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Southerners as an
Ethnic Group?
(The following is a testimony from Dr. Clyde Wilson,
a history professor at the University of South Carolina.
It was written as an explanation of Southerners as a separate
ethnic group for a legal case in South Carolina concerning discrimination
at school against a student for wearing a shirt that had a battle flag on
it.)
Scholars
in every field in the humanities and social sciences have long recognized
that Southerners have formed a distinct people within the body of
Americans from the earliest colonial times to the present.
Authorities in history, political science, economics, sociology, folklore,
literature, geography, speech, and music, have recognized and studied the
significance of this distinctiveness. The distinct identity of
Southerners has also, of course, been a commonplace of everyday life in
the United States, and distinctive Southern manners, customs,
attitudes, and behavior have been material for our greatest
creative artists in song, story, and movie-making.
Nearly every college in the United States and many in Europe
(as well as Japan and Australia) offer courses in Southern history,
literature, and other subjects. A number of universities have
special institutes devoted to study of the South. (The
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the University of South
Carolina, the University of Mississippi, Johns Hopkins University, and
Cambridge University are a few examples.) Thousands of
scholars around the world are studying Southernness. Thousands of
books and dozens of popular and academic journals and websites are
available today that are devoted specifically and exclusively to the
South. It cannot be credited that this activity would be devoted to
something unless it was real and significant.
Many explanations and descriptions have been
offered in scholarly literature as to the origins and nature of a
distinctive Southern people, beginning with the ethnic origins of the
American colonial population and coming up to recent date in studies of
public opinion and voting behavior.
An important recent and authoritative study is
ALBION'S SEED; FOUR BRITISH FOLKWAYS IN AMERICA by David
Hackett Fischer, prize-winning Professor of History at Brandeis
University, Boston (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). From
exhaustive study in Britan and America, Fischer has identified four
different cultural groups from the British Isles that formed
differentiated cores of cultural development in what has become the
United States. These groups came from different regions of Britain
and were separated by religious denomination, economic activity, dialect,
manners, and customs.
1) Puritan settlers of New England
who came from the East Anglia region of England and formed an identifiable
religious and cultural group which spread to other parts of the
Northern states.
2) Settlers from the English Midlands and
Wales who settled the Delaware River valley, belonged to a variety of
dissenting religions such as Quakers and Baptists, and pursued economc
activities and goals different from those of New England and the South.
3) Gentry and servants from the English
southern counties who settled Virginia and the Carolinas in the 17th
century, largely Anglican, engaged in plantation agriculture, and
displaying manners, customs, and attitudes very distinct from groups
1 and 2..
4) Borderers, sometimes loosely
described as Celtic, who came from Ireland, Scotland, and the
Scots-English border region. They were largely Presbyterian and
their ways of living and making a living were markedly different from
those of the ordinary English. They settled the piedmont regions of
the Southern colonies and spread across the Appalachians in the late 18th
century.
Fischer piles up convincing data that these
groups formed different cultural centers in the evolution of
America. Groups 3 and 4 merged in the early 19th century to become the
Southern people. The distinctiveness of a Southern people was well
recognized by everyone by that time--by Southerners, by Northerners, and
by foreign travelers. The famous English writer Charles Dickens
observed after a trip to America that the Americans formed two
distinct peoples. Fischer also provides extensive and convincing
evidence that these distinct American cultures persist to this day,
a distinctiveness which can be seen in attitudes, political behavior, and
daily life. An interesting example he provides is the startlingly
different actions and methods of leadership of two American generals in
the Pacific theatre during World War II, both named Smith, one from the
North and one a Southerner. Countless other examples can be cited
showing such differences in recent history.
Historians have also identified as
keys to Southerness climate and a historical experience that differs
markedly from the general American. The South was warmer than the
North and the regions of Europe from which settlers of America came,
giving it a different kind of agriculture and crops (cotton, rice,
tobacco, sugar), and thus a different kind of economic activity and a
different relation to the marketplace than the rest of the United States.
When the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided in the 1920s to commission
a definitive history of American agriculture, it found that it required
two distinct studies to cover the subject: Percy W. Bidwell, HISTORY
OF AGRICULTURE IN THE NORTHERN UNITED STATES, 1620--1860
(Washington: 1925), and Lewis Cecil Gray, HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE IN THE
SOUTHERN UNITED STATES TO 1860 (Washington: 1933).
Southerners have, unlike other Americans,
more than 350 years of living in a biracial society, in which whites and
African-Americans have reciprocally influenced each other's development.
It should never be forgotten that the number of African-Americans outside
the states of the South was statistically insignificant throughout
American history up to World War I. In evidence of a distinct
Southern culture, it should be pointed out that Southern
African-Americans share with Southern whites nearly every aspect of
Southern culture except ethnic origin and political behavior, and differ
from general American attitudes in the same direction as do white
Southerners.
Undoubtedly the most decisive
historical event in firmly establishing a Southern people was the
failed War of Independence of 1861--1865. Unlike any other
Americans, Southerners have suffered military defeat and occupation
and massive destruction by invading armies on their soil. The
Confederate States of America was characterized by a mobilization and
casualties far beyond that ever experienced by any other Americans
at any time in their history. (Gary Gallagher of the
University of Virginia, THE CONFEDERATE WAR, Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1997). It is estimated that 85 per cent of the eligible male
population was mobilized in the War of Independence and one of every
four Southern white men was dead at the end of the war. (Comparison:
Northern losses were 1 in 10 and the loss was simulataneously made up by
immigrants. American losses in later wars are trivial percentages in
comparison.) The experience of total war, invasion, conquest,
and defeat had effects, both tangible and psychological, that
have lasted for generations, and that mark Southerners now living.
War is the single greatest solidifier of a nationality, and it
is hardly credible that Southerners would have fought to such an extremity
for independence if they had not been conscious of being a separate
people.
C. Vann Woodward, Pulitzer Prize historian
of Yale University, in his famous study, THE BURDEN OF SOUTHERN
HISTORY (Louisiana State University Press, 1960), has emphasized
this distinctive experience as giving Southerners a heritage
of defeat and sorrow. Coupled with longstanding guilt and
frustration from the difficulty of race relations, this burden of history
has made Southerners a sadder, less optimistic, but perhaps wiser
and more realistic people than other Americans whose history
has been one of uninterrupted success.
Woodward points also to another
consequence of the war. In contrast to America in general,
which has been a land of opportunity, progress, and prosperity,
Southerners, both white and African-American, have long experience of
poverty. The most prosperous region of the United States in 1860,
the South was from 1866 to at least World War II the most
impoverished. An estimted 60 per cent of the region's capital was
destroyed by the war, leaving it economically helpless and subject to
exploitation of its resources and peoples as a colony of the United
States. In 1860 nearly all white Southern families were independent
landowners. In 1900, forty per cent of white Southerners were
tenants or share-croppers. And 60 per cent of African-American
Southerners were in this position, though in absolute numbers there
were more white sharecroppers than black. In the 1930s
President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously referred to the South as
"the nation's No. 1 Economic Problem" and public
discussions were full of references to the South's colonial economic
status.
The South has long been known as a source
of cheap labor. As well as African-Americans, hundreds of thousands
of white Southerners have moved to the North and West in the 20th century
as industrial labor. In the North and West they were treated as and
understood themselves to be a distinct ethnic group, referred to
negatively as "hillbillies" and "Okies." Evidences of
this can still be seen (like "Little Dixie" neighborhoods in
Chicago and country music in Bakersfield, California.) It is
impossible to over-estimate the effects of generations of poverty
within a prosperous country in forming a distinct Southern identity.
Even in currently prosperous and growing areas of the South today, the
better jobs are largely occupied by newcomers from other parts of the
country and the blue collar jobs by native Southerners.
Southern difference
in manners, speech, recreations, religious beliefs, cuisine, and music
are commonplace observations in everyday life in the United States.
These differences do not have to be absolute. Scots and some Irish
and Welsh speak English and are like Englishmen in various ways, but they
are still obviously distinct nationalities, as are the French-descended
Canadians. Speech, religion, music, manners, and cuisine are the
universal markers of ethnic distinction. The proof of distinctive
Southern characteristics in these areas is easily established by the
well-known negative (and sometimes positive) reactions that Southerners
receive from other groups
Contemporary markers
distinguishing Southerners as a distinct group have been given systematic
scientific study in the works of John Shelton Reed, Kenan Professor
of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
especially THE ENDURING SOUTH.
Besides differences in lesser matters such as
names of children, places, and businesses, Reed demonstrates that
public opinion surveys have consistently shown statistically
significant differentiation from the American average, especially in
three areas.
1) Southerners are the most consistent believers
in basic orthodox Christianity as measured by their belief in the Bible, a
future state of rewards and punishments, and the reality of Evil, as
well as in their church attendance. They even outscore Roman
Catholics in other parts of the country on these factors.
2) Southerners are more local and family oriented, less
interested in distant events and celebrities than Americans in general.
3) Southerners, for better or worse, live by
a different definition of the line between private and public. They
are more conscious of giving and receiving offense and tend to deal with
such things in person rather than call in public authorities. For
instance, in the South murders most commonly occur between persons who are
acquainted. In the North they are more commonly attacks by
strangers.
Reed has also demonstrated
through scientific attitude surveys that Northern and Southern students at
the cosmopolitan University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recognize
themselves as having different thoughts, feelings, and
behavior. The distinctions discovered by Reed are not absolute---there is
some overlap--but they are statistically significant (as well as readily
confirmed by empirical observation). See the attached article by
Reed from THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN ETHNIC GROUPS.
Another relevant work is THE SOUTH AND THE
SECTIONAL CONFLICT by David M. Potter of Stanford University, generally
recognized as one of the outstanding historians in the United States in
the 20th century (Louisiana State University Press, 1968).
Potter affirms the separateness of the Southern people and describes how
that difference has been created by distinct folkways (thinking, feeling,
behaving in ways common to members of the same social group)
and separate political experiences.
The hallmarks of a living
national culture are its production of arts both at the folk level
(arising spontaneously from the people) and at the level of high
culture. Southerners have produced several original styles of music
and it is hardly to be doubted that Southern writers have
produced a distinct (and highly regarded by the world) literature.
The acclaimed novelist George Garrett has demonstrated that distinctive
Southernness persists in the most recent generation of outstanding
writers. And he has interestingly related Southern literary prowess
to the distinctive manners of the region. George Garrett,
"Southern Literature Here and Now," in Fifteen Southerners, WHY
THE SOUTH WILL SURVIVE (Athens and London: University of
Georgia Press, 1981).
The history of a distinctive Southern
speech has been examined by the world famous literary scholar and critic
Cleanth Brooks (Yale University) in THE LANGUAGE OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH,
University of Georgia Press, 1985. Brooks has demonstrated how
distinctive Southern speech has contributed to the success of Southern
literary efforts. The distinctiveness of Southern accents was part
of the lifelong study of the greatest American scholar of English
dialects, Raven I. McDavid of the University of Chicago, author of
LINGUISTIC ATLAS OF THE MIDDLE AND SOUTH ATLANTIC STATES (Chicago,
1980 and later editions) and SOCIOLINGUSTICS AND HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
(University of Odense, Denmark).
That Southerners can be distinguished by differing
voting behavior is a commonplace calculation of politicians and news media
and is the subject of much continuing study by political scientists.
Establishing the reality of the Southerner is
akin to proving that Iowa grows corn or that Hollywood is located in
California. When the term "Southern" is used, there
is no mind in America that does not immediately reference
impressions, favorable or unfavorable, of particular history,
literature, music, cuisine, manners, and political and religious
tendencies.
I would like to conclude my expert
testimony with a personal statement derived from a speech I made at the
annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association in New Orleans in
1995, parts of which were published in the journal SOUTHERN CULTURES
(University of North Carolina). It refers to the Confederate battle
flag which is a universally recognized symbol of Southernness, not just in
connection with the "Civil War" but with Southern identity
today:
The Confederate
Battle Flag: A Symbol of Southern
Heritage and Identity
I remember my own father and uncles returning from
World War II with stories of how Southerners, particularly rural and
working class ones, were denigrated and ridiculed by urbanites for their
speech, manners, and attitudes. There was a general cultural attack
at the time on "hillbillies" This was the beginning
of my consciousness of belonging to a separate people from other
Americans. It was at that time that we began to display the
Confederate battle flag at times from the front porch and to observe Lee's
birthday and Confederate Memorial Day. It is relevant, too, that my
grandmother was the daughter of a Confederate soldier and had a fund of
stories of the family in the war. Our identification with the
Confederate battle flag was nearly a decade before Brown vs. Board
of Education and it had nothing to do with segregation, the
Dixiecrat movement of 1948, or football.
My Southern identity had thus been brought to my
attention before I entered school, and the battle flag was the obvious
symbol of that identity, and a beautiful and hallowed object as well.
Time, and the success of the civil rights movement, and other great
changes in the South have done nothing to diminish this. Rather to
the contrary. The fact that the United States is increasingly a
multicultural empire rather than a federal republic, will make ethnic
identities, including the Southern, even sharper in the future, which
bodes well to offer symbolic struggles between Northerners, Latin
Americans, African-Americans and Asians. Southerners, the
oldest and largest minority in America, have a right to claim their
heritage and its symbols. The South is larger in territory,
population, economic strength, and history and more distinct in culture
than many of the separate nations of the earth.
In recent years, I have spoken often to meetings of the
Sons of Confederate Veterans, the United Daughters of the Confederacy,
Civil War Roundtables, local historical societies, and other groups.
These groups of good citizens are full of defenders and displayers of the
battle flag. For most of these good Americans the flag is not a
symbol of white supremacy, but an identification with their own ancestors
and heritage and an affirmation of their own identity.
Attachments: (No attachments in this copy)
Excerpt by Charles P. Roland from A HISTORY OF THE SOUTH
Excerpts by Francis Butler Simkins from A HISTORY OF THE
SOUTH (2)
Entry for Southerners by John Shelton Reed in the HARVARD
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN ETHNIC GROUPS
Clyde N. Wilson, Credentials |