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but bear with me anyway, please. So I saw a link: The "redneck-blackneck" politics of the Deep South

And clicked. And it turns out it's about Johnnie DuPree. And about how depressing racial politics are.

Guys, I honestly don't have spoons right now and I'm about to go eat, but are local politics in the rest of the non-South so straightforward? Because I am highly active social butterfly (who's an empath and an introvert lol) and very much into politics and just let me say this:

None of what this article says has much to do with what is going on. Yes, there are party lines. No, they're not very racial at all. Yes, race is a big deal. No, unless you're a Tea Partier here, it's not why the average Mississippian isn't voting for DuPree.

It's not that simple. Sorry.

Thanks for a useless article, Salon.

[edit] and you can tell I was running out the door! grammar check :)

Current Mood: contemplative

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From:

nagasvoice

Suggests the writer isn't local and is using stats to prop up their oversimplified scenarios. Would a comment there from an informed local person perhaps lead to more fruitful info?

From:

majoline

Ha, most of the comments on there are pretty good already and nothing I say is going to change the mind of the guy who calls me a redneck. He already thinks I don't wear shoes.

But I am definitely going to try to write up an overview, because I have a lot of thoughts on the subject, seeing as I've worked my bum off as a Mississippi Democrat for the last eight years.

Edited (singular fail) Date: 2011-08-28 01:45 am (UTC)

From:

sporky_rat

The wrongness of that article makes my eyes burn. That article is nothing but numbers with no truth to back them up.

From:

majoline

I know. Ugh, everything I see about MS in the media pisses me off.

And creeper!dude vs "I let my spiritual advisor help me in all decisions" is not a gubernatorial election I'm looking forward to.

Edited (grammar fail) Date: 2011-08-28 01:47 am (UTC)

From:

silveradept

For many Northerners, the lens of racists versus abolitionists still runs pretty strong. When it's not "the rich and corporations versus the people and the unions."

From:

majoline

It's always been way more complex than that. And articles like this pretending that the reason Mississippians didn't elect a white Democrat is because they're racist just gets the old white Republicans who are already uncomfortable about sharing even more antsy.

From:

silveradept

It does kind of run in circles, doesn't it? Because I've seen more than a few hairy accusations leveled at the governor of Mississippi, but most of them play back to "he's a Tea Partier, and thus is intent on destroying the social safety net" or "man, look at all these connections he has to known white power people."

From:

majoline

Woah, wait, since when is Barbour a Tea Partier? SRSLY?

And if you tried to walk down the street here you'd trip over a white power person, sorry. And Mississippi's are not nearly as bad as most - the South in general is the only place where they are losing and not gaining power.

Northerners need to police their own backyards, methinks.

From:

silveradept

Anybody who looks like a doctrinaire Republican on social issues is sort of assumed to be at least courting the Tea Party, if not in their thrall or one of their number, because it's a fairly convenient narrative for the Beltway press to make the Tea Party into the juggernaut that's taken over the Republican Party, rather than just acknowledging the Tea Party as the socially conservative base of Republicanism. That same convenience-of-narrative makes the South the stronghold of White Power and the Republicans that gladly court them, whether through "states' rights" overtures or other concepts, like small government on economic issues and really really really big government on social issues - it's a lot of code word accusations - nobody can overtly proclaim themselves as proud racists, but if you look at their associations, where they speak, and what words they use, you can build a translation matrix...or a bingo card.

It's always more complicated than that, but when a prevailing narrative is that the American people are as dumb as the stones in the quarries, the order to reduce complexity to simple sound bites, ads, and oversimplified narratives is never far behind.

From:

majoline

Wow, I'm starting to really think that next week when my brain isn't mush I actually need to write that Mississippi 101, because almost everyone here would hate to think they're being associated with the Tea Party. In fact I know that LA and MS politicians would rather you think they were the sane, rational conservatives.

'States rights' is a hard thing to talk about because yeah, it's an easy way to overlook the former slavery narrative and current racism, but a lot of the reasons that Southern politicians have always talked about states rights are still here and kicking:

like the fact that MS got hit by Katrina all the way up to Hattiesburg and shit was down to Jackson and only north of Tupelo was spared.

When you Google exactly where those places are, and the fact that most of the aide MS'ians got was from large corporations or churches and we're still waiting on the federal government to allow us to rebuild in sections of Gulfport and Pass Christian, well, you can understand why they are suspicious of allowing anymore federal intervention.

Mississippians feel like they get left out of everything that involves America, or the Gulf Coast, or the Weather Channel even.

While at the same time, the bigots still use the same language they always have too. So yeah.

From:

silveradept

It can be hard, sometimes, with the media parading the Bachmanns in front of the cameras all the time, to remember that there are plenty of sane and rational conservatives, even if it seems like the elected representatives have gone off the deep end.

Explaining just that to a Beltway "liberal" will justify to their minds the need for better bigger federal disaster spending, because corporations always have ulterior motives and churches are just looking to convert people any way they can. Some of them will also pick up the intended message of "hey, if you guys actually had your s**t together, we wouldn't be pushing quite so hard to not have to deal with you", but it's probably a coin flip.

From:

majoline

I suppose I agree without otherwise I wouldn't be writing about my experiences here all the time. :)

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