Presidential Politics in the New South

by Patrick Anderson
Huffington Post

I am a southerner — born, bred, educated and domiciled. I have been in many other places, both in this country and others, but my accent and worldview betray a deep southern bent. I was raised in a segregated world, educated in all-white schools, worshipped in all-white churches, ate in all-white restaurants, waited in all-white waiting rooms, drank at all-white fountains, swam in all-white public swimming pools, was policed by all-white police departments and otherwise lived in a surreal world apart. The first African-American student matriculated at Furman University during my junior year there. I had a lot of catching up to do as a young adult.

I can remember seeing KKK cross burnings as I traveled throughout the south as a college student in the 1960s. As recently as 1982, as my family and I were moving to Louisiana, where I joined the faculty at Louisiana State University, we drove past a cow field with smoldering crosses from the previous night’s Klan rally in Tangipahoa Parish.

Today we live in what we call the “new south.” Legal segregation has disappeared, fading into history. Klansmen either have died or moved west to populate white supremacy compounds where they feel safe from the black (and other) people they fear. In North Carolina, a black police officer can write a speeding ticket for a white motorist.

But memories can be long. Fear is fear. In the states of the old Confederacy, race is at the heart of virtually every political issue. Whereas my childhood memories are mostly of isolation from persons of different races, black folk have deep memories of violence and injustice and, for many, those memories are recent.
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