by Bruce Gourley » Wed Jan 30, 2013 1:57 am
I grew up in the Deep South. Wills speaks a lot of truth. In the eyes of many unreconstructed Confederates these many generations after the fall of the South, the absolutely worst thing in the world would be ...
... for a black man to become president of the United States. And a damned Democrat to boot.
White Southerners (including Southern Baptists) called Abraham Lincoln "the black president" upon his election in 1860, and then the Deep South (governed by planters) promptly withdrew from the United States in order to, in their own words (over and over and over), protect and forever preserve the God-ordained institution of African slavery.
The election (twice!) of a black president has indeed brought the worst out of many white Southerners, vividly expressed in the Tea Party, and (often) even more vividly in private. And politically, it has brought America back to where it was in the Civil War era: a white coalition (Republicans in our modern era) in the South barricading itself against liberalism and non-whites -- at this moment, (and ) in an ocean of white Republicans.
The one thing that may be able to move the Deep South past its past is immigration: when whites become a minority in the Deep South (a destiny that white Republicans have fought tooth and nail by trying to run out immigrants and disenfranchise the minority vote), perhaps a new chapter will unfold. And if the white Republican Party continues down the road they are headed, they may not be around to witness the transformation.
I say none of this with gladness.
Bruce Gourley
BaptistLife.Com owner