Growing Up Liberal In The Deep South
Life in the south is very different than in other parts of the country.
Down here a man is often judged by the height of his truck and the size and monetary value of his gun collection, instead of his intelligence and accomplishments. A man’s very worth is often directly related to the decibel level emitted by his truck exhaust and his truck or car’s ability to go faster than any of his buddies vehicles.
In addition, education, especially higher education, is often viewed as frivolous and a waste of a real man’s time.
“You don’t need none of that education stuff to earn a good living, as long as you’re not scared of hard work”.
This is the mantra of the modern southern working man. Not that there’s anything wrong with that in of itself. America was built on hard work. The problem arises when, fed by talk radio that’s saturated with right wing pundits, the modern southern working man begins to look at America in an US verses THEM manner. Throw in a vague insinuated communist conspiracy take over plot of America’s universities, then stir in some well cultivated but simmering hatred, and you end up with an entire region of uneducated red state Breitbart bots and Rush Limbaugh groupies who abhor education. A college education is now almost synonymous with liberalism here in the south.
This wasn’t always the case down here. There once was a time when every parent dreamed of sending their children off to college. Now, the southern generation X is no longer encouraging their children to attend college with the same fervor that our parents once did. This anti education environment, cultivated by the right, could have long lasting effects on the region and maybe even the country as a whole.
My parents, baby boomers, had three children. All three of us were encouraged by our parents to attend college. One, however, went the way of the modern southern working man. Coincidentally, there’s only one conservative in our family. I’ll let you guess who that is. That’s not necessarily a knock on him. He makes a good living and provides well for his family. I would even go so far as to say he makes a better hourly salary than I do, when he has got work. But he also enjoys no health insurance, no 401k retirement, a significant overhead, and no steady employment. There are pros and cons to any fork in the road, but given the choice, I’ll take my degree, steady wage, and benefits. Between my wife and I we bring in over six figures yearly and only have one child. We are about as close to the American dream as you can get in the south in 2018.
As a kid growing up I can still remember both my parents extolling the values of southern democrats. Their opinions were echoed by my grandfather who I am sure learned them from his parents. You vote Democrat and NO on all taxes. It was simple as that. I can also remember my parents asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. At the time I wanted to be like my dad — -a pipe welder.
My parents would always say the same thing. “No Craig. Go to college and get a good job so you don’t have to work hard like your daddy”.
Now I am doing the same thing with my son. He wants to be like his dad and I am already encouraging him to go to school and get his degree. For, even though my current occupation does not utilize my degree, it’s always there to fall back on should I desire. And that’s never a bad thing.
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 brought about a great political shift in the south, especially among African Americans. Blacks who had traditionally favored the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, since the Civil War, resented the Republican flood response, or lack of response, and shifted their allegiance to the Democratic Party. At that point the parties flip flopped and, in many ways, the South is still dealing with the repercussions of that upheaval. Before that event, the liberals were the Republicans.
But, today, down here, in the US vs THEM South, the term Liberal is often used in a derogatory manner. ALL Democrats are lumped together with the ANTIFA instigators, the BLM movement, the raucous protesters in the street, the communists and the devil himself as the scourge of the earth. We are simply “all those LIBERALS!”.
Well, to quote JKF…
If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I’m proud to say I’m a "Liberal".
Sincerely,
A proud old school southern democrat.
