How the South Skews America

[DemocratSinceBirth]

Religiosity is one example of American exceptionalism among English-speaking countries that is largely the result of Southern exceptionalism within the United States. “We don’t do God,” Tony Blair’s aide Alastair Campbell famously remarked, emphasizing that religion is kept out of the public sphere in modern-day Britain. In most modern English-speaking countries, voters find ostentatious piety on the part of political candidates troubling, not reassuring. But in the U.S., born-again Southern evangelical politicians like Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush who troll for votes with piety have given U.S. presidential politics a flavor more reminiscent of Tehran than of London or Ottawa or Canberra. According to Gallup, in 2014 the most religious Americans were all found in Southern states, with the exceptions of Mormon Utah and semi-Southern Oklahoma. Mississippi led the nation in zeal.
Southern violence also goes a long way toward explaining the exceptional violence of the United States in general compared to otherwise similar countries. The pre-modern “culture of honor” continues to exist to a greater degree in the South. White Southerners are more likely than white northerners to respond to insults with increased testosterone and aggression, according to social scientists. According to the FBI in 2012, the South as a region, containing only a quarter of the population, accounted for 40.9 percent of U.S. violent crime.
Compared to other Americans, Southerners disproportionately support sanctioned violence in all of its forms, from military intervention abroad to capital punishment to corporal punishment of children. According to Gallup, Southern households have a far higher rate of gun ownership (38 percent) than households in the East (21 percent), Midwest (29 percent) or West (27 percent).
The death penalty has been abolished in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Isolated among the major English-speaking nations, the U.S. is among the world’s leaders when it comes to per capita executions, competing with the regimes in Saudi Arabia, China, Iran and North Korea. The U.S. owes this dubious honor to the South. Between the time the Supreme Court ended the ban on the death penalty and mid-June of this year, the South was responsible for 81 percent of the executions in the United States, with Texas and Oklahoma alone accounting for 45 percent of the whole.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/how-the-south-skews-america-119725_Page2.html#ixzz3ew2wPcEb

[treestar]

1. Interesting statistics

and you can't be charged with South bashing if it is statistical.

I kind of get that the flag might stand for the culture, a country music, grits, Lynyrd Skynyrd type existence. But then black people don't often participate in that. It's hard to get away from the fact the culture is not progressive. After all it started out trying to maintain slavery.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. I lived In Florida for most of my life but it's more geographically south than culturally south

I lived In Florida for most of my life but it's more geographically south than culturally south unless you are talking about the Panhandle.

[treestar]

4. Yeah I understand that

People from Miami don't generally have Southern accents. It has southern culture in its Northern parts, the way I understand. Like Jacksonville or the Panhandle. Skynyrd came from Jacksonville.

I was on a long car trip with a nephew who loves country music. The concept of the culture that comes across in the lyrics came to mind - bars, bar fights, barbecues, small towns, driving a truck. I heard a ton of that this weekend.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

6. The joke used to be the further south in FL you got the more northern it gets...

And don't forget Miami-Dade County is nearly 70% Latino.

[RebelOne]

14. Even though I was born in Philadelphia,

from the age of 5 I grew up in Miami and never lost my Philadelphia accent.

[DawgHouse]

27. We say Tallahassee is the last stop in the south. nt

[DemocratSinceBirth]

33. I did post grad work at FSU. Like all college towns Tallahassee is pretty liberal./nt

[DawgHouse]

35. I love Tallahassee. If I'd known what a great town it was,

I would have stopped there instead instead of moving on down to Orlando. I'm from Little Rock originally, and Tallahassee reminds me of it a bit.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

36. I spent most of my life in Orlando. Orlando and Tallahassee aren't remotely alike./NT

[DawgHouse]

37. You are so right.

[Iliyah]

2. The United States of America is a very young country compared

to the world. Countries that have been around for centuries still toil with many of the inhumane aspect of a civilized environment. That said, the USA have a long rode ahead.

One of my favorite songs is "He ain't heavy he's my brother".

[HassleCat]

5. We can do it!

We defeated them when they tried to leave the union. Eventually, we'll civilize them.

[cwydro]

7. Wow. nt

[Cali_Democrat]

9. The best paragraph:

Voting is far more polarized along racial lines in the Southern states than elsewhere. According to a recent study by political scientists Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell and Maya Sen, “the larger the number of slaves in his or her county of residence in 1860, the greater the probability that a white Southerners today will identify as a Republican, express opposition to race-coded policies such as affirmative action and express greater racial resentment towards African Americans.”

For some people, it's hard to figure out why white southerners tend to support right wing policies and Republican politicians.

Much of it is driven by animosity toward blacks.

[cwydro]

10. Uh huh.

[Cali_Democrat]

11. I think the facts are pretty clear

Here's the study referenced in the article.

http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/msen/files/slavery.pdf

[former9thward]

29. What an offensive comment.

[HassleCat]

31. I guess so

I apologize. I get carried away with the sarcasm, and it doesn't always work out well.

[Cali_Democrat]

8. Much of it is due to ignorance

These people think George W Bush was a great President.

A lot of the politics in the south is driven by race and Republicans play to the ignorant racists.

[hifiguy]

30. The interplay of ignorance, which can be cured, or at least altered,

and stupidity, which is forever, is something I have thought about for quite a whie.

If you're ignorant, you just might be smart enough to realize that it might be a good idea to educate yourself out of a state of ignorance.

The paradox is that stupidity is almost impossible to fix. If you are genuinely stupid (I will use Princess Sparklemoose as a geographically neutral moron in this example), you lack even the most basic, lizard-brain requisite intelligence to realize that you might in fact be ignorant. Stupidity is therefore self-perpetuating and impossible to fix. The stupids are incapable of effectuating any mental self-improvement because they don't have the mental horsepower necessary for self-reflection. Remarkably, people who are not necessarily stupid by predisposition actively choose to become stupid by embracing fundymentalpatient religion. My best guess for why this happens is that trying to actually think makes the marginal stupids' heads hurt. Better to stop thinking entirely and just buy into a form of bullshit that pretends to have all the answers, I guess.

And the Stupid Belt exists in every state these days.

And yes, racism, this country's metaphorical original sin, is at the basis of many of this country's deepest social problems.

[Populist_Prole]

12. One thing I noticed among _some_ southerners

Especially after loosened up after a drink or two: Why some think if one's ancestry is from the British isles, they are a "real" American, or a more "real" American than someone whose ancestry is from elsewhere.

[jalan48]

18. I think they are the Monarchists left over from 1776.

It is estimated that 1/3 of the colonists supported keeping the Monarchy prior to the Revolutionary War. They believed in the Divine Right of Kings and an authoritarian form of government. My experience with super patriots and flag wavers is that they are the first to bow down to authority.

[Populist_Prole]

22. Makes sense

Also this: "My experience with super patriots and flag wavers is that they are the first to bow down to authority."

I agree. I've never seen such an odd dichotomy so often. So many beat their chests about "freedom" and how they'll accost anyone who threatens theirs...and yet are the most obsequious boot lickers I've ever met to "the man"; their boss, law enforcement, or government ( if a republican is in charge ).

I think there's an innate Calvanism streak somewhere in there too.

[oneshooter]

13. More South bashing.

Will they ever be satisfied?

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

15. The South is good to have around if we have to go to war - they're patriotic

According to Pentagon statistics, more military recruits come from rural areas and the south than from any other single region. They bear a large part of the burden in the fighting. If we ever have to go into another world wide conflict, it'll be good to have the South on our side.

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/07/158892-military-pride-states-boast-highest-enlistment-rates-america/

"...According to the Defense Department, differences exist at the regional level as well. In 2013, 44% of all military recruits came from the South, despite it having only 36% of the country’s 18-24 year-old civilian population.

By contrast, the Northeast was the most underrepresented region of the country; only 14% of new enlistments came from this area, compared to 18% of its 18-24 year-old population. ..."

[cwydro]

16. Yes.

This is very true.

[Cali_Democrat]

17. Americans have had enough war.

We're tired of it.

[cwydro]

20. Completely agree.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

21. In WWII, war found us

My dad was from the South. He answered the call to serve his country. He was a war hero, earning a Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and Air Medal, as the pilot of a B-17 and shot down over Germany. becoming a POW and getting his hips and legs permanently damaged in the process. One of his brothers was in the Marines, survived some of the major battles in the Pacific including Guadalcanal, and still had shrapnel in several parts of his body on the day he died. His other brother lost an eye in the fighting in North Africa as a member of the U.S. Army. His cousin who lived across the street was a turrent gunner in a bomber and died when his plane blew up over Germany. No one likes war. But there are cases when you have no choice, whether you're tired of war or not. Preserving America's freedom is not easy.

[cwydro]

32. Well said. nt

[Gormy Cuss]

25. And that may explain why the military is more conservative than the general population. n/t

[betterdemsonly]

38. I suspect it is because they approve of most of our recent wars.

A true war of defense as opposed the the Iraq war bs, would see people volunteering from all parts of America.

[cwydro]

19. No, they won't.

I think they envy the south.

I lived in Key West for years. People from all over come to Key West.

Interestingly, I met people from the north (primarily) and from the Midwest. Very, very rarely did I meet anyone from the south.

Southerners are happy where they live.
.

[Uncle Joe]

24. Net Domestic Migration Patterns.

[NickB79]

23. These are statistics, not opinions

So no, not more South bashing. Facts.

[MFrohike]

26. It's not bashing

The author of the article is a Texan who's written pretty extensively on the south. As soon as I saw the phrase "culture of honor", I knew who it was.

[oneshooter]

34. Not the article, the replies. n/t

[MFrohike]

39. Ah

Yeah, there's a ton of people on DU who are firmly convinced that only the south can do wrong. You'd think Wall Street was in Charlotte and that the Bush family didn't originate in Connecticut.

[muriel_volestrangler]

28. According to exit polls Obama only got 10% of the white vote in Mississippi in 2012

which is incredibly low.

Obama’s share of the white vote, per the 2012 exit polls:
Mississippi: 10%
Alabama: 15%
North Carolina: 31%
Florida: 37%
Virginia: 37%
National average: 39%
Ohio: 41%
Michigan: 44%
Minnesota: 48%
Wisconsin: 48%
Iowa: 51%

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/19/15279137-first-thoughts-my-my-myanmar?lite

Other states didn't have exit polls with racial data available, but here's a Daily Kos attempt at estimates - a little lower than the exit polls in one or two states like Virginia (to assume 95% of blacks everywhere voted for Obama is very simplifying), but it looks fairly accurate for most: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/10/1159759/-Percent-of-White-vote-won-by-Obama-2012-by-state

Really, anywhere the white vote for Obama fell under 25% looks awful. That's beyond 'political landslide' numbers - it's beyond the crazification factor for the loony far right.