Guardian UK: The Old South's last hurrah

[marmar]

The Old South's last hurrah
Barack Obama could break the Republican party's hold on the south and prove that race-based politics are a thing of the past

Sasha Abramsky
guardian.co.uk, Monday November 03 2008 21.00 GMT


Now, finally, the election is upon us. And now there is a chance for a once-in-a-half-century, perhaps even once-in-a-century political realignment. There is a chance to say goodbye to a politics built around tribalism and to move into a new chapter in American history.

I'll keep this short. From the civil war onwards, Democrats controlled America's southern states and used their power to enforce a rigid apartheid system. Southern Democrats remained a vital part of any national Democratic coalition, and hence, even under otherwise radical administrations such as those of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, segregation was never seriously challenged. The "peculiar institution" of slavery was ended by the Yankee victory in the civil war, but the almost equally peculiar institution of race politics and the division of society into racial castes persisted.

For reasons too convoluted to go into here, in the 1960s the national Democratic party embraced civil rights. And as the legal architecture of Jim Crow was dismantled and more African-Americans were registered to vote, reluctantly, at least at first, white southern Democrats began to reach out to these empowered constituents. Eventually African-Americans became a core part of the party's identity.

The Republicans sensed an opportunity and began aggressively courting conservative southern whites aggrieved by these changes. And in one of the country's more remarkable transferrals of political allegiance, in the space of a couple electoral cycles Dixie went from being Democrat to being Republican. And it has remained so ever since. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/nov/03/barack-obama-republicans-south-race

[drm604]

1. Great article.

The author has a better grasp on U.S. racial politics than a lot of Americans.

[ensemble]

2. What I see...

Its not so much a break on the Repub's lock on the south as rendering it irrelevant. Whereas in the South, race has played a key role in this and other elections, in the rest of the country its not that important. The Dems ran the best candidate, one that would never have a change in most of the South, and appear poised to win easily.