|
|
Political
Culture and South Carolina -- Bob Botsch
Introduction
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 and in the
2007-9 Great Recession was to
cut the state budget reducing services and laying off employees, including
teachers, rather than
raising taxes. Even after the economic recoveries the governor and
Republican dominated legislature placed more emphasis on tax cuts than on
improving education or rehiring employees.
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 20th 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 20th 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 is 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.
A few years
ago
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.
|