The Republican Party has long been associated with fiscal
conservatism. It still is—or at least it
was until Trump arrived. But it was also
generally liberal on social issues with its moral core derived from traditional
New England Protestantism. At some point
the Party became associated with a particularly radical social conservatism as
its center of gravity moved to the states of the South that promoted the values
of Evangelical Christianity. Donald
Trump surprised everyone by gaining the Republican nomination for president,
and startled everyone by actually winning the election. Commentators were so busy drawing comparisons
with the rise of Adolph Hitler that they forgot to notice that the politician
Trump most resembled was the southern segregationist governor, George Wallace, who ran for president in
1964 and 1972 as a Democrat and in 1968 representing the American Independent
Party. Trump did not run as a
segregationist, but he gave a wink and a nod to every racist he
encountered. Wikipedia provides these comments on Wallace’s 1968 campaign.
“Wallace ran a campaign
supporting law and order and states' rights on racial segregation. This
strongly appealed to rural white Southerners and blue-collar union workers in
the North. Wallace was leading the three-way race in the Old Confederacy with
45% of the vote in mid-September. Wallace's appeal to blue-collar workers and
union members (who usually voted Democratic) hurt Hubert Humphrey in Northern
states like Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A
mid-September AFL-CIO internal poll showed that one in three union members supported
Wallace, and a Chicago Sun-Times poll showed that Wallace had a plurality of
44% of white steelworkers in Chicago.”
“Wallace's foreign policy
positions set him apart from the other candidates in the field. If the Vietnam
War was not winnable within 90 days of his taking office, Wallace pledged an
immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. . . . Wallace also called foreign-aid
money 'poured down a rat hole' and demanded that European and Asian allies pay
more for their defense.”
Wallace appealed to the racial and economic fears of the
white working class. The surprising
strength of his campaign should have told us that Trump would also be stronger
than expected outside of the South.
Historians, social scientists, and political analysts
have often been moved to use a phrase similar to the “southernization of
America” to describe the process by which the Republican Party was reconfigured
to take its current form and the white working class switched from seeking the
economic benefits promised by Democrats to pursuing the cultural values
promoted by Republicans. Could it be
that southern values propagated out of the South with the huge migrations of
southerners that dispersed throughout the rest of the nation during most of the
twentieth century? James N. Gregory is a
history professor at the University of Washington who believes that to be the
case. He presents his data and
conclusions in The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America
(2005).
The migration of Blacks
from the South to the cities of the North and West has been referred to as “The
Great Migration.” The migration of
whites from the South over the same period was much larger, but much less
studied. Gregory provides this summary
of what his investigations demonstrated.
“This
book is about what may be the most momentous internal population movement of
the twentieth century, the relocation of black and white Americans from the
farms and towns of the South to the cities and suburbs of the North and
West. In the decades before the South
became the Sun Belt, 20 million southerners left the region. In doing so, they changed America. They transformed American religion, spreading
Baptist and Pentecostal churches and reinvigorating evangelical Protestantism,
both black and white versions. They
transformed American popular culture, especially music. The development of blues, jazz, gospel, R&B,
and hillbilly and country music all depended on the southern migrants. The Southern Diaspora transformed American
racial hierarchies, as black migrants in the great cities of the North and West
developed institutions and political practices that enabled the modern civil
rights movement. The Southern Diaspora
also helped reshape American conservatism, contributing to new forms of white
working-class and suburban politics.
Indeed, most of the great political realignments of the second half of
the twentieth century had something to do with the population movements out of
the South.”
Given the interest in
Donald Trump and the Republican voters, the focus here will be on the effects
of the southern white migrants.
Discussing internal
migrations and the effects they might have becomes complicated because people
will leave one location in search of a better life but a significant number
will return eventually, sometimes within months, sometimes only decades later. Data exist providing numbers of southerners
who migrated out over some time period, and data exist indicating where those
migrants settled over that period. However
the data needs interpretation from other sources in order to determine what
effect they might have had on any society in which they embedded
themselves. Economic and social
circumstances would also play a role in where people settled. Blacks were restricted in where they could go
and headed for the black enclaves in the big northern and western cities. Whites could go anywhere other whites lived,
but were not equally welcome in all places.
As a result, whites would also tend to concentrate in areas where jobs
were available and any cultural peculiarities they might have brought with them
were tolerated.
The migration flow breaks
down into two periods. The first begins
at the start of the twentieth century, grows through the war years and
diminishes during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The second and largest migration period was
driven by World War II and the postwar boom years. The out migration of blacks would peak in the
1970s and fall considerably as the century came to an end. For whites, the peak would come in the 1950s
and stay relatively high from then on.
“In
the Great Migration era of the early twentieth century, when African Americans
moved north for the first time in large numbers and established much-noticed
communities in the major cities, less-noticed white southerners actually
outnumbered them roughly two to one. The
margins became larger after 1950 and still larger as the century drew to a
close. Over the course of the twentieth
century, more than 28 million southerners left their home region—28 percent
were African Americans, 68 percent were non-Hispanic whites, and 4 percent
southern-born Latinos, Tejanos mostly, who had been joining the flow north and
west since World War II.”
Gregory provides a
breakdown of where former southerners lived in 1970 by region. By far, the most densely settled regions are
what he refers to as the Pacific (California, Oregon and Washington) and the East
North Central (Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio).
“In
1970, 12 percent of California residents were southern born. This was proportionally similar to Ohio, where
1.4 million southerners of both races lived, and to Indiana, which was home to
617,000. In Illinois, where former
southerners numbered close to a million, and Michigan, where there were more
than 800,000, they constitutes 9 percent of the population….Unfortunately, we
have no way of counting the children and grandchildren born in these
states. They would certainly at least
double the demographic impact.”
One must remember that statewide numbers can
be misleading because conditions encouraged concentration of migrants. Consider California as an example. It saw a huge influx of migrants from
Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas during the depression years. Many of them settled in the Central Valley where
agricultural jobs were available and became a significant fraction of the
population. California is today,
politically, two states: the coast and the inland region. It is perhaps the most liberal state in the
union because most of the voters live on the coast where the original settlers
had mostly non-southern origins. The
inland parts of the state are highly conservative, differing little today in
political views from those now found in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas.
Gregory was quoted as
writing that the migrant southerners “helped reshape American conservatism,
contributing to new forms of white working-class and suburban politics.” How does he justify that claim?
One of the southern
contributions to political discourse was to make racism and racial violence
more politically correct. Racism already
existed outside the South, but it was generally illegal and violence was not condoned. The southerners brought the attitude that
racism was legal and violence against blacks was condoned. This message was one of encouragement of
others to behave as whites did in the south.
Although the southerners were not numerous enough to be major
participants in racial incidents, they could be the tinder that lights the
flame. Gregory provides this example.
“Southern
whites played a real part in the hate strikes and white-against-black housing
riots that occurred in northern and western cities in the 1940s and 1950s. Sociologist Katherine Archibald worked in a
shipyard in Oakland, California, during World War II. She witnessed neither riots nor major violent
clashes, but in her book Wartime Shipyard,
she explored the tense racial dynamics
of the yard, where about 20 percent of the workers were African Americans from
the western South and another 20 percent were whites from the same region….Okies
often took the lead in whites-only conversations about the ‘Negro problem.’ Vicious, uncompromising racism, she pointed
out, was widespread, virtually universal among whites of all backgrounds in the
shipyard, but the southerners spoke loudly about their hatreds and theories,
drawing a sense of authority from their supposed special knowledge about how to
handle black people. Talk of lynching
was an Okie contribution to the racist discourse: ‘What you need round here.’
one former southerner counseled, ‘is a good old fashioned lynching. Back in my home state we string a nigger up
or shoot him down, every now and then, and that way we keep the rest of them
quiet and respectful’.”
Why is the encouragement
of racism of significance in the history of American conservatism? Because every Republican president from Nixon
to Trump has sent the message that racists are welcome in the Republican Party,
the conservative party. This embrace of
racism led southern Democrats to turn into southern Republicans and helped
working and middle class whites outside the South decide to vote the same way,
although there would be more than racism involved. Under Trump, the Republican Party is best
described as a white nationalist party.
Gregory provides several
examples where the migrant southerners did more than just talk. The resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the
1920s was driven mostly by southern activism.
The participants were majority non-southerners, but southerners led the
way.
“Estimates
of the numbers who joined [the Klan]….range well above 2 million, with
two-thirds of the membership outside the South.
Huge Klan organizations were built in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Illinois and Michigan. The West also
responded to the Invisible Empire.
Oregon elected a Klansman governor in 1922, as did Colorado in 1924, and
there were pockets of Klan strength in California and Washington.”
A Texas native, D.C.
Stephenson was perhaps the most politically successful of the Klansmen.
“….Indiana
alone counted 300,000 Klansmen….the 1924 election season witnessed Stephenson’s
greatest triumph: first a Klan takeover of the Republican Party, then of the Indiana
statehouse. Until he was brought down by
a 1925 rape and suicide scandal, Stephenson was the most visible and probably
the most powerful Klansman in the country.”
A similar dynamic occurred
when George Wallace brought his campaign to the North in the 1960s. He received considerable support from
southern migrants, but probably more importantly, their support provided the cover
for others who might have hesitated to vote for such a controversial and
unlikely figure. By the time Wallace
arrived on the national scene a number of other developments had occurred. The
civil rights movement and subsequent legislation had further aroused racial
issues. School desegregation would be a
long and nasty process—unpopular in both the North and South. The war in Vietnam would grow to monstrous
proportions, dividing the nation as to how to define patriotism. The cultural upheavals of the 1960s had
offended the traditionally minded and prompted religious groups to become more politically
active.
Wallace brought more to
the table than just racism. Like Trump
he appeared to be the answer to a number of the concerns of the white lower and
middle classes.
“His
promises crossed the boundaries conventional in northern politics. He sounded like a Republican on welfare,
race, and taxes, a Democrat on social security and union rights, and a southerner
on the centrality of God-fearing religion.”
Much of the cultural
division that emerged during the 1960s was driven by southern music. Traditional southern music formed the basis
for both an industry of folk music and one of country music. The two would take opposite sides on
virtually all issues.
The South also spawned
liberals who would take their music north and create an industry that would
side with liberals on issues related to race and unionization, and promote
anti-war stances during the 1960s. Woody
Guthrie was born in Oklahoma and gained notoriety in California. He would be the prototype. The traditional southern melodies would be
used to create protest songs that were used as a resource in the labor and
civil rights movements, and ultimately in the antiwar movement.
Country music took a
different path. It had been increasing
in popularity outside the South for some time, acquiring a country-western
flavor when cowboy themes were added.
However, the arrival of rock and roll music in the 1950s produced an
existential crisis. To continue to grow,
country had to redefine itself. It had
to shed the hillbilly and cowboy imagery and find an audience on which to focus. If the youth wanted rock and roll and
exciting experimentation, country would go for an older audience and emphasize
traditional values.
“The
racial markings remained very apparent as Nashville positioned itself against
the racially integrated imagery and personnel of rock and roll and as George
Wallace and other segregationist politicians claimed country music for the
backlash cause.”
Country music also
positioned itself as the “working man’s” music.
The songs were often about humble people working dangerous jobs, while
suffering broken romances with unfaithful women, and the disdain of the
elites. This approach was broadly
popular across different regions and the various ethnicities. It had found a definite demographic niche.
“Listener
surveys revealed that country music appealed largely to whites in middle-age
range, twenty-five to forty-nine, with few younger listeners. And the audience was largely blue-collar
families—especially the skilled and semi-skilled sectors—with mid-range incomes
and modest educations. In the North,
former southerners accounted for a vigorous portion of this market, thus
approximating the start-up role they played in the Wallace crusades. But the product had spread far beyond that
base. Country music had also become
popular in ethnic neighborhoods, showing up in all sorts of blue-collar taverns….”
With the coming of the
Vietnam War and the associated controversies, country music put itself firmly
on the side of the war and the soldiers who had to fight it—a strategy that
would again be popular with its audience.
It would represent patriotism and traditionalism. Would this be enough to help determine the
course of working class conservatism? Gregory
provides this comment.
“These
are songs some critics will say, and who knows what they meant to
audiences? But they were not just
songs. Country music of this era was
surrounded by political commentary. DJs,
artists, journalists, and music-buying publics recognized that music was a
prime battleground for the epic conflicts of the Vietnam era. Politicians did as well. Many of the medium’s biggest stars signed up
to help Wallace in 1968, performing with the governor as he crisscrossed the
country. Nashville’s ‘Music Row was
practically a battlefield command post for George Wallace,’ observed journalist
Paul Hemphill, who found also a few Nixon supporters but nary a star who
publicly supported Hubert Humphrey.”
“In
the years that followed, Republicans moved to take over that command post. Repeatedly (and awkwardly) declaring his
fondness for country music, President Nixon courted musicians and Nashville
executives, knowing that these entertainers would help secure the new voting
blocs that the Republicans counted on, working-class whites in the South and
working-class whites outside the south.”
Southern whites would
provide yet another factor that would drive working-class and middle-class
whites in a more conservative direction: the rise of religious political
activism. The religion exported to the
North and West was of a very traditional Bible-driven form. It was tolerant of racism, but intolerant
when it came to Catholics, Communists, homosexuals, and feminists. It did not become aggressively political
until the Roe v. Wade decision in
1973. On the issue of abortion, the
southern churches and Catholicism finally found common ground.
“Fear
of Catholics had been part of what had last driven evangelicals into the
political arena in the 1920s, when their voices and votes had aided the causes
of prohibition, anti-immigration, and the Ku Klux Klan.”
“With
the reawakening of politicized Christian conservatism, Republicans grafted
moral traditionalism onto the patriotic and racial traditionalism that had been
helping them win elections. Opposition
to feminism, gay rights, sex education in the schools, and especially abortion
offered a new way to appeal to blue-collar and lower-middle-class whites who
not long before had been consistent Democrats.”
The politicization of
Christian traditionalists provided the Republicans with another opportunity to
gain votes among the white working and middle classes by promising to
discriminate against and restrict the civil rights of an expanded list of
people. The party once known for fiscal
responsibility and civil liberties had now formed a covenant with these white
voters that allowed blacks, Hispanics, immigrants of all kinds, homosexuals,
and women to be considered as less than full citizens of the United
States.
Such an approach to
politics would inevitably lead to someone like Donald Trump.
And that is how we arrived
at where we are today.
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