H. Brandt Ayers: South's cultural barriers
Nov 08, 2009 | 2228 views | 4 
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Progressive Southerners haven't made much headway in our desire to nudge the region into the mainstream of American affairs. To do so, we will have to cross cultural barriers that keep normality out and us in.Another reason we haven't broken out of our voluntary apartheid is that the voices of progress have been talking to the wrong people … ourselves.
In essence, that is the message I brought this weekend to an invitation-only gathering of men and women from throughout the South who met at Davidson College to see if they could design a "better South."
See what I mean? Here we go again, academics, authors, editors, current and former office holders, professionals of all stripes … talking to ourselves. And our message to the region's white majority is: "Shape Up!"
All those cops and carpenters and beauticians, farmers, filling-station owners and small-business people hearing or sensing a slight answer, "Who the hell are you to tell me to shape up? I'd take that from my drill instructor or my spouse, but not from somebody who doesn't know my culture or me."
I'll get to some thoughts about building a trusting relationship between progressives and the decisive majority, but first a visit to the boneyard of forward-looking efforts in the past.
Atlanta editor Henry Grady articulated the first New South movement in the late 19th century. His plan for a risen South was a marriage of Yankee capital with Southern management, labor and raw material. Such a marriage built the New South town of Anniston, but the South wasn't a good bet for most investors.
Birmingham in 1938 was the scene of another New South rising when 1,500 delegates gathered to create the Southern Conference of Human Welfare. Distinguished delegates including Eleanor Roosevelt enjoyed a vision of a South healed and forgiven — for one night.
The next day, reality appeared in the barrel shape of the city's new police commissioner, Bull Connor, who famously said, "White and Negro may not segregate together." Under relentless attack by powerful conservatives, SCHW was a walking corpse by 1948.
In the 1970s, another New South movement emerged with the antique name, the L.Q.C. Lamar Society, which I led for three years but which was swamped by its own creation, the Southern Growth Policies Board, and one of its members, President Jimmy Carter. By 1980, Carter's presidency was finished and the last New South movement had fizzled.
And so, where are we now, and what are we to do?
We are in a state of political purgatory, taken for granted by the national Republican Party and shunned by Democrats who flinch from touching the toxic cultural belt that surrounds the Deep South.
There is no real two-party system in the crescent of states from South Carolina to Texas. We are effectively a no-party region and thus we are not a part of the normal discourse about crucial domestic and foreign-policy issues.
Opening a normal two-party dialogue in the South will require a Democratic president, Barack Obama, to undertake a "Nixon in China" mission to detoxify some of our most divisive cultural symbols.
From the perspective of 50 years as a liberal Southern journalist, I believe this conference can do no more important work than to begin a process that builds a climate of trust between the white South and the White House. In the absence of such a climate, a majority of Southerners will not listen to the president.
The process can begin only by his showing up in Atlanta or Birmingham or Jackson as naturally as appearances in Chicago or Boston. Telling the folks how happy he is to be here and what a good thing it is to be living in the South.
But the invitation hymn must be sung first, an event that requires dealing with tricky cultural symbols that seem so toxic but can be neutralized, even enjoyed without apology or embarrassment.
I can see Obama at a South-wide cultural conference in the Atlanta Civic Center flanked by the two Southern presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, Sen. Jim Webb representing that chamber and Congressman John Lewis representing the House.
In his introduction of the president, Lewis says that his philosophy of the "Beloved Community" is wide enough to encompass black soul and white soul, too … that all people deserve respect and the enjoyment of their heritage.
An expectant crowd of Southerners, some hopeful, others hostile, are surprised to hear a Democratic president, especially the first black president, calmly, poetically speak of unifying possibilities in a symbol that had seemed so polarizing.
"I am reminded again," he begins, "that we are one undivided America, that the honored dead at Gettysburg wore blue AND gray; they fought under different flags that deserve honor and respect but are equal inheritors of one America, indivisible.
"It is good that people set aside quiet, peaceful places to remind us that even in defeat, there was nobility of character, that the men who fought under such leaders represent universal values of courage, honor and loyalty. Cultural symbols speak to people of important events that happened to them along the way. They should never be dishonored as symbols of hate."
Cultural conciliation could begin with such a speech. If a national coming together is ever achieved — a lifelong dream — I will tell the Lord, "You can take me now, but before you do, let me enjoy the feeling for awhile." Amen.
We're all familiar with President Obama's recent G--D--- America tours during which he apologized profusely to national leaders around the world for the United States' "arrogance" and "stupidity" for our military, economic, racial and foreign policy indiscretions.
Well, now we have Obama's southern disciple, H. Brandt Ayers, publisher of The Anniston Star, juxtaposing his G-- D--- The South media tour, to wit, his
writing, "H. Brandt Ayers: Isolated and Loving it", The Anniston Star, Oct 11, 2009, and others, wherein he denigrates the South for being "Southern" -- you have to read it.
Armond "Si" Simmons
Pell City, AL 35128
A question or two from the unwashed....
Were the attendees at Mr. Ayers' conference political figures or religious figures?
Does President Carter's religious standing count; same for Congresman Lewis. They both are liberal Baptists, so maybe not?
It is good to be back in Alabama.
AHS1960
Who was the most politically succesful southern regionalist to implement a liberal and progressive agenda with his region? That would be Aubrey Williams, native Alabamian and director of the New Deal's youth employment agency, who was also a devout Christian, as were also a surprising number of powerful, second-tier New Dealers. That was back when "liberals were Christian," and unapologetically included their belief in the Social Gospel and Christian Humanism as their prime motivations for advocating public funding of education, health care, and a decent provision for the poor. Their numbers also included some other Alabama-bred Christian believers and liberals as the late Rev. Andrew Turnipseed and his daughter, Marti Turnipseed, of Birmingham-Southern College, and the very much alive Wendell Berry, none of whose names turn up very often at Davidson College colloquia.
It is my conviction that until southern liberals openly take up again the beliefs of Christian humanists, and not present themselves as secular, know-better-and-educated-more-expensively-than-you social engineers, their cause is lost in the South and in the nation. The New Deal knew that, but we have forgotten. Of course, the rigor of being both a confessing Christian and an unapologetic liberal is that one also must confess the limitations of moderism, the innate imperfection of us all, and the inescapable self interests of all our social schemes, whether proposed by Ronald Reagan or Lyndon Johnson. Still, one confesses, and then acts with all one's power for the good.
The difference between a confessing Christian liberal and a modernist, largely secular liberal progressive is the difference between, say, a Reinhold Niebuhr and a Ralph McGill, or a Henry Grady, the latter two of which you seem to be particularly fond. That is why the writings of Niebuhr can still fire the minds of men and women to liberal political action, and the writings of McGill or Grady are as as dustily irrelevant to the New South as, say, a group of porfessional southerners talking to themselves at Davidson College.