[lbo-talk] why are white southerners so violent?

[Alan Rudy]

Isn't the obvious explanation that there are way, way too many intervening
variables?  First, and granted I haven't read the article, are we sure its
scots-irish decended whites who're doing the killing? or is the argument
purely cultural?  if it's purely cultural is the assertion that somehow
southern scots-irish white culture remained more immune to mediation by
other factors than elsewhere?  btw: where the hell is the south?  aren't the
majority of white west virginians and a boatload of rural Pennsylvanians (my
dad's native community among 'em) scots-irish? Is there higher current
murder rates among scots-irish descendants in New Zealand and Australia, or
Boston?  Higher than what?  There's no intervening class variable or
historical variability that might/could need to be explained?  Is this
white-on-white or white-on-everyone violence? Are we sure that the
scots-irish who emigrated were herding peoples?
Granted these are questions rather than explanations but I'm staggered folks
are sympathetic to this.  Cuilture of honor, fooey, who's dishonored
southern whites the most? Are they the one's southern white's are killing -
yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, there's a technical definition of culture of honor
but surely that's part of the problem.
Were all those violent inner city gang members from African, Central
American or Asian herding peoples oh-so-variably long ago or are there
different cultural reasons for violence in different regions for different
peoples?
A

On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 1:00 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


>
> On Jul 17, 2010, at 10:50 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > I really don't see how any discussion of violence in the south can leave
> > out lynching.
> >
> > Nor can it leave out the demands of "white unity.
>
> We're working so far with an abstract, not even the full paper, so we don't
> even know what the author said.
>
> That aside, it is of some interest that ethnicity and the animal population
> do statistically "explain" current murder rates? It might be that there's
> something there. If not, I'd like to hear an explanation of why not.
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

-- 
*********************************************************
Alan P. Rudy
Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Central Michigan University
124 Anspach Hall
Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
517-881-6319