The dangerous myth of a singular, unified, white American South

[n2doc]

WRITTEN BY

Matthew Pratt Guterl
Professor of Africana and American Studies, Brown University

One-hundred and fifty years after the end of the Civil War, the thirst for an alternate version of Southern history in the US remains unquenchable. The Confederate flag endures as a symptom of the deeper cancer of racism, eating into the bone of the nation. And now a distinguished team of HBO showrunners, no doubt keen to appeal to the Trumpian electorate, is creating a show set in the alt-right South—in which the Confederacy’s secession was triumphant, and slavery is still legal. The planned show, “Confederate,” will purportedly depict the road to the “Third American Civil War.”


HBO seems to believe that there is something edgy in the idea of “Confederate.” But there is also considerable perversity inherent in our willingness to let this question to be asked, over and over again. Kevin Wilmont’s 2005 mockumentary, C.S.A, tried to imagine what life might be like in a more contemporary slaveholding Confederacy. Ben Winter’s recent book, Underground Airlines, did so with an even greater degree of cleverness, following the arc of a slave-turned-slavecatcher in an alternative present. HBO’s “Confederate” also dates back to the much-earlier imaginings of Winston Churchill and MacKinlay Cantor and Harry Turtledove—revealing a century-long catalog of attempts to answer the question, What if the South had won the Civil War?


The answer, however, is always the same: Slavery survives, adapts, and spreads, in a plot that seems designed chiefly to let white people imagine what it would be like to own slaves and revel in white supremacy in the contemporary world. As Roxanne Gay put it in a recent New York Times op-ed, it is utterly exhausting to consider fiction’s repetitive desire to resurrect slavery and keep it alive. Why not, she writes, imagine a South where slave rebellions were triumphant? Or dream up a more robust, more introspective, multi-racial liberal democracy, built on top of the ashes of white supremacy?

The answer has everything to do with how American political and popular culture is haunted by the Civil War—and by the more foundational, mythical idea of a singular, unified South. In many ways, the Confederacy still appears to be present, real, and dangerous. This is in part because that once-troublesome block of states is still troublesome in the same ways. But it is also because we routinely use an antiquated definition of the region.

more
https://qz.com/1041782/hbos-confederate-and-the-myth-of-a-unified-american-south/

[DK504]

1. I am never surprised by "Hollywood" and studios decisions.

They are generally ridiculous and a lower IQ level than even a low preforming high school student. All they care about is money, they care nothing for the public good or even good story telling. They haven't had an original idea in decades.

These studio heads, producers and writers are very "well educated" and do not want for anything, yet they care for nothing and no one except their own ego. Most I have met are small minded and myopic in their understanding of anything outside of "LA" and it's 'culture'. That may be acceptable if LA actually HAD culture, they do not, they have Mann's Chinese Theatre and tourists thinking they will meet George Clooney walking down Sunset Blvd.

They have produced nothing but idiotic, immature dreck for decades and they have no desire to change. Their only desire is money and an illusion of power. The intellectual depth of an average writer or producer is a shallow marsh.

[Hortensis]

2. Don't imagine climate and heat were considered factors

to be considered. Both challenging climate extremes and hot climates increase both individual and cultural conservatism. Geneticists have established that conservative and liberal start as genetically linked inborn personality traits, further formed by environment. This goes for all races, including black. (This is what scares me most about of the possible dangers of global warming.)

I've also read that the south's dominant cultures were also based more on more conservative, southern European/Roman underpinnings, rather than more liberal northern European cultures.

Then there's the little reality that conservative populations are far more likely (than those with strong liberal components) to see different factions as existential threats and to feel a need to eliminate these threats than they are to live in peaceful cooperation.

All in all, the fantasy that the south would ever have developed into a "more introspective, multi-racial liberal democracy" seems just that. Maintaining democracy on their own would itself have been a huge problem. The south was/is strongly conservative, and most conservatives just don't believe in their guts in the principles of equality and government of, by and for the people. Many see them as examples of typical, dangerous liberal idiocy.

[IronLionZion]

3. How about a South where Virginia and North Carolina elect Obama?

Unless the truth is unacceptable to some people who prefer to perpetuate and romanticize a fantasy where they benefit from cruelty towards others.

Trumpers would love to Make America "Great" Again for a few while it sucks for many.

[GulfCoast66]

4. What about Florida being for Obama as well

Shit, even when Florida Man get things right we get no credit

[djg21]

5. I want to see the alternative outcome.

Where Lincoln frees the slaves; Sherman burns the South to the ground; and the Confederacy is not permitted to rejoin the Union.