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Growing up in a conservative evangelical community, in the south (aka Georgia), definitely has its downsides. Like, in terms of race. I wouldn’t say it’s worse than the North, don’t have a lot of experience to say. But it’s definitely not a helpful environment to realizing your internalized racism and bigotry, removing it, and becoming anti-racist. The internal vestiges of this cultural concoction try to oppose your self-radicalization. It’s kind of the point.
(A note on Georgia: they disproportionately send black kids to an underfunded and abusive “emotional and behavioral disabilities” school system that had a 10% graduate rate, compared to a 78% graduation rate for GA’s main public schools. I suggest you read the whole New Yorker article here. Segregation isn’t dead, it’s just gone underground, if you weren’t already aware. Oh! It also violates the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.)
It shouldn’t be surprising that a culture based in faux-european genteel nostalgia, slavery, then sharecropping, and some fuedalism for good measure would be opposed to the ideological commitments of literally any liberational movement. Most forms of Western subcultures are based in classist, imperialistic bullshit; some just try to be worse than others.
These cultural foundations make for an effective combo for opposing most forms of self-awareness. Southern Hospitality is glorified passive-aggressiveness, with an added rule-book of manners for any occasion. If this, do that. Don’t do that there. Bow here. Shake hands now. Make sure all the fancy place-mats are out on the table. Blah blah blah, this is fuckin’ silly, blah blah blah! Pleasantries!
Luckily, the majority of my community were wannabe Southerners. They didn’t grow up in the South, and they didn’t have a lot of family connections to the south. No accents either. Sure, they couldn’t trace their heritage to a slave owner, but they definitely played the middle class game like they did. Like a bunch of white people reenacting early American colonies.
Looking in from the outside, after formerly being on the inside, has its benefits. Add in some awareness of white privilege, white supremacy culture, and classism and you’ve got a solid analysis of white southern conservative evangelical culture.
White supremacy is, according to Liz Walz’s “The Culture of White Privilege Is to Remain Silent,” the conscious or subconscious belief that people with white skin are more “competent, capable, savvy and intelligent, etc than people of color and that white cultural values are ‘normal.’” It combines with America’s class system to divide and conquer the lower classes along race, so that the rich can maximize their wealth and power. As a person with white skin, my relationship with this system is labeled “white privilege.” “As a white person in this country,” taken from “What We Mean By White Anti-racist Organizing,” “I have an economic, political, cultural, and psychological relationship of privilege to institutional power. Race is not a biological reality, but rather a position within a hierarchy of power based in one’s relationship to the state.”
White privilege isn’t to be confused with power. Most white people experience labor exploitation, economic injustice, or cultural oppression in regards to their gender, sexuality, or ability. The white working class are generally overworked, experience wage theft, suffer from environmental pollution thanks to big corporations, yet they’ll consider themselves better than the slightly poorer African-Americans down the street. They’re probably friends with a few cops, and generally don’t fear them; blaming any police abuse on the victims - usually African-American. White privilege affords white people certain standards, rules, rights, and norms that should be for everyone, but have been denied for racial reasons. You can have white privilege and still be exploited, but Black people are super-exploited with no privilege to fall back onto.
White supremacy propagates racial lies among the white middle, working, and poor classes. It claims that they are, or are almost successful, instead of slightly less exploited. And that their success is of their own making, not dependent on structural forces beyond their control. It argues for the individualistic mirage of white success while dismissing the structural oppression African-Americans, latinos, and others suffer every day; chalking it up to personal failure and lack of character (i.e. victim-blaming). White supremacy will even use the occasional token African-American person to stroke white egos with familiar racist stories of how “negligent” African-American culture is.
But racial myths, race traitors, and white privilege are not enough to fully defend the system. Extra layers of mental and cultural repression are added to white culture. Southern culture is the easiest example of this (although by no means solely theirs to own). Conflict is avoided at all costs, replaced with passive aggressive smiles. To start open conflict is probably one of the worst violations you could make. We’ve all heard the phrase, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Few of us have contemplated who this serves. It’s comforting to think living by this phrase makes us a better person. That we’re not an “asshole.” Sadly, it’s not so cut and dry.
I was socialized to be nice. Not as much as other kids, though. I knew too many kids who sounded like fuckin’ robots with their “yes sirs,” “yes ma’ams,” and affiliated “respect” bullshit. On a simple level, this is classism in the making. Molding a child to respect authority, and address their elders (i.e. their masters). It implies and reiterates that children have a place, far below that of adults. Once in a while, a few kids get the sense that adults are just as immature as them. They don’t call their friend by their last names. It’s silly. Children are not servants, and it’s not cool to have servants.
My point is, we’re ingrained at an early age with the barriers to questioning our own bigotries and complicitness, including those of others.
“When white people stay silent—especially in all-white groups—we protect the egos of those who are ignorant of or who don’t care about their impact...It is the fear of losing privilege that keeps me and other whites silent in the face of the violence of racism: in our homes and families, faith communities, schools, workplaces, in the media and legal systems—and in our own hearts.” - The Culture of White Privilege Is to Remain Silent, by Liz Walz
For white people, like myself, our specific cultural backgrounds very often prove to be just as harmful as the generic white supremacy we work on expunging. They go hand in hand.
I’m not super confident when it comes to speaking out when friends and family spew racism. But what’s been helpful for me is to realize A) I have a moral duty to call people out on their racism, otherwise no one else will. And B) my current lukewarm ability to call people out is not my natural state. It is the byproduct of cultural factors that don’t have my best interests, or the interests of lesser privileged individuals, at heart. Silence is complicitness at best; violence, at worst. Of course conversations about race with friends and family are going to be uncomfortable. They’re not going to be a “one and done” affair, nor all that effective at first. Like getting your parents used to you saying “fuck” in front of them, it takes time. It takes a conscious effort that this is for the best, for everyone.
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