Via Aravosis.
“Southern people are conservative by need. You know, if you lived in the South 40 years ago, you’d know what I’m talking about,” said Donald Crocker, who has cut hair in tiny Leakesville since 1966. He meant that Southerners had learned to live poor, relying on their churches and their neighbors and not expecting government help. Even when their forebears received government handouts — cheese and powdered milk — they scrimped and saved and used it all. He still tries to live that way, charging just $9 per haircut and $10 for a flattop.
Clearly anyone who lived outside of the southeastern United States at that time must have no idea what he is talking about. If only I could think of something that happened in the South in the late sixties and the early seventies that had such an impact. Anyone?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I wish I were smart enough to think of something with that kind of impact, in that time period.
Corner Stone
He’s probably referring to the massive influx of long haired hippies about that time, due to The Beatles American debut.
ant
they got all uppity
Steve
What sort of “impact” are we talking about? An economic impact? The post kinda makes it sound like you’re arguing the civil rights era turned white Southerners conservative, when of course they’ve always been conservative.
Gex
Yeah, why would those guys rather go without than have government help everyone? I can’t think of anything. And is that in anyway related to the new position of southern conservatives which is government spending on me is okay but spending on others isn’t? Is the word “others” there a clue?
Who knows? It’s all just a fucking mystery.
I like to blow people’s minds every now and again by describing Fox News’ demographic then pointing out most of those folks went to school before desegregation. They don’t often put that together, but it can sometimes help them see through the Tea Party BS.
Culture of Truth
HIPPIES!
Matthew Reid Krell
Translation: “Things were better before all them Jews and nigras got uppity. People knew their place.”
ETA: I’ve been to Leakesville. It is a total throwback. I would not be surprised to learn that there was some quiet intimidation to keep “those people” away from the polls.
ETAA (Edited to Add Again): I see ant beat me to it.
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
Atlanta Flames first took to the ice?
CBS cancelled “Hee-Haw”?
Other than that, I got nothin’.
Bago
It got up into Alaska, via the importation of southern truckers working on a federal project.
feebog
WTF? Rural Southern states receive far more federal dollars than they pay. These people are entitled whiners. They continue to push the myth that they are independent, self sufficient and proud of their hertiage. In truth they are racist wankers who still haven’t got over the fact that they lost the civil war 150 years ago.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I think he meant to say 140 years ago.
As for his timeframe, that’s when I was born, in the south, though I didn’t think I had that much of an impact.
To be a bit more serious, southerners have had no problem taking from the government. What he meant to say is that certain southerners have been hoarding it since the 60s.
Zifnab
“I’m poor because I charge so little for my services, and I must charge so little because all my neighbors are also poor.”
Gee, this seems like a chronic condition. Better pray for a solution.
Emrventures
Unlike my Northeastern forebears, who ate half their government cheese and threw the other half away, then used the powdered milk to fertilize the arugula garden.
This Real America crap is so tired.
The Dangerman
If my name was Donald Crocker, I’d try not to be such a cracker.
Elizabelle
From Aravosis’ commenter “arleeda”: don’t buy all of her argument, but it’s good:
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
Thrifty and frugal out of need does not equal “conservative”.
This guy is full of shit. My family left the South right about when he got there. Let’s deconstruct:
All too true.
Can’t ever remember chruches helping anyone down there. Church members, sometimes, would bring you some leftover food, along with healthy helpings of shame and scorn.
Most of the time, your neighbors would be gossiping about what a fuckup you were rather than helping.
No one expected it, but they were sure as shit glad to have it. Most places in the South all the way up ’til the sixties had framed portraits of FDR. Because they were so conservative, you know.
I don’t mind that there’s a “Southern mythos”, but I do object to how it keeps changing.
Jesse
You’re being a bit too elliptical, Tim. Sure, I can think of some answers: Southern Strategy, the 60s in general, etc. But, having thought of these, I can’t say that I know what precisely you’re getting after.
Cargo
“excessive government” = “helping black people”
“smaller government” = “less help to black people”
“handouts” = “helping black people”
New Yorker
Hippies began having weekly drum circles in Asheville.
Gex
@Gex: The corollary to which is that for some, Hawaii wasn’t a state when they learned the states in grade school, which doesn’t hurt when arguing he’s not really an American.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
The kinfolk I grew up with that lived that way, were not really conservative, but more Harry Truman democrats, or labor dems. But the part about a kind of communal living style is true, with a support system for the vitals of everyday living. I don’t think that is what sets the deep south apart though. That would be vile racism, and 300 years of slavery, and the attendant so called ‘southern lifestyle.
Nowadays, beginning with the The Great Society, and The NEw Deal before it, there are more poor southerners living off Yankee tax dollars than anywhere else. The problem there is the remains of an aristocratic life style left over after the Civil Way, with tell tale hallmarks like regressive state taxation, right to work, and all sorts of other local governing philosophy of suppressing anything like a healthy middle class. Same old Princes and Paupers class based society. Now largely supported by Massachusetts pinko libtards.
Nom de Plume
@Emrventures:
Yep.
Dear various regional populations: stop with the “It’s a Southern thing, you wouldn’t understand”, or “It’s a city thing” or “It’s a country thing”. STFU. You’re not that unique.
harlana
not seeing a connection between the civil rights movement and southern white frugality
imo, this kind of thinking goes back to the Civil War period, not the civil rights era, and resulting shortages of goods – and of course, hatred of the federal gov’t is all mixed in there as well (w/ regard to both the civil war AND the civil rights movement)
and they think if God makes them suffer from deprivation, it makes them better Christians
Villago Delenda Est
@Cargo:
I do believe you’ve hit all the high (ahem) notes of the entire teabagger (and by extension, stereotypical Southern) chantey.
SpotWeld
What happened was the increased rehtoric that “all your tax money is being given to the wrong sort of people” People were given long stories of friend’s friends who knew that they say someone living high on the hog on goverment hand outs.
And people were convinced that every time they made a smart decision to save rather than spend, feel a little bit of pain out of need for frugality it was becuase someone else got what was theirs.
In truth thier situation did not change greatly. They were just convinced every bad thing ecnomically was the fault of a specific subset of fellow Americans.
Villago Delenda Est
@harlana:
The Federal government took away their slaves.
Of course they hate them.
Chris
Those assloads of money that the federal government funnels to the South from places like New York and California and which heavily outweigh the amount of money the South puts into the system? They beg to differ. Yeah.
Corner Stone
Beyond the latent racism aspect, I thought there were three pull quotes from the story that will define this election:
…
…
Linda Featheringill
I was living in Texas in the 1970s. I don’t remember a new economic force rolling through the country at that time.
A lot of people made bold to speak out about life from their point of view. We had ethnic and racial pride: black pride, Italian pride, German pride, etc. I don’t remember a big Hispanic pride movement, though.
The sexual revolution happened. I’m sure that was unsettling to some old-fogey types.
I really don’t see what was significant about 40 years ago.
Culture of Truth
He meant that Southerners had learned to live poor, relying on their churches and their neighbors and not expecting government help.
As opposed to… those wastrel spendthrifts in the Bronx, North Dakota, Wyoming, Gary Indiana, Schenectady, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Newark? Please.
reflectionephemeral
You just can’t talk about this stuff without quoting Lee Atwater and Pat Buchanan.
Atwater:
Buchanan’s 1971 memo “Dividing the Democrats”:
Was noting over at my blog this weekend that this notion of cutting the country in half for political gain isn’t just a gambit anymore for the GOP– it’s the sum total of their policy and rhetoric. It’s a cultural resentment that they mistakenly believe is synonymous with patriotism.
Hillary Rettig
@Emrventures: +1
Also, “relying on their churches and their neighbors and not expecting government help. Even when their forebears received government handouts…”
Paul in KY
@Steve: What happened was a major political party stopped trying to appeal to people’s better nature & decided that a low-grade style of facism could significantly improve their lot.
Paul in KY
@Zifnab: He oughta charge $4.00 for a haircut. $9.00 haircuts back in the good-ole-days were done at that frenchified ‘salon’ where the nancyboys hung out, etc. etc.
harlana
as for my situation, when i was unemployed, other people in my situation considered themselves too good to accept the benefits to which they were entitled.
even i, as a young woman, at one time felt humiliated by just applying for benefits – i had become a victim of that mindset previously discussed
however, my father made me pursue every single possible government benefit i could get, because I/HE paid for it with our tax dollars – throughout my entire troubled existence
that said, the numbers don’t lie that we take in more federal aid than the rest of the country; but when you’re kids are starving, i guess that stubborn Southern pride finally goes out the window
Steve
@Paul in KY: Everyone, including you, seems to be talking about why white Southerners started voting Republican, but the guy’s quote wasn’t about Republicans, so why is everyone acting like it was? White Southerners have always been conservative.
Kyle
“Southern limited government” = “helping me plenty, but not helping black people”
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
Nowadays, beginning with the The Great Society, and The NEw Deal before it, there are more poor southerners living off Yankee tax dollars than anywhere else.
That suggests the possibility for some ratfucking.
Start a pseudo-conservative Internet movement to keep OUR hard-earned Yankee tax dollars out of the welfare-sucking South.
harlana
@Villago Delenda Est: well, a lot of them, their ancestors who fought, really didn’t own much at all besides farmland, much less slaves – but i see where you’re coming from there – in such cases, the fed govt took away their “inferiors”! (thanks also to the civil rights movement). if you’re not rich, privileged or gentrified, who’s left to look down on, after all?
Cuppa Cabana
@ Paul in KY:
I get a $4 haircut in Manhattan. True, it’s in Chinatown and the dude doesn’t speak English, but he knows what he’s doin and I don’t end up looking like Moe Howard. Much,
(Ladies cut: $6)
Paul in KY
@Steve: They used to vote Democratic, conservative or not. They pulled the lever multiple times for FDR, for Stevenson, for Kennedy, and in 1964 for LBJ.
IMO, that was because they weren’t being demogogued by 1 of the 2 major parties.
Joel
@Gex: Because it makes them better than the rest of us.
Steve in DC
I read a good article not that long ago about some of this which didn’t resort to hick bashing and accusations of racism. In a nut shell people who live in major metropolitan centers where they can see the government at work constantly tend to view it in a more positive light and value it. People who live in far more rural areas where the government is minimal often have to rely on local community for many things and tend to view the government negatively and don’t feel it creates a lot of value in their lives.
VA is a bit of the South and the North in this aspect. NOVA which is one of the richest areas in the US prospers because of defense and intelligence spending along with it’s proximity to the federal government. With all the top notch infrastructure to support the government and the massive amount of jobs it creates government is highly valued around here as the source of our jobs and relative wealth. Go down to Southern Virginia where there is minimal federal government and virtually no government investment and people are insanely hostile towards the concept of government.
This isn’t just true of the South though. A lot of Western states still have a somewhat libertarian bent and are distrustful of the federal government.
There is also the badge of pride for voting conservative, and I think a lot of people forget about this. Despite that fact that the Republicans are not always on their economic side the entire “damn hippies lost Vietnam and are destroying America by turning us into Europe” means that it might not be in your best economic interest, but by voting conservative you’re doing what’s best for America even if it’s not what’s best for you.
Paul in KY
@Cuppa Cabana: See! See what godless socia1ism in that disease pit known as New York can get you!
Seriously, I guess he makes his money off volume. Glad you found a good, cheap hair cutter.
terraformer
@feebog:
Liar!
Because shut up!, that’s why.
Midnight Marauder
@Steve:
Except that when this guy talks about “Southerners had learned to live poor”, he is referring to the fact that they would rather learn to live poor than live in a world where black people and other minorities had access to the same government benefits white Southerners used to enjoy at the expense of those minorities.
It’s a bunch of fucking coded language to mask the fact they don’t want to participate in a system where black people are equal to them.
I don’t think it’s that hard to parse out what he means.
red dog
The southern states collect far more Government aid than any other group. Ironic that the leased tax people receive the most benefit from it and then clear their conscience by voting GOP and going to church. They all live in the past and revel in it.
Culture of Truth
@Steve: The quote may not be, but the WaPo article is about whether this voter and other southerners will vote GOP in the fall, what they are looking for, and why all 3 remaining candidates are failing to connect with that voting bloc.
middlewest
Don’t even try and sell that bullshit here.
Culture of Truth
I think that’s a good point, a flip side to why liberal millionaires vote for Democrats, even though Republicans are promising them a big huge tax cut.
JoyfulA
@Cuppa Cabana: Yep, in Pennsylvania, we have chain salons that charge $8.99 for a woman’s haircut, less with a coupon; I don’t know what they charge men, but they’re the majority of customers. (I do, however, tip big.)
BDeevDad
That’s what I would have to pay in San Diego, if I didn’t shop around or have my wife cut my hair. Many barbers charge $5 for buzz cuts.
grandpa john
@Steve:
true, even in the period when the south was overwhelmingly Democratic, and called the “solid south” they were conservatives. Which was why they had no problem switching to be republicans since it called for little change in their political views. I grew up in the south during that period, I can remember when SC elected its first republican Governor, and when Strom switched parties.
chopper
@Cuppa Cabana:
not bad. I get my hair cut (when i finally get around to it because the wife complains that i look like a DFH) at a nearby place in brooklyn. 12 bucks, not too bad.
Steve in DC
@Culture of Truth
The overwhelming majority of rich people are socially liberal and economically conservative. There is almost no difference.
Some vote Republican and hope the party will turn around on social issues. Others vote Democratic and have been turning it around on economic issues. Liberals have one on just about every social issue, at the same time we have been deregulating, tax slashing, free market solutioning, and free trading away the lives of anybody that isn’t rich. And we were cheering it on. It wasn’t till after the crash of 2008 when college educated white collar people started to get hit that liberals as a whole screamed “stop this is fucked up”. Before that we were perfectly OK with selling blue collar workers down the river as long as college educated liberals (which is the new Democratic base) were doing OK and the cost of food and macbooks went down.
The Republicans have always been for the top .00001% But the Democrats have gone from being for the 99%, to the 80%, to the 50%, to the 25%, to the 1% since Clinton got into office.
And that’s one of the reasons why tax policy is so hard. Liberals in areas like NOVA, San Fransico, NYC will all scream bloody murder at tax raises on over 250k, let alone 100k. Sure the Republicans cater to the rich, but the Democrats haven’t been for the working class or the blue collar types since the 90s. Don’t ignore the damage that Clinton did.
I blame the DNC and centrist types, but to be fair those types honestly do represent the educated white collar liberals that are out there. They’d love to help out the poor people, just do that with taxes on income over 500k, and leave their 100k-200k alone.
TheStone
I get my haircuts for $7.50 in this here leftist enclave of Philadelphia, so ol Donny Crocker can stick it.
TheStone
@Steve in DC: The irony is that a lot of today’s rural lifestyle (and the communities wherein it is pursued) would be virtually impossible absent extensive govt. intervention at all layers.
While there is less of a red/blue correlation insofar as return on tax dollarsthan is often claimed, rural states are more reliant on govt ‘handouts’, ie mandated air service, cost-inefficient mail delivery, farm subsidy, infrastructure work for roads that are used by about 7 people, etc.
Paula68154
Forced busing.
muddy
@Corner Stone:
Boy bands being totally equivalent to potential presidents.
muddy
The poor South, always left behind, it’s sad.
Some towns in VT didn’t have electricity until 1968, that guy probably had it by then. We progressed, they did not apparently.
J.R.
Here locally, the terrain is such that without constant major maintenance, the road system would cease to exist in a very few years. The past week, when the tornadoes afflicted KY and IL, we got torrential rain, mudslides, and the siltation blocked culverts and drains.
Without government, here in WV we would soon be traveling only during dry spells, and using the creek beds for roads, just like the old days, pre WW-II.
There was no electric power in the rural country until the 1950s. I had a foreman in one of my first jobs, an older guy like many foremen, and his first job after he got out of the Army in WW-II was working for the Government putting the electric grid in rural mountains.
I really don’t understand people hating their government in a democracy – it seems too much like hating yourself.
Corner Stone
@J.R.:
“That was how we did it in my day, dag nabbit! And we liked it!”
/Grumpy Old Man
DonkeyKong
Lee Atwater being interviewed in the early eighties-
Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
Rafer Janders
He meant that Southerners had learned to live poor, relying on their churches and their neighbors and not expecting government help.
Sure, like they didn’t rely on the WPA, the federal highway system so they could finally get goods to market, or on the Tennessee Valley Authority to finally get electricity….
Skalite
What the ever living fuck? Has no one down there ever heard of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the sole reason any of those backward fucknozzles (yea, I’m counting you too John Cole in rural West Virginia) has a little thing called ELECTRICITY!
http://www.tva.gov/
Berial
The thing about the Southern conservative mind is this. Once you have a thing, you have obviously always had the thing. So, once we Southerners got electricity and indoor plumbing, we obviously always had it. No planning, expense or hard work was involved with getting them, of course, or it would still be hard and expensive to get them!
Paul Gottlieb
The way I read it he was saying that 40 years ago, much of the South, particularly the Deep South was massively poorer that the rest of America, almost as if it were a separate, much less economically developed nation. And I believe that statistics from that era will bear him out.
Julie
@Steve in DC:
This, exactly. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past ten years pointing this out to my conservative parents (who live in rural Idaho) and my not-so-conservative brother (who lives in Kansas and would love any little inkling that his tax dollars are being used for something not-crazy). I, living in a progressive urban area, see the direct effect of my tax dollars — even when it’s on stuff that maybe I’m not 100% sure about the effectiveness of (mandatory composting, anyone?), I still see the effort, I still see it working for me and my neighbors. I’m way more happy to pay my taxes because I see their impact all around me.
Not to say that rural life isn’t just as highly subsidized or reliant on government services, but the effects are spread out. They just aren’t as easy to see as they are in the compressed space of a city. Suburbs are equally prone to that blindness because of the way they are constructed and maintained.
Also- there’s that mythos again of rural life that people really do buy into, be it the rural south or the ‘independent spirit’ of the rural west. It’s a fantasy, but people do love it. It makes them feel special and better than those who “need” help.
AA+ Bonds
I see it’s been taken on here already but this is a pretty goddamned weird thing to say, as the South’s agricultural economy depended completely on government subsidies (and still does even as it employs less and less of the population)
It’s like saying that Alabama is a left-wing state if you don’t count economic or social policy
AA+ Bonds
@Steve in DC:
This might be a good argument for now but in the Sixties we’re talking a populist Democratic South with a bunch of small farmers and they all had the government’s help staring at them when they opened the mailbox
I think the error here as identified in the post is that Mr. Crocker is ascribing to the 1960s a Southern point of view on “government help” that postdates the parties’ realignment
AA+ Bonds
And of course the major cultural contributor as I see it is the American-agricultural myth of self-sufficiency, which exists outside the South but remained especially potent there because it was fostered by the landed pseudo-aristocracy and so it’s still tied to nostalgia for the Civil War and antebellum South
It’s pretty funny in a fucked up way to read paeans to the nobility of the self-sustaining plantation from back then, written by people who bred other people so they could be tortured to death keeping the place “self-sufficient”
(And honestly, what is that “scrimped and saved” bullshit in the quote, do they think the Irish in New York just threw their government cheese out the window when they got halfway done with it)
The Crafty Trilobite
Here in latte-sucking Seattle, we also have $10 flattop haircuts. They’re lousy haircuts, but we have ’em. Guess we must be secretly Southern.
priscianusjr
@Nom de Plume:
asiangrrlMN
Dear South: Give me back my taxpayer’s money. If you truly are real Americans and do things on your own, then you surely don’t want my dirty dollars.
I’ve pretty much had it up to here with this bullshit, and I would rather not pay to be insulted any longer, thankyewverymuch.
opie jeanne
@Linda Featheringill: The Hispanic Pride movement was getting started in California in the early 70s. I think they had trouble getting traction at first, mostly college kids.
Gemina13
My mother was born in the South in 1929. Her father was a coal miner and union organizer. Times were so hard that she remembers one of her earliest chores being to forage for wild onions with her mother so they could stew them with whatever Grandma managed to catch that day–a fish, squirrel, anything with a little meat. One time, with payday days off and their families in need of food, Grandpa and several of his friends went to a store in Harlan. They filled gunnysacks with food and headed for the door. When the cashier demanded that they come back and pay for it, Grandpa responded with, “Charge it to President Hoover.”
So when FDR came along, even though change was slow, people like my grandparents revered him. Here was a politician who did more than promise pie-in-the-sky; he gave a damn about them and the country, and he created jobs for them. While Grandpa never took part in the various projects offered in the South, he had nephews who did, and who were able to feed themselves and their families because of it. So my grandpa, and Mom in her turn, were “labor Dems”–they’d fought for the rights they’d gained, and were grateful to the party and President that had taken their side.
When my oldest brother announced he voted for Reagan, I thought our mother would cry her eyes out. She never voted for a Republican, and swore when George W. Bush took office that he’d bring another Depression on us. She kept her senses just long enough, unfortunately, to see the Great Recession coming, and knew who to pin it on.
She had a name for her cousins who not only stayed in the South, but adopted the same attitudes as those held in Georgia and Alabama: Idiots.