[lbo-talk] Wish I Was In Dixie (Re: The North's burden of enlightening the South (was Re: The "NAFTA Superhighway" Urban Myth)

[Carl Remick]

On Nov 18, 2007 8:55 PM, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> On Nov 18, 2007, at 5:18 PM, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> > I grew up down South, and while if I never cross the
> > Mason-Dixon line again it will be too soon (I may make
> > an exception for New Orleans), I am more than aware of
> > Dixie's contributions to US culture. Insofar as the US
> > has a native artistic culture that isn't Jewish, it is
> > largely Southern. Never mind Janis Joplin, listen to
> > the people she listened too. The blues, ...
>
> Couldn't you replace "Southern" with "Black", without losing accuracy
> while gaining insight? i.e., black music can be seen not as part of
> Southern culture but as a response to it?

Bingo!  That's the only rational interpretation of the South's
contribution to the arts.  "Southern society" -- which was of course a
white oligarchy that enslaved or terrorized blacks and controlled all
government, justice and the economy -- was simply the grit the
produced the pearl of black jazz.  I am unaware of white Southerners
making any direct positive cultural contributions at all with the
possible exception of pecan pie.  As for white Southern writers, you
can have them.  Offhand the only Southern novelist I can think of
(besides Mark Twain, who cleared out of the region pronto) who wasn't
a Gothic bore or morbid eccentric was Walker Percy, and he thought the
South was pretty much a waste of space himself.

Carl