New south, old south

Excellent and thought-provoking Newsweek cover story from a couple of weeks ago, written by Christopher Dickey (son of James Dickey, who wrote Deliverance) about his recent tour of the south (taking the route of Sherman's march!) Holy canolli! Super interesting, but also depressing - people are so misinformed and determined to remain so.

This was my favorite, if you can all it that - granted, this kid is only 12 y.o., but he's saying things that he hears:

But the subtext of old prejudices keeps creeping in even among the very young. Walking down to The Point one morning, a 12-year-old "private" in this particular Confederate unit told me what he'd heard tell in school about the elections. Next to nothing about McCain. But Obama? There are too many chances we would take if he became president, you know what I mean?" I said I wasn't sure I did. "I don't know if it's a myth or it's true," said the boy, "but they say that they caught him trying to sneak Iraqi solders into the United States."

And this about black voters:

Obama's candidacy is, wittingly or not, resurrecting the hope and fear and suspicions of those bloody years. The campaign's Southern strategy depends crucially on registering and getting to the polls hundreds of thousands of black voters. Enthusiasm is not a problem among African-Americans, whether in cosmopolitan Atlanta, the fields of Oglethorpe County or a raucous Baptist church in Savannah. The sense of opportunity, of dreams tantalizingly close to fulfillment, is overwhelming. But so is the skepticism, the knowledge deep within one's bones of the likelihood, if not the inevitability, of disappointment. Obama couldn't win, not in the South—or, if he could, they wouldn't let him. And that's the dark side of the hope: it's reminding people of their doubts about a white power structure that some think has never really atoned for its sins.

And this about Hispanic voters:

Never in the last century and a half has the South been home to so many people who were born and who continue to live outside its history. A Census report estimated that the South's Hispanic population nearly tripled between 2000 and 2006, more than in any other U.S. region; nearly 60 percent of this population was foreign-born. These newcomers have little interest in re-enacting the Civil War, no reason to revive the emotions of the civil-rights movement. They did not move here for iced tea or a more leisurely pace of life. The South to them is future, not past.