Immigrants, Slave Economy & Low Wages linked in South's Traditions

[KoKo]

Immigrants, Slave Economy & Low Wages linked in South's Traditions


(I caught this review on Buzzflash about a new book on the South..I thought Buzz's comments were incredibly good and explains much about why so many of us DU Southerners are anguished and frustrated)

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Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity (Hardcover)
by James C. Cobb

Published by Oxford University Press, "Away Down South" is another book well worth reading to understand the modern Republican Party. We need to warn you that it is not per se about the GOP; in fact it is an eminently readable, but scholarly, study of the actual and perceived heritage of the South.

And the author, former president of the Southern Historical Association and a Professor at the University of Georgia, James C. Cobb, is painstakingly fair. As a specialist in the history of the South, he balances the facts with the myths about the region.

Indeed, the challenge to understanding the South is that it is such a mixture of myth and reality. If the North was prospering as a result of the gritty process of industrialization, the South was relying on the ultimate low wage market (as in slavery) and the intoxicating fuel of romantic notions about its "values."
-snip-

BuzzFlash has discussed before that the new South consists of two different worldviews from an economic standpoint. There is the high-tech, globalized Southern economy represented by people like Ross Perot, who made their fortunes off of the "new" American economy. Then there is the low-wage, natural resources, non-industrialized heritage of the South that came directly from the slave owning tradition.

It is the latter tradition (and these thoughts are BuzzFlash's, not the book's author) that the Bush/Cheney Administration owes its heritage to. That explains why Bush, despite the right wing objections of his party, wants low-wage immigrant workers to be allowed into the country. That is why Cheney and Halliburton and Iraq and oil are so important to the current regime. They harken back to a South that lived off natural resources and the cheapest labor available: slavery. (Again, the book doesn't get into politics much. These are BuzzFlash's observations.)

"Away Down South" is subtitled "A History of Southern Identity," and Cobb does a masterful job of dissecting the perception of identity vs. the reality of life. On the other hand, the self-image of many Southerners, historically, has had more to do with the perception of their identity than with reality. Sound like anyone we know?

http://www.buzzflash.com /