crucial to this process.
On NPR's "All Things Considered" Thursday, Audie Cornish interviewed another Mississippian, Hodding Carter III, now a professor and a former member of the Carter administration who was in the late '50s and early '60s a reporter and later publisher of the family newspaper, the Delta Democrat-Times.
Cornish: So you actually did some reporting on citizens councils back in the '60s. Tell us, how did they come about and why?
Carter: They were formed in the Delta, which is where our paper was. They were formed for one reason only: to oppose any form of integration. They were formed immediately after the desegregation decision of 1954. And let me just read one little phrase from their organizing pamphlet. "The citizens council is the South's answer to the mongrelizers. We will not be integrated. We are proud of our white blood and our white heritage of 60 centuries." That was the point. And at every point they had a chance, they used pressure of every sort except overt violence to put down any dissent from total white supremacy. ...
Cornish: So what kind of methods did they use?
Carter: Well, Yazoo City is a good example of what they used. A group of some 50 or so black citizens in Yazoo City signed a petition asking for the desegregation of the schools really early. The citizens council published, not only in the newspaper, but on placards around town, the names of all of those who had signed that petition, suggested people look at those names carefully. Within two weeks all but something like 12 of those 50-something names had been stricken. Some of the people had left town, some of the businesses that they had had been closed. Immediate, fast, uh, a very quick lesson in what non-violence meant to the citizens council.
Cornish:I do want to say civil rights leader Medgar Evers was killed in 1963 by a member of a citizens council in Jackson, Mississippi, and there is other evidence of use of violence by members of councils. Was the Yazoo City council different?
Carter: The citizens council was always extremely careful to use rhetoric which said we will not ... we do not condone ... we will prevent the destruction of our way of life by other means. But you should not be surprised, they would say, if the effort to stop it peacefully fails, if violence breaks out. That was as coded an invitation as you would want to those who would take up violence that, if things got to it, nobody was ever going to turn against them. And, indeed, nobody in the citizens council in Mississippi at any time, and I was there throughout the entire period, got up and led the charge to bring the killers to justice, to expose them. The killers in Mississippi swam in a sea of citizens council control and therefore protection for what they did. Never, ever were those people brought to justice by white leadership.
Cornish:And how are we to interpret Gov. Barbour's memories of Yazoo City and his statement about these councils? I mean, what does it say about him and maybe his political prospects?
Carter: Well, Haley is a younger man than I am, and he could be forgiven for a slight lapse of memory since he was not in the middle of the business at the time that it was really hot. On the other hand, he was from a family of leadership in Yazoo City and he knows perfectly well what kind of force was used - economic and other forms in Yazoo City to "hold things down," as they used to like to say. Why was he saying that? I think he was talking to a sympathetic interviewer and he lost his mind.
No. He delivered exactly the message he wanted to deliver to the people who really count in Republican electoral calculus.
And so, even if Barbour does lose, and they have to "settle" for Huckabee, they'll have bottomless pits of white rage to draw on to motivate the base.
Governor Rick Perry of Texas continues to make veiled threats to secede today. The only thing that is really unusual about these threats is that they are coming from a Governor, rather than the guy sitting next to you in the local bar. After a political power shift, empty threats about emigration and / or secession are fairly common. It is a safe bet that everyone in America has either a family member or a close friend who has made such a threat at some point over the past decade. In the days immediately following the 2004 election, in my West Philly neighborhood, talk of secession and emigration was rampant to the point of becoming standard ambient noise. Eventually, as time passes, both the tempers, and the empty threats accompanying them, begin to recede.
But, now that the Governor of the second largest state in the country has brought secession talk into the mainstream, it is worth investigating national support for secessionist. The only poll I could find on the subject was from Zogby (a telephone poll) from July of last year. The results indicated surprisingly high support for secessionist movements in America, and that support was significantly higher among Democratic-leaning demographics than among Republican-leaning demographics. From the poll
One in five American adults - 22% - believe that any state or region has the right to "peaceably secede from the United States and become an independent republic,"(...)
The level of support for the right of secession was consistent in every region in the country, though the percentage was slightly higher in the South (26%) and the East (24%). The figures were also consistent for every age group, but backing was strongest among younger adults, as 40% among those age 18 to 24 and 24% among those age 25 to 34 agreed states and regions have secession rights.
Broken down by race, the highest percentage agreeing with the right to secede was among Hispanics (43%) and African-Americans (40%). Among white respondents, 17% said states or regions should have the right to peaceably secede.
Politically, liberal thinkers were much more likely to favor the right to secession for states and regions, as 32% of mainline liberals agreed with the concept. Among the very liberal the support was only slightly less enthusiastic - 28% said they favored such a right. Meanwhile, just 17% of mainline conservatives thought it should exist as an option for states or regions of the nation.
Asked whether they would support a secessionist movement in their own state, 18% said they would, with those in the South most likely to say they would back such an effort. In the South, 24% said they would support such an effort, while 15% in the West and Midwest said the same. Here, too, younger adults were more likely than older adults to be supportive - 35% of those under age 30 would support secession in their state, compared to just 17% of those over age 65. Among African Americans, 33% said they would support secession, compared to just 15% of white adults. The more education a respondent had, the less likely they were to support secession - as 38% of those with less than a high school diploma would support it, compared to just 10% of those with a college degree.
While not very high in an absolute sense, support for secession is only just below where approval for Bush was during his final few months in office.
Just as interesting is who supports secession. Liberals, African-Americans, Latinos, young voters and the less educated are the most supportive of secession. These groups tend to skew Democratic, showing that support for secession is not just limited to conservatives like Rick Perry and the teabaggers.
Marginalization within broader society is a clear connection that runs through most of the demographics that favor secession: Minorities, the less educated and young people--over one third of whom appear to favor secession--are simply given smaller shareholdings within the country at large. As such, it isn't surprising they favor secession more than other groups. The better adjusted, and better connected, and better off you are within a given society, the more likely you will want to stay a part of that society.
By contrast, for the guy who runs the second largest state in the country to blather on about feeling ignored is a mind-bending level of egocentric pouting (although he might feel better if he finally came out of the closet). Much the same goes for the upper middle class white folk who were cheering for secession when Perry talked both yesterday and today. Exactly why they feel so marginalized is not entirely clear, but the conservative movement's persecution complex knows few limits.
Personally, I believe the better approach for progressives is to try and connect the United States more with other countries and international organizations, rather than fragmenting into smaller countries. More connection, not more division, is the answer. Also, it also would be worth polling this question again in 2009, to see if the demographics most supportive of secession have changed at all with President Obama's election. My bet is that yes, there has been.
STATE BLOGS
