> Now, thanks to the Bush Supreme Court, in the next decade I expect it to
> bounce right back, all over the Southeast. Sherman should have burned
> everything, and taken no prisoners.
I'm taking this as hyperbole on your part, but assuming it isn't for the sake of argument, I don't see any difference in an attitude like this and, say, Ann Coulter's attitude towards Arabs and Middle Easterners, a "backwards" lot if there ever was one, right? I mean, the American South's history is one of abject poverty in which the population was dominated, first, by an idle planter class and, after the North invaded, by Northern capital and a new industrial class. I'm sure most are aware of the South's characterization as an "internal colony," and that is an apt description in my opinion. The natives were backward, to be sure, but this is to be expected, no? The kicker, however, is the South's recent rise to national political power. Despite still being the poorest region of the country by far, Southern politicians, Southern ways of coducting politics, and much Southern ideology, have come to dominate the American political scene. And it has taken hold in places other than the South, including the Midwest and West (in degree also related to relative wealth). That is in fact the very reason we are discussing a Supreme Court case in which an integration plan was struck down. But this isn't the fault of those Southern kids who sang their racist songs in your elementary school. And the racism at the root of this decision has never been confined only to the South anyway. I, for one, do think the South's political power has peaked with Bush and will be diminished in the future, but we'll have to live with his Supreme Court for many years to come.
All that said, as a (deep) Southerner who grew up on the lower end of an upper middle class suburban area, I do hate middle class, suburban Southerners with a passion, who tend to be authoritarian, xenophobic, nationalistic, racist, religionist, and a whole lot of other things.** (I do not of course believe--given what I wrote above--that this trend among middle class suburbanites is limited to just the South, but certainly it is more pervasive and trenchant there.) And I do believe it is primarily their electoral pact with the ruling capitalist class that has allowed the U.S. to remain a country in which the poor and less fortunate ("criminals," "illegals," "minorities," etc., in the eyes of that class) are no better off--and perhaps worse off--than if they had lived in a third-world country. But, in the end, even I have to recognize that these people are mere pawns in a larger game and that true responsibility lies elsewhere: specifically, where the most amount of power resides in the least number of individuals (i.e., in the corporate-capitalist class). So I, for one, am glad that Sherman didn't lay complete waste to the homes and livelihoods of these people. Of course, were there to be another civil or revolutionary war--not likely anytime soon--I would consider any of this class who lined up on the wrong side to be fair game.
** I also have deep South rural relatives--"hicks," almost none of whom have ever attended any college--who, while perhaps more prone to use explicitly racist language, are in the end much more accomodating and tolerant than those suburbanites I grew up with. (I've even found their use of racist language almost never has any hostile content.) They in fact seem to recognize and even accept their social equality with blacks and hispanics and take a much more critical view of authority in all spheres of life (from work to local, state, and federal government) than do the Southern middle class.