Max Eherenfreund in The Washington Post: “In the South, it seems, old prejudices have persisted. Southern counties that had more slaves on the eve of the Civil War are distinct from their neighbors: White residents in those areas are more hostile toward African Americans and they are more likely to vote Republican today, new research shows. Drawing on archival Census figures and recent polls, the study adds to an expanding body of evidence on the importance of racial anxiety to the predominantly white Republican coalition.”
‘Those white Southerners who live where cotton was king are also substantially less likely to identify as Democrats today. Among otherwise similar counties, a difference of 20 percentage points in the enslaved population in 1860 was correlated with a difference of 2.3 percentage points in the share of white Democrats.”
“Recent research by economists Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington suggests that white Southerners who defected from the Democratic party after the civil-rights movement were those with the most conservative views on race. Democrats who held moderate and conservative views on other issues and who lived in other parts of the country largely remained loyal.”
You only have to read “Go Set a Watchman” to know this is true.
They believe, in their hearts–and this is not hate, they think they LIKE black people, understand them better than yankees ever will–that everything was better when whites were firmly in charge of everything.
I don’t know how long it will take for this to change, or if it ever will.
There’s been progress, but so much less than you’d think.
These are not David Duke people. These are just ordinary decent folks who you’d like if you met them–as long as certain subjects didn’t come up. And they can make all the exceptions in the world for black people they know, and have a good opinion of. And those exceptions don’t matter a damn when it comes to voting time.
How do you persuade people that a system that made the lives of everybody like them just a bit better–at the expense of people different from them–is wrong? Always was wrong. Never could be right.
You can’t.
No wonder they wax nostalgic about the Confederacy and its culture, which was founded on kidnapping, rape and subjugation of other human beings.
Great comment! I still think HRC will prevail inNov 16 because ALOT of
minorities, and not just black ppl like myself, will vote for the Dems because Donald Trump hates all brown/black/purple ppl-HRC could not have asked for a better opponent & the Repubs can’t stop him-if they do, they will sitout 2016 just as the conservatives/evangelicals did to Romney in 2012.
Great comment! I still think HRC will prevail inNov 16 because ALOT of
minorities, and not just black ppl like myself, will vote for the Dems because Donald Trump hates all brown/black/purple ppl-HRC could not have asked for a better opponent & the Repubs can’t stop him-if they do, they will sitout 2016 just as the conservatives/evangelicals did to Romney in 2012.