Introduction
Politics in the American South evidences both change and continuity in the 21
st
century.
The overriding change is the shift of many Southern whites out of the Democratic Party
and into the Republican Party (Black and Black 1987, 2002; Glaser 2005). This change
is so pronounced that in four of the past seven presidential elections (1984, 1988, 2000
and 2004), Democratic candidates have received no electoral votes in the 13 Southern
states, the 11 former Confederate states plus Kentucky and Oklahoma, and carried only
one state in 1980 and a minority of electoral votes in Bill Clinton’s wins in 1992 and
1996. Furthermore, even after nationwide gains in the 2006 elections, Democrats hold
only 5 of 26, or 19% of, Southern U.S. Senate seats, and 57 of 142, or 40% of, Southern
U.S. House seats. Democratic gains in 2006 were concentrated in the Northeast and
Midwest (Klinkner and Schaller 2006). In some Southern states, notably Texas, South
Carolina, Georgia and Florida, Democrats are virtually irrelevant in state politics as well.
The continuity, I argue, is this: White Southerners, always hegemonic in defining
the region’s history, politics and culture, frequently demonstrate, and have demonstrated,
strikingly strong resistance to diversity. While Southern white party loyalties have
switched from majority Democratic to majority Republican, intolerance of difference
appears woven into the region’s political and social fabric, more so than in other regions.
This observation draws substantial support from historical studies (Goldfield 2002), and
other research examining specific elements of Southern culture, i.e. the Southern culture
of honor (Nisbett and Cohen 1996), Southern Baptist and other evangelical Protestant
religious traditions (Rosenberg 1989; Smith 1997; Green et al. 2003), and hostility
toward organized labor (Clark 1997; Minchin 2006). An intolerance of difference and
2
Convention