Few native white Southerners participated in the civil rights movement. Many -- probably most -- of black civil rights activists' white allies were actually Northern radicals in the beginning; liberals later. Moreover, the civil rights movement really took off when Soviet criticism of U.S. apartheid began to sting and as the sharecropper system was collapsing. So it is not as if white America (esp. white southern America) finally realized segregation was bad: there was plenty of coercion involved. And native white Southerners still haven't changed much as a whole. As Thomas Schaller argues, whatever political shifts there have been in the South lately are due largely to migration to the sunbelt causing native white Southerners to become a less influential proportion of of the electorate (e.g. northern VA, NC's Research Triangle, Atlanta, etc.)
Or consider how plastic bags became uncool in Ireland after a hard ass environment minister got the government to tax them:
"In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.
"Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one's dog." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/world/europe/02bags.html
SUV's and trucks aren't cool anymore because gas is expensive: it took high gas prices to get the rest of America to realize the hippies were right to advocate for fuel efficient vehicles all along.
This suggests that coercive/institutional/structural change is a more effective way of changing popular consciousness than simply giving people the right information or out-debating them. (Yes, institutional change needs to come from somewhere, but it can be generated by pressure from relatively small, but influential groups). The Zinn quote you posted earlier today also reminded me of something Zizek said to Doug awhile back:
"BS: Chomsky and people like him seem to think that if we just got the facts out there, things would almost take care of themselves. Why is this wrong? Why aren't "the facts" enough?
"Zizek: Let me give you a very naive answer. I think that basically the facts are already known. Let's take Chomsky's analyses of how the CIA intervened in Nicaragua. OK, (he provides) a lot of details, yes, but did I learn anything fundamentally new? It's exactly what I'd expected: the CIA was playing a very dirty game. Of course it's more convincing if you learn the dirty details. But I don't think that we really learned anything dramatically new there. I don't think that merely "knowing the facts" can really change people's perceptions."
http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2002/59/zizek.html
The task, I suppose, is basically undemocratic: we need to figure out how to force institutional change even when we're in the minority and be prepared to exploit political opportunities when they arise. The Christian right's been pretty effective doing this. We can learn a few lessons from them.
-WD