[lbo-talk] Southern Strategy? (was Profiles In Spinelessness)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sat May 31 10:10:23 PDT 2003


At 11:16 PM -0700 5/29/03, Miles Jackson wrote:
> > Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>>
>> >So, what's your Southern strategy?
>>
>> What's your anything strategy?
>>
>> For now, I say forget the South, at least the white part. It's
>> solidly Republican but only a minority of the U.S. population. The
>> Northeast, Upper Midwest, and Pacific Coast are far larger and far
>> more promising.
>>
>> Doug
>
>Ya know, the more I think about it, what was so fucking awful about
>the secession of the South? I'm serious: The Confederacy would no
>doubt be a very scary place today, had it survived, but frankly, the
>rest of us would be much better off.

That's a thought, but the South is with us, whether we like it or not.

I am thinking of what Mike Davis wrote in _Prisoners of the American Dream_, especially Chapter 2 "The Barren Marriage of American Labor and the Democratic Party" and Chapter 7 "The Lesser Evil? The Left, the Democrats and 1984." Left-wing political organizing will need three upsurges: a massive unionization drive, especially in the South; an insurgent black-led social movement; and a break from the imperialist consensus. None of the three can happen if leftists remain stuck in the Democratic Party. A strategic implication for anti-imperialists is clear, but the problem is that we don't have a vehicle through which something like a strategy can be worked out.

As for the South, what is interesting is black migration patterns since the 1970s.

***** ...From 1965-70, 46 percent of outmigrants moved to those States, but by 1990-95 only 13 percent did so, as the great majority chose to move to southern metro areas instead.

Simultaneously, the rate of movement of southern metro Blacks into the nonmetro South also rose throughout the 30-year period, but especially during the 1990s. By 1990-95, the movement of Blacks from Southern cities and suburbs into the rural and small-town environment of the nonmetro South nearly equaled the movement in the opposite direction....

Since 1970, there has been a reversal of the long-standing trend of Black migration loss from the South. Following a net loss of almost 300,000 Blacks in the second half of the 1960s, the South had a small net gain in 1970-75, which increased to over 100,000 in 1975-80 and almost 200,000 in 1985-90. Then during 1990-95, the South had an unprecedented net inmovement of over 300,000 Blacks into the region (Frey, 1998).

The gains followed over a half century of losses, from the time of World War I when Blacks began moving north in greater numbers, with the war-time cut-off of immigrant workers from Europe, to about 1970. The departure of Blacks from the South was particularly strong during 1940-70. One study estimates the total net Black outmigration for this 30-year period at over 4 million, or about one in four of the average U.S. Black population over the period (Long, 1988). (Other studies of this period's heavy Black movement from the South include Beale, 1971; Farley and Allen, 1987; Fligstein, 1983; Hamilton, 1964; Johnson and Camp-bell, 1981; and Lemann, 1991.)

The subsequent reversal of this trend, beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present, has resulted in much research on the volume and character of the flows between southern and nonsouthern regions, States, and metropolitan (metro) areas (e.g., Frey, 1998; McHugh, 1987; Robinson, 1986, 1990; Farley and Allen, 1987). One study contends that the trend of net inmigration since 1970 has contributed to the redistribution of Blacks down the metro hierarchy in the South to favor smaller metro areas (Johnson and Grant, 1997). Yet relatively few studies have focused on the nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) aspects of this migration, even though a fourth of all southern Blacks still lived in nonmetro areas in 1990. Studies touching on the nonmetro aspects of Black migration for post-1970 periods are Cromartie and Stack (1989), Pfeffer (1992), and Aratame and Singelmann (1998). Each study shows that although much of the historic South-to-North migration stream came from the rural South, the new trend of reverse inmigration has been primarily directed to southern metro areas....

(Glenn Fuguitt, John Fulton, and Calvin Beale, "The Shifting Pattern of Black Migration From and Into the Nonmetropolitan South, 1965-95," <http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/rdrr93/rdrr93.pdf>, pp. ii-iii) *****

***** ...This report, which utilizes census and Current Population Survey data, documents that: * The South's black population increased by 3,575,211 in the 1990s -- about twice the number of blacks that the South gained in the 1980s (1.7 million), and lies well above the gain for the 1970s (1.9 million). * The 1990s is the first decade where each of the other major regions -- the Northeast, Midwest and West -- registered a net out-migration of blacks, and completing the Century's reversal. * The Southeast is especially attractive for blacks. Florida and Georgia lead all states in black gains, and of metros with large black populations, Orlando and Atlanta show highest rates of growth. * Black in-migrants to the South are most likely to reside in the suburbs or metro areas. Seven of the 10 fastest growing counties for blacks are in the suburbs of metropolitan Atlanta. * Within the South, Texas and Florida attract most Hispanic gains. In the remaining 15 southern States, Blacks comprise 22.8% of the population, compared with 3.5% for Hispanics. * The South leads the nation in the percent of blacks who selected "one race only" in the 2000 Census. Less than 2% of blacks identified with more than one race in 9 southern states.

Datasets Used: US Censuses, 1960 - 2000 US Census Current Population Survey data for years 1990 through 2000....

(William H. Frey, "Census 2000 Shows Large Black Return to the South, Reinforcing the Region's 'White-Black' Demographic Profile." PSC Research Report No. 01-473, May 2001, <http://www.frey-demographer.org/reports/rr01-473.pdf>) *****

Given this migration pattern, leftists need a progressive Southern strategy, too, I think.

For what it's worth, Solidarity has a strong Atlanta branch: <http://www.atlantasolidarity.org/>. -- Yoshie

* Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>



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