Comments on: The first rule of white club

By: truffula

truffula — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 20:17:33 +0000

racist v. non-racist

I grew up in white suburban California under the care of parents who had an anti-racist parenting thing going on before there even was such a term (they were folkies, more or less). I moved from there to Montana, where the casual and conversational displays of racism left me stunned. I realized that growing up where and how I did, I really had no clue about what the world is like. I started paying more attention and after a while, I realized that where I’d grown up was just the same, simply less out in the open about it. The notion that any particular place in the US has a lock on the racist/not-racist sweepstakes is not credible.

By: Notorious Ph.D.

Notorious Ph.D. — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:40:56 +0000

The cognitive dissonance that holding an image of the south as all-white culture is amazing, especially considering that the one other thing that is popularly associated with the Deep South is difficult race relations.

And while we’re at it: can we dismantle the “racist south” versus “non-racist north” dichotomy? Detroit anyone? Chicago? The (until recently) lily-white Pacific Northwest?

By: J. Otto Pohl

J. Otto Pohl — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 12:45:29 +0000

Western Dave is absolutely right. I did a multicultural thesis comparing acculturation and political activism of Russian-Germans, Crimean Tatars, and Meskhetian Turks in response to being exiled from their ancestral homelands. There was absolutely zero interest in the US in even interviewing me. It took me a full seven years after getting my PhD to land a long term contract at an African university. The number of comparative historians out there is quite limited. For a long time the late George Fredrickson was just about the only person doing comparative history.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:32:58 +0000

Thanks, Paul–I’m sorry to hear about this. I TA’d for Bob in the fall of 1991, for his Civil War class. He was a generous and decent guy.

I think his son is just a little younger than I am. (At the time, he had a son who was an undergrad at Penn–he may have had other children too but I don’t recall.) Sad for them to lose a parent at a relatively young age.

By: Paul Harvey

Paul Harvey — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 03:57:01 +0000

BTW, an obituary, courtesy of Tom Sugrue, of one of C. Vann Woodward’s students, who had a great career in African-American (southern) history (and there were a number of them):

http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2013/01/robert-engs-2013.html

By: Z

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 02:06:47 +0000

Northern Barbarian is on the money, and the point on popular vs scholarly perception is very good (and this NY article participates in the popular perception).

There are a lot of Democrat-voting precincts and municipalities and counties here but what pisses me off royally is the party’s abandonment. Candidates cannot get funded by the DNC, etc., yet they have the gall to call me for contributions to campaigns in other states. Who has the wherewithal to challenge the Republicans for Governor and save the schools?

I don’t know, those dems themselves just seem so white some days, like this author, white is all they can see.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 01:39:37 +0000

Indeed. He was one of those very brave, very manly so-called “Liberal War Hawks” back in 2002 and 2003 who supported the Bush admin’s opportunistic move to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. All of those guys–and of course, the ones who got the prominent perches in mags like the New Republic and the New Yorker were in fact all guys–were apparently entirely ignorant of the voluminous history of modern colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as totally credulous in believing (or hoping?) that the Bushies were capable of anything but a total clusterf^(k. And none of these guys had military experience either (duh!).

So, color me surprised when they turned out to be wrong wrong wrongity-wrong with a very wrong cherry on the top.

But nobody was giving me, or anybody with any historical knowledge, common sense, or even the slightest amount of political acumen that even my dumba$$ kitty-cat had after watching the Bush admin run things for 6 months, any of that kind of opinion journalism real estate, except for Paul Krugman. It was all Thomas Friedman “suck on this” time. Jackasses.

By: truffula

truffula — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 01:19:45 +0000

Did anybody else actually click over to read the article? Ugh. George Packer is a war and “failed state” reporter, I guess. This manly white guy in an armchair stuff might be his style.

By: Lance

Lance — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:42:06 +0000

Setting aside the very first sentence – and I, not being of Yale, can’t offer an opinion – the rest of this is totally spot on, H-Ann. You are describing, as a stage of socio-demographic evolution, the outskirts of Phoenix, now full of silver-haired millionaires on fixed incomes, driving custom golf charts and voting in Sheriff Joe, whose job is scare off/overpolice the browns and blacks. But someday, the silver-haired folks will be fewer. And they will lose everything. For the rest of the greater South, between now and the inevitable future, though, there is a whole mess of ugliness yet, a whole lot of Phoenix. We need histories rich in complexity to prepare us for this rich and complex landscape in-the-making.

Plus, I love the tone.

By: nicoleandmaggie

nicoleandmaggie — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:21:38 +0000

Very odd. My little window to history is cliometrics, and I can’t think of anything South-related that isn’t about race. I don’t think economists care about the South except because of how its racial relations have affected the rest of the country. It’s just an odd little region to put in a fixed effect for otherwise.