Photo: American Memory LOC
I found this description of an small Georgia town interesting. It comes from the pen of James Kunstler:
“I have some theories about southern culture — I’m entitled to have them, and even express them, whether you like it or not. This is a region that was miserably poor until very recently. All the material progress, the new wealth of the Sunbelt, has been acquired rapidly over the last thirty years or so, and it has been delivered in the form of corporate products: tilt-up buildings, hamburgers, Ford pickup trucks, manufactured “homes,” and cornucopia chain stores overflowing with plastic goodies. Building all this stuff and hitching employment rides with these ventures has dragged the cracker class out of the extremest poverty. Nearly universal air conditioning has also changed the picture, giving folks a reason to make an effort to do anything after the sun rises above the windowsills.
The reason their authentic down-home eateries are so bad is because for two hundred years they had a miserable diet of cornmeal, sugar, and pork fat, and a miserable concept of cuisine for presenting it. The reason the decor is so bad is because until fairly recently they lined the walls of their houses with newspapers and sat on benches. Electricity from the TVA also arrived relatively late in the game, and the finer points of interior illumination have not yet developed there. A restaurant dining room in Georgia is lighted the same way as a used car lot.
The sad fact is that the final blowout of the cheap oil age has been the foundation of the Sunbelt’s prosperity. The whole nation is afflicted with the cancer of suburban sprawl, but down there it is invested with the highest values. It is their truth and beauty. To a certain extent, their former poverty embarrasses them and they want to forget about it, not celebrate it.
They seem to have no plans for coping with a daily life that is not based on cheap oil. They even resent the suggestion that they might have to. They will keep sending a disproportionate number of their young people into the military to help with the current project of securing future oil supplies by attempting to pacify the Middle East. Sooner or later that project will come to grief and the people of Georgia will have to make other arrangements like everybody else. But the process may be extremely traumatic for a people who have not allowed themselves to imagine a future different from the present.”
Here in Van Nuys 
Good points, Andrew. The South certainly has some lovely architecture and urban planning (just as the Northeast has its share of forgettable-to-lousy architecture and planning).
Several years ago I spent a few hours in Paducah, Kentucky, which was just an hour or so from where I was attending college in Illinois. The town had a really interesting and well-preserved waterfront area, complete with plaques detailing Civil War battles, famous Paducah residents, and the like. The old part of town was surprisingly well preserved and had some lovely old buildings, at least one of which had been turned into a pleasant coffee shop/bookstore. I also visited a fairly nice park, although I had to quickly get back in my car when some geese charged at me. (I guess they were after the sundae I’d bought at a nearby Dairy Queen.)
Of course, just about everyone I talked to in Illinois spoke of Paducah as a dump. As Kunstler’s article demonstrates, prejudice abounds, even (especially?) among the “progressive” set.
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And Kunstler ignores the fact that it is in the South, in cities like Charleston and Savannah, where the “New Urbanism” began 200 years ago with front porches, town squares and classical architecture.
It is hard to pin on “the South” those attributes which all Americans share, for better or worse.
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I, too, found the piece rather offensive. For starters, much of my maternal heritage is Southern. But more importantly, much of what Kunstler attributes to the South is true about much if not most of this country (including the Northeast). One can find urban sprawl, badly decorated restaurants, fattening food, and car-centric culture just about anywhere in the U.S.
And this includes “progressive” Portland, Oregon, where I’m living now. Even though Portland is by and large ahead of the game with regard to urban planning and mass transit, it still has a ways to go. As a non-car-owner, I’m definitely in the minority here. And don’t get me started about all those eyesore, oversized condos going up in my neighborhood.
And as Peter noted, many Northerners are moving to the South. Two summers ago, my mother moved from Oberlin, Ohio, to Asheville, North Carolina, largely for better weather and a more natural setting. While she has some complaints about the local culture in Asheville, it doesn’t look like she’ll be moving back north anytime soon.
I’ve also read that much of this country’s African American population has been heading south to cities like Atlanta. And come to think of it, why didn’t Kunstler mention Vermont’s overwhelming whiteness? As I’ve observed here in Portland, it seems that white liberals overwhelmingly prefer the company of their own.
Kunstler’s article, while perhaps interesting to read, was a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
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Replace “cracker” with “black” and you have a racist piece on your hands, and just as as if not more accurate, so why isn’t this a racist screed? Double-standard anyone? Any why does JK take a pass on black Southerners, while feeling free to take a swipe at white ones? Aside from that, to the point he has a point, not too impressive. He doesn’t like strip malls – yawn.
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I think his critique has some element of humor in it, much like HL Mencken, though not as good of course.
He is expert at ripping down sprawl and the junk which it propigates, but less convincing when he jumps from the built environment to the living one. He attempts, as most of us do, to draw vast sociological conclusions, some of which are absurd. He uses stereotypes and generalizes, but it is so over the top, that it is more comical than intellectually grounded.
I think the growth in the South has also been accomplished by the weakening of labor and the rise of retail giants who underpay workers and bribe politicians to ram throught big box stores, motels, etc.
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I have always considered Kunstler a complete asshole and pretty stupid to boot; that he decided to insult the paternal half of my heritage is unsurprising.
But let’s take JHK’s argument at face value here. Does he realize that half of the people who have moved to Atlanta, Nashville, Houston, Dallas, etc. in the past 20-30 years have been Northerners, a disproportionate number of whom hail from his beloved Upstate New York? They’re the ones embracing the schlock he decries.
Meanwhile, much of the cracker class actually moved to Chicago, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s. The South Side of Chicago and suburban southern Cook County are often considered an exclusively black and “ethnic” white territory, but they were also the site of massive immigration by white Southerners during WWII and the postwar period. Much of the labor force in Southern California’s hyperindustrialization during the same period was white and Southern in composition.
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Kunstler the Hustler dupes another gulible soul with glib prose and bad science.
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