Tracy Thompson -- The new mind of the South
===========================================

The first chapter "It's complicated" warns you straight off that you
should not expect to get to the end of this book with your
previously held beliefs and conceptions either affirmed *or*
destroyed.  More likely, you are going to have a more complex and
nuanced ideas and opinions about the South, and while getting
there, Thompson will get you to do some heavy thinking even to get
to that state.

This a book about social and religious change, about rural and urban
change, and about how the South is changing.  It's about how the
South is becoming less and less like a mythical time and place, a
time and place that Thompson suggests never existed, but that some
Southerners still believe that the South and they are falling away
from.  The mythical past was one where there was no racial tension,
where everyone helped each other, where whites treated blacks
decently and blacks loved whites in return.  And, the new reality is
in part, one of urbanization, suburban sprawl, strip malls, and real
estate developments.  There's that, and there is also rural
depopulation, which Thompson describes as the result of industrial
agriculture and as having as one of its consequences an increasingly
severe rural poverty.  The *rural* South that is left behind is
increasingly poor, has more people living in poverty, has fewer
people who are highly educated, and has more people who are living
unhealthy lives, in particular, who are becoming obese.  That rural
South has also become a land marred by large hog farms, mono-culture
farming, tree farms (rather than forests), and intensively
mechanized cornfields.  The result is unemployment, poverty, and
depopulation.

I'm not sure that Thompson would want to return to a time and place
where hogs were raised with more labor, where corn was tended and
picked by hand, etc.  Certainly, she does not want to do that kind
of work.  Still, the consequences of that mechanization and the loss
of work, especially for those who need that employment are severe.

What you can expect from "The new mind of the South": (1) Some deep
thought about society, culture, and individual relationships within
that culture.  (2) Reportage and description on current and past
conditions in the South, both rural (and how it is emptying out and
becoming even more impoverished) and urban (ultra-urban, perhaps,
especially Atlanta and its sprawl).

Thompson is a native.  She was raised near Atlanta, Georgia.  So,
she is able to give a view from the inside, a view from the
perspective of someone from inside that culture.  Although, as she
makes clear, it's many cultures and not just a single one, so she is
mostly giving us a view from the inside of one of those cultures.

But, she is one of those valuable analysts who is able to see and
describe things from both the inside *and* outside.  She can tell
you how *some* Southerners feel about their own culture and about
(the way they perceive) others' feelings about them, and she can
also tell you a good deal about conditions in the South,
descriptions that hold true whether you are a native Southerner or
not.

Some of the real value of this book comes through in "glimpses" of
South, the kinds of constructions that grammatically are called
dependent clauses.  For example, "... Democratic Party in the South,
which in his day occupied the same point on the political spectrum
that some parts of the Republican Party hold today, in that it was
enthusiastically and unequivocally pro-business." (p. 183)

Thompson often talks about *agrarian* values and about agrarianism.
She leans on that categorization, so it's important to understand
what she means.  If I had a request for Thompson when and if she
prepares for a second edition, it would be that she explain a bit
more about what she means by agrarianism in the South and by rural
values.  (But, note that Thompson has a lot to say about the urban
South, too.  See the chapter titled "Atlanta".)

But, it's also important to understand that Thompson means to
explain in what ways *some* parts of the South have come a long way
away from agrarianism.

Other important concepts and categories -- (1) Property rights: I
suspect that Thompson would claim that you cannot understand the
South without understanding something about the strong and perhaps
even unconscious feelings about property rights held by many
Southerners.  (2) Individualism: An individual's rights to conduct
her/his life in the way s/he sees fit (as long as it's within the
bounds of the values of her/his peers and culture) must be
inviolable, which may help explain the distrust of government and
the dislike for government regulation that seems so prevalent in
some regions of the South.

The chapter on religion in the South (titled "Jesusland") was
enlightening for me.  Thompson stresses the idea that religion is
one area where the South is changing the most (and perhaps becoming
less like the old South).  Whereas, formerly, religion was "big
tent" and broadly accepting, more recently in the South it has
become more restrictive and fundamentalist.  And, this makes a
significant difference on a narrow set of social and political
issues, which Thompson lists as "the morally corrupting influence of
mass media, creationism vs. evolution, homosexuality, and abortion".
This restrictiveness is, according to Thompson, a new tribalism in
the South, a new attempt at exclusion and at setting those in it
apart as "the right-thinking, the correct-minded, the doctrinally
and ethically pure".  Thompson claims that politics and religion are
more interconnected than in other parts of the country.  That has
consequences, in particular with a narrow but large segment of
voters, and especially with respect to that set of issues listed
above and the use of those issues to influence voters and to
maintain the cohesiveness of that voting block.  And, just as
religion and politics are interconnected in the South, so too,
religion and business have multiple and strong connections.  Some
points: (1) "prosperity gospel" theology in which the *right* kind
of religion will bring you financial success; (2) mega-churches as a
business; (3) the claims by Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy that
leading a religious life is a way to success; (4) the incredible
success of Walmart and (Thompson claims) its use of Christian
trained and oriented employees.

If "The new mind of the South" interested you, then you might also
want to look at "Night comes to the Cumberland", by Harry Caudill.
It's more narrow in scope, since it was written in the early 1960's
and is specifically about the south-eastern region of Kentucky. But
it is very perceptive about topics that are also covered in "The new
mind of the South", for example, the effect of large corporations
and their increasing mechanization on employment and society, the
"brain drain" and out-migration of talented and more educated people
from rural areas, etc.

12/19/2013

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