Why The South is Still Deeply Red

by | Jan 5, 2023 | Politics | 7 comments

Like a blazing sunset over an old magnolia grove, the South continues to burn bright red. Democrats had hoped that former Confederate states such as Texas, North Carolina, and Florida would return to their long-lost Democratic roots in the 2020 election. Every one of those states, however, voted for Donald Trump, and of the two Southern states that opted for Biden, one quickly snapped back to red, and the other, Virginia, has arguably transcended its Southern cultural roots to join the Acela corridor.

So, the last two years have delivered bitter disappointments to Southern progressives who’d hoped for an end to their long bout of political suffering. The region remains, as of now, a conservative bastion in a center-left nation. Its history of racism reverberates with devastating force. Its social conservatism seals off too many hearts from appeals to modernity and tolerance. And whatever Democrats may have hoped, demographic evolution does not yet seem to have transformed the South’s political disposition.

One indication as to why new demographics have left the region’s conservatism unaltered may be found in an old book. In Albion’s Seed, David Hackett Fischer argues that newcomers to America do not assimilate into a generic nationalized culture. Rather, American immigrants gradually blend into one of several distinct sets of norms and mores that are divided by cultural geography. In the South, that dynamic has tended to produce cultural conservatism even in migrants who come from societies far different from Protestant, racist Dixie.

We see this operating in the demographics of the state of Florida. In the Sunshine State, Latinos, most of whom are descendants of or even first-generation immigrants from a diverse, Catholic world, have migrated politically into the arms of Trump Republicans. Cuban Americans and other Hispanics voted in 2022 much like the white “Florida Crackers” in the culturally Southern northern panhandle of Florida. As a result, Florida has fallen off the map of American swing states.

This tendency of migrants to “Southernize” is not without its limits. Demographic change can transform a region’s politics under the right circumstances. For example, when it was dominated by racially conservative white mill workers, Durham, North Carolina once voted for Senator Jesse Helms. Such an outcome is today unthinkable due to Durham’s newfound domination by the technology and education sectors. But enough new Southerners have assimilated into an anti-Black political culture to keep the vast majority of the region, including the bulk of North Carolina, Republican red.

What it will take to finally turn the South blue is a cultural transformation. As long as Southern culture remains reactionary and fixated on the past, there will be limits to how far demographic change can go in altering the region’s politics. We need a moral awakening, a moral revolution. In short, we need a third Reconstruction.

7 Comments

  1. Ellie Kinnaird

    I am wondering if the new tech companies coming int the state and life scientists could change the political scene? Highly educated people usually vote ble.

    • Fetzer Mills Jr

      As a product of a small, rural, NC textile town, I’m going to have to disagree with you somewhat. The two major factors are the the deep hostility southerners hold toward education and thinking and the fact that southern fundamentalist “Christianity” is not Christianity at all. It’s based on the Old Testament, not the New Testament and is more closely related to fundamentalist Islamic sects than to Christianity. The mill owners payed the preachers, quite literally their salaries. Uneducated, religious people are easily controlled. You can blame mill and plantation owners. Poor whites weren’t treated much better than slaves but the one thing they had that kept them off the bottom most rung of the ladder was their white skin. Preachers emphasized it. Couple that with public schools that weren’t designed to educate but to subjugate and that’s why we have this southern culture or lack there of.

  2. adamclove

    Reconstruction was built around military occupation of former Confederate States, the forcible re-writing of their state Constitutions, and the forcible removal from office of their elected officials. Is that what you’re calling for?

    • TC

      And why was that, Adam? Why was there a military occupation of the Confederate States? Why was it necessary for those State constitutions to be re-written? Why were those officials forcibly removed from office?

      • cocodog

        Come on Adam, give the man an answer to his question!

    • Joe Fowler

      You still think like an insurrectionist

    • cocodog

      It is difficult for some folks to make the transition from a know-it-all high school kids mentality, living in their parents basement to responsible adults! They usually become internet trolls, making statements that add little to the conversation, intended to provoke rather than address the issue. This is usually based on the notion that they do not fully understand the issue, preferring to avoid it by siting some cliché.

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