Political Culture and South Carolina -- Bob Botsch

Let's start with a definition. Political culture is how a group of people view themselves in terms of the proper role of government and how they relate to the government. It includes identities and political style and ideology and partisanship leanings. It has heroes, villains, stories, traditions, sacred documents and symbols.

Political culture is the product of demographics and historical experience. That is, people who come to a region bring with them cultural baggage of their origins. Then as they interact and live with others who come a new culture is created built on that baggage and the experience of the struggles they have.

A political scientist named Daniel Elazar argues that America has three dominant political cultures that exist in the different regions of the nation. Those subcultures are based on different mixes of two contrasting ways one can view the nature of political order. First, one can see government and society (what he calls "polity") as a pure marketplace where people bargain with each other motivated by sheer self-interest. This can be seen as a selfish view of society -- we all work out deals with our own self-interest in mind. The second view is that the polity is a moral enterprise in which the goal is not self-interest but the common good. How that common good is defined has two variations, one in which the community works together in a participatory way to find it, and the other in which a privileged eilte who are wiser than the masses decide what that good is.

So you can see that we get three different cultures form this. Do you want to guess which one most southern states and South Carolina fit in? By the way, one way of thinking about South Carolina is that it is an exaggeration of what southern is. That is think South and multiply for South Carolina.

Now let's look briefly look at each of these three possibilities and give them labels. First, the individualistic culture is a culture in which individuals pursue self-interest and government plays a limited role so as not to interfere too much with the workings of the bargaining taking place. Politics is seen as just like business in which people pursue self-interest. Citizens accept a certain amount of corruption as a cost of doing business. Politicians are full-time professionals who are generally well-paid. As long as there are two strong competing political parties, individual politicians are kept from gaining too much power. But if one party dominates, the danger is extensive corruption. This culture is found mainly in the northeastern states from Maryland up through New York.

Second, we have what Elazar calls the moralistic culture, one in which the community participates in searching for the ideal society and in which government is actively engaged in intervening in many areas of life in the name of the common good or the public interest. People get into politics as a calling to public service, to "give back" as many say, not for personal gain. Politicians are often part-time poorly paid amateurs rather well paid professionals. All citizens are expected to play an active role in the political process. It is highly participatory. The ideal here is the New England town meeting where all citizens meet and speak as equals in deciding what should be done. This is found in New England and the Midwest. The Progressive movement that came out of the Midwest in the late 1800s is a product of this culture. It was aimed at weakening the powers of political bosses and parties that were associated with the individualistic culture. We will talk about this later and how it affected the organization of local governments and how elections were designed.

Finally, we have the one that best fits southern states and South Carolina, the traditionalistic culture. In this culture the emphasis is on maintaining social order for values determined by the elite. Of course, the social order means that those in charge remain in charge. Average people are not expected to participate much in politics, just do what they are told to do. Social status and family ties are very important and political parties are not important. Interpersonal relationships are more important than impersonal bureaucracy and rules or regulations. this culture is most likely to be found in a hierarchical rural society and is usually paternalistic. Ideally, the elites play the role of caring fathers for those less well-born, but often that caring is rationalized self-interest. If you know anything about southern mill culture and tenant farming or sharecropping, you know that paternalism was usually a cruel joke played upon the exploited mill workers and subsistence farmers and of course upon African-Americans.

According to Elazar in a piece he wrote for one of the texts on South Carolina, the Palmetto State is "the most traditionalistic state in the union." He sees changes that were taking place as nothing more than necessary accommodations made by elites so that they could maintain control. In the years that have passed since then, more changes have taken place. What I want to do now is talk in more detail about South Carolina's culture and regional variation in the state, paying particular attention to the role that religion has played in the state's political culture, especially on race relations.

South Carolina's Political Culture: Variations and Religion and Race

Many of the Southern states, and especially South Carolina, exhibit characteristics that are typically found in a traditionalistic political culture. South Carolina’s agricultural society, founded on the backs of enslaved Africans, gave rise to an aristocracy from its beginnings in the late 1600s in Charleston. This aristocracy helped create a traditionalistic political culture characterized by a “social hierarchy” that held and maintained power. In South Carolina, the defense of slavery and of the plantation-based way of life became the next thing to a religion to a greater extent than in any other state. In the years after the Civil War, a new aristocracy of small-town farmers and businessmen became the ruling elite. These elites continued to dominate South Carolina’s economy and government through much of the twentieth century.

Elazar noted that in a traditionalistic political culture, non-elites are discouraged from participating in politics. Thus parties, which generally encourage greater participation, play a limited role in the political process. A one-party system is common and factions within the party may battle. For more than one hundred years after the end of the Civil War, the Democratic Party dominated South Carolina’s politics, a role that the Republican Party has gradually been assuming in the years since the civil rights movement began.

Finally, in such a system, elites see their role as one of maintaining the status quo, rather than as bringing about change. While many observers have noted the changes occurring as people and industry relocate to the “New South,” such change has been slow to reach and to affect South Carolina. There is no question that South Carolina’s youth receive a better education today than in the days when state leaders saw “cheap labor” as the key to prosperity. But the state still ranks near the bottom on most indicators; despite a gain of 8 points, South Carolina ranked number 50 on the 2001 SAT scores, or number 47 if public schools alone were counted. The usual response of state leaders to budget shortfalls in the early 2000's was to announce another round of belt-tightening and to cut services rather than raising taxes, especially at the upper end of the income groups or on corporations. Even after the economic recovery of 2005-7 the governor and Republican dominated legislature placed more emphasis on tax cuts than on improving education.

In a traditionalistic culture all institutions are employed to help defend the status quo. This includes religious institutions. South Carolinians have always claimed to be religious. Church membership today is high, with 62% of the state’s residents reporting that they belonged to a church in 1990. Just as before the Civil War, the Baptists are the largest denomination, claiming one-third of all church members. Thus, it is no surprise that religion has always played an important role in the life of South Carolinians, as well as other Americans.

The Anglican church dominated the early South. Under the control of elites, it served as a state church and was supported by taxes. But the Great Awakening, a movement that focused on the individual’s relationship with God and on the need for religious conversion, swept the region and the nation in the 1700s. Affecting all faiths, it had perhaps its strongest impact among the Baptists, who would become the largest denomination in the South. The Baptist faith appealed to poor whites, to women, and even to slaves, providing opportunities for all to participate. It fit the rural South much better than other religions because the Baptist church was so decentralized with little structure, just as was rural life. Ministers were self-appointed or chosen by each congregation and often had little formal training. No external organization had to approve them.

In pre-Civil War America, many Americans saw Christianity as the moral force that would lead the nation toward the equivalent of a utopia. But for the South, the slavery question was always the most compelling, and ordinary Southerners would ultimately defend a way of life that benefited plantation owners and other elites. By the 1830s, as the North and South began to split over the slavery question, Southerners became defensive about their way of life and less excited about a utopian future that would involve extensive social change. They pointed to the Bible to support their claims that God wanted humans to live in an orderly society with a structured social order. Although Southerners claimed a heritage of individualism that harked back to the American Revolution, they did not apply these ideals to anyone other than white men. The white Baptists split into Northern and Southern churches in 1845 over the slavery issue rather than over theology. Both northerners and southerners, of course, regardless of their faith, claimed that God was on their side in the Civil War.

Race issues could not be separated from religion. In early South Carolina, there was a tradition of religious toleration, dating back to the efforts of the early Proprietors to attract settlers to the state. Most of the churches were Protestant, and they tended to support the status quo, rather than acting as a force for change. The primary focus in South Carolina, and in the region, was on saving one’s soul, not on social change. From the 1830s on, most of the churches voiced few objections to slavery, with the notable exception of some Methodists. However, despite a statement by the Methodist General Conference in 1790 stating that slavery violated God’s law, most Methodists modified their views by the 1830s.

After the Civil War, Southern churches were virtually the only institutions that had not been greatly damaged. Churches accepted and helped perpetuate the myth of the “Lost Cause” and the “Southern way of life.” They became as segregated as the institutions of the secular society. Most Southern churches developed a doctrine of “the spirituality of the church.” According to the rhetoric, churches should not get involved in politics. What this meant in practice was that the churches would support segregation and the status quo. Southerners and many Southern churches would resist change well into the 20^th century. South Carolina’s white churches, which had focused on individual salvation before the Civil War, would not provide leadership for social change. Through a series of revival movements, they would focus on sin, especially on drinking. As they moved into the 20^th century, churches began to focus also on social justice and on social problems.

Just as states and regions differ from each other in political culture, one can find cultural differences within any single state. South Carolina is no exception. Many observers divide the state into two or three different cultural sections. The up-country or Piedmont plateau is the northwestern third of the state. It is generally defined as the area above the first set of falls in rivers – the “fall line.” The lowcountry or the coastal plain is the lower southeastern section, the area where one can float all the way to the coast on rivers without interruption. This area is characterized by flat sandy plains with some sandhills as one moves to the center of the state. Sometimes the “midlands” are distinguished from the upcountry and low country, though their topological distinctiveness is less precise. They are the areas adjacent to where the first falls are encountered and are characterized by both sandy soil and red clay that is more typical of the upcountry.

Geography and topography had a great impact on who settled in these regions and how they lived and prospered. With different people came different cultural baggage. Different lifestyles increased those differences. Moreover, the institution of slavery and later the economic stagnation following the Civil War prevented any great in-migration of outsiders to dilute those differences.

The lowcountry was settled by Anglican aristocrats and large numbers of enslaved Africans. The economy centered around the plantation. Settlers moved as far west as they could until they reached the falls, which prevented them from floating heavy bales of cotton on barges to the coast where it could be shipped to the cotton mills of England. Even today one can find statistically significant differences in the percentage of Episcopalians, who are the religious descendents of Anglicans, among the regions of the state. More of this small, relatively liberal religious group are found in the lowcountry. Moreover, despite generations of social upheaval and great migrations, the percentage of African-Americans living in lowcountry and midlands counties is far higher than those in the upcountry.

The upcountry had a different in-migration pattern. Rather than coming from the coast to the west, settlers came from the north through North Carolina. Scotch-Irish and Germans, who lived by the sweat of their own brows more than the sweat of enslaved people, scratched out a living on small farms above the fall line. They brought with them their religions, which were Calvinist in the flavor of their moral beliefs. They were more likely to be part of the great religious awakenings in early history, taking their moral beliefs into the Baptist churches that were springing up like mushrooms across the South Carolina frontier. Moreover, they held the people and culture of the lowcountry with great disdain. The ethnic waves of colonial history are but ripples today, but they can still be seen in some demographic patterns. Even today one finds significantly more who claim Irish heritage in the upcountry than in the lowcountry. The same is true of Scottish, though to a lesser extent. We see a great difference in those who claim adherence to the Southern Baptist church. In the average upcountry county, a full third of the population count themselves as Southern Baptists, as compared to a fifth of the population in lowcountry counties.

Every culture has some internal contradictions. So it is with the socially and morally conservative traditional culture of South Carolina. While it may well be the most traditionalistic of all states, and while its peoples have never seen politics as a competitive business in which government provides services in return for votes, the political culture contains one strong element of the individualistic culture. South Carolinians have long seen the private realm as of greater importance than the public realm, even when in great need of public help. Moreover, they reject collective action in favor of individual attempts to survive, even when the collective efforts of common people are the only way to combat the powers of those who ran company towns. This rugged individualism that refuses to surrender any independence to any outside agent or collectivity helps explain the perennial low rates of unionization of the state. Individualism expressed through extreme notions of self-reliance, volunteerism, and of individual and family honor that can be defended through violent outbursts have all been noted by observers of southern life, culture and politics.

Even the dominant religious institution of the white South, the Southern Baptist Church, reflects the individualistic element of southern culture. Until the 1990s when conservative elements took over the reins of the organization, a prime belief of the church was the “priesthood of the believer.” No leader was to tell members how to interpret scriptures or create any official doctrine of the church. That was all left to individuals and to individual churches. Southern Baptists in South Carolina and elsewhere could say much the same thing that Democrats were fond of saying about their political party. “I am not a member of any organized religion. I am a Baptist.” Although few took these freedoms outside the conservative moral consensus and although those who did were often socially ostracized, the right was cherished in principle, if not in practice. The attempt by new conservative Southern Baptist leaders of the religious right to make informal practices into a formal orthodoxy has split the church asunder in recent years.

The battles and splits within the Baptist church in recent years raise the question of change in the state's culture. One source of change in the in-migration of outsiders to the state. Many have been attracted to the state as a place to retire. Many of these are northerners, who bring their own cultural baggage, a very different baggage than those who are native to the South.

Recently Carol Botsch and I delivered a paper to the Popular Cultural Association of the South on the impact of in-migrants to South, focusing on Aiken County in particular. We used survey data that my classes had gathered over the past decade to look at the changing mix of cultures and how those who did not consider themselves "southern" were different that those who considered themselves southern. We found that over the last decade the percentage of Southerners had declined (to about 72%) and the percentage of "non-southerners" had doubled to about 12%. The reminder consider themselves "converted southerners," whose attitudes lay somewhere in between the southerners and non-southerners. rather than give you the whole thirty page paper to read, I will just reprint the conclusion below with a little editing (thank-you Bob!!!).

Change in South Carolina’s Political Culture

In some way, shape or form, South Carolina will inevitably change as its population continues to change. Long and short term residents of South Carolina and other parts of the South are surely aware that their communities and states are changing, even without empirical data from surveys.

Observers note changes both large and small. On the political front, voters approved a referendum that permitted South Carolina to establish a lottery in 2000 and to eliminate mini-bottles in 2004. On Sunday afternoons, South Carolinians are as likely to be found in a shopping mall as a church, as we can see in Aiken County data on church attendance. Some restaurants even serve alcohol on the traditional Christian day of rest. From time to time, one hears proposals to abandon the blue laws altogether. At the same time, black churches in some areas of the state have boomed, as more African-Americans move to communities like Columbia. As more Hispanics move to South Carolina, once scarce Catholic churches find themselves with many more new congregants. Hispanic newcomers add to the mix in terms of food, music, and overall culture. As one drives through the state, it seems that even the most rural area has a Mexican restaurant or a Hispanic grocery. However, the experience of Charlotte, NC, is instructive. Government officials have also found that their new residents place greater pressure on schools and other services, with a language barrier to boot.

With more people comes more congestion and traffic. Jim Elliot of the South Carolina Center for Birds of Prey in the Francis Marion National Forest near Charleston sees more injured birds than he did in the past. He believes this is a result of the increased number of cars on the road and more traffic near natural areas.

Although much of the focus of this paper has been on the impact of retirees, many younger people also moved to South Carolina in the 1990s, looking for first jobs or career advancement. We saw this in our data when we looked at age and regional identification. The state experienced a net in-migration of 27,207 people aged 20-34 during the 1990s, with more coming from North Carolina than any other state. Many were attracted by the new, high tech industries, according to researchers at Clemson’s Strom Thurmond Institute. These new and younger residents are fueling the demand for more schools and other services needed by young families, at the same time that voters in some communities, such as Lexington, have repeatedly turned down school bonds. In Beaufort, where over 15,000 babies were born in the decade from 1990-2000, the school district is seeing a “swell of students” in the primary grades.

In some respects, the big story for South Carolina is still the aging of its population as baby boomers arrive. As the state grays, the demand for more options in homes for both abled and less abled seniors will increase along with more strain on medical facilities and services. In areas like the Midlands, real estate developers find that demand is up for resort and active retirement living, often including a “continuum of care.” Housing all over the state has boomed, with sales of patio homes to singles and vacation homes all over the state fueling the growth. The housing boom is attributed in large part to in-migration. As our data suggest, many of the new retirees are well-off, and these new residents want more amenities, including more and better restaurants and cultural options. At the same time, they put a strain on the state’s resources that must be planned for, and they may affect the political environment of a traditionally anti-government, anti-tax state down the road.

But all retirees in the state are not wealthy. Some communities are finding that some of their elderly residents, both new and home-grown, are below the poverty level, putting a strain on existing services. This does not augur well for the future, as baby boomers age and deplete their resources. In communities like Beaufort, which continues to attract many retirees and has experienced tremendous overall growth, the county is finding it difficult to keep up with demand for library books and parks. More medical facilities and more medical personnel with specialties in geriatrics will also be needed throughout the state. But in 2005, only 30 geriatricians practiced in the state, a rate of 1 for every 17,000 patients.

The authors of this paper can recall that when they moved to South Carolina in 1978, the city of Aiken was a sleepy little town with one upscale restaurant, two movie theaters, and a dying downtown. Today the community is booming, with a plethora of upscale restaurants, a shopping mall, and a small multiplex. One must even plan daily trips to avoid lunchtime and late afternoon traffic jams! It is no longer unusual to attend a concert or a wine tasting and find a sea of unfamiliar faces, many newly arrived from Florida or even the South Carolina coast.

The growth of the many somewhat insular retirement communities in both Aiken and elsewhere, some gated, some age-restricted, raises some interesting questions about the impact of migration on culture and politics. Will in-migrants who have many amenities, from golf courses to swimming pools to cooking clubs, all within walking distance of their homes, and who need to venture out only to forage for food and other necessities, interact enough with the “locals” to absorb the local culture? Our data show that many do not. In turn, will the new residents affect the attitudes of longer term residents or even change the politics and culture of their new communities? Again, our data show that values of those considering themselves to be southern do not always fit the stereotype. As the numbers of non-southerners increase, what kind of political impact will they have? Our data show that newcomers who do not consider themselves “southern” are less Republican, more liberal, and more supportive of government regulation. In Aiken, retirees have in effect already elected one of their own to the City Council, and helped to elect another long-term resident who supports such measures as planned growth. These newer council members sometimes find themselves at odds with other members of the council who represent a more socially conservative, anti-government native constituency.

Two events that occurred in Aiken, SC in September of 2006 illustrate that while the culture is changing, it is still quite socially conservative. One of the authors attended a meeting of a book club sponsored by the Aiken County public library. In response to feedback from previous participants, the library staff had selected books written by South Carolina authors as its theme for the year. Nearly 30 people, mostly middle-aged white women, attended the first meeting, where the group discussed a Pulitzer prize winning novel by Julia Peterkin, a white female plantation owner whose 1920s era work is considered ground-breaking in its sympathetic treatment of African-Americans, despite what some contemporary readers would consider a stereotyped representation of the black experience. Overall response of the book group, which included both native southerners and transplants, was positive. The following week the group discussed a book of poetry by black author Nikki Finney. Finney’s poems focused on a variety of topics, ranging from family, to civil rights, to her own experiences in a lesbian relationship. About half of the group was absent. According to library staff, several people had turned in their books, stating that they were offended and would not participate further in the book group. That the event was even held suggests change, but that some opted out and were offended shows continuity.

The second event that sparked some controversy surrounded a program developed by students at USC Aiken for their fellow students on the dangers of alcohol and unprotected sex. In previous years, the students had presented similar programs, entitled “Sex by the Pool,” but this year the students thought that a catchier title would attract more students to a program that included presentations about drinking, date rape, and sexually transmitted diseases as well as the distribution of condoms. An email labeled “Sex and Kegs” was distributed to the student email list, and 125 students attended the program. However, after a parent complained to the Aiken Standard, the local newspaper ran a front page story about the program. This was followed by an editorial the next day, where the newspaper lauded the university for its efforts but criticized it for the title of the email. In particular, both the newspaper and the parent seemed concerned that the title implied an endorsement of drinking and sex. When asked about this whole fracas, some of our mostly native southern students commented that something like this would not have even been a blip on the radar in communities in other regions!

Of course, change does not occur all at once. Studies, including this one, still show that southerners are distinct from their fellow Americans in many respects. Church attendance is higher in the South and southerners are more likely to join the military. Some parts of the South are still quite poor. Eight of the ten states with the highest percentage of mobile homes and nine of the ten states with the highest percentage of people who have lost their teeth are in the South. Migrants who come to the South adapt to southern culture in a range of ways, from switching their allegiances to sports teams to learning to drink sweet iced tea even in the middle of the winter, as well as changing the culture to one where bagels and ballet become part of the norm.

This process of change may not be restricted to the South. Some observers believe that the modern South may not be so different from the nation after all. They note that this region, now the most industrialized in the country, has exported its culture to the rest of the nation. “We have exported country music, NASCAR, and the Southern Baptist Convention so successfully,” says scholar John Shelton Reed, “that they may not be ‘Southern’ institutions much longer.”

At the very least, the South will continue to grow and to be a force in national politics. The last two Democrats elected as president were southerners, and both parties recognize the importance of the region. By 2030 it’s expected that 40% of Americans will be living in the South, some native born, and some newer residents who have moved to the region. Research to explore the impact of in-migration on the South and the impact of the South on in-migrants and the rest of the nation will continue.