By Garda Ghista
May 2007

With the television being the dominant brainwasher and mind-controller of all times, some people say that the South has begun to vanish as a unique cultural entity. All people, young and old, rich and poor, even the poorest of the poor, watch television. It is the greatest cultural destroyer in modern history. Being an anti-culture, pseudo-culture medium, it has played a major role in destroying southern culture – in fact, all cultures. Conformity is the key, and nationalism, especially neo-con nationalism based on hatred of others, is the next key to destruction of the South’s unique culture.

However, southern culture has not died. I believe that black social capital is deeply embedded in the hearts of black people everywhere, despite academic reports to the contrary. Southern white racism is also thriving and growing. And thanks to neo-con plundering of the federal budget and further plundering the entire country of public work programs, educational and social/health care programs for the poor, poverty is also on the rise. Hence, the key ingredients of southern culture, namely black social capital, obscene white racism and near third world poverty are all alive and well. So who says southern culture is dying?

Racist Mementos Past and Present

The tag on Doris Moore’s new couch read “nigger brown.” It was her introduction to the huge business taking place today of buying and selling racist furnishings and decorations, such as Coon Chicken Inn dinner plates, little Black Sambo blocks, Aunt Jemima Cookie Jars and Jolly Nigger Banks, all of which are selling for hundreds and thousands of dollars at Ebay and other sales outlets. Beyond the above, there are Sambo Dart Boards and hundreds of clocks, ashtrays and plates all emblazoned with Sambos, Mammies, Toms and Coons. Matchboxes are adorned with Nigger Head shrimp, Nigger Head oysters and Mammy Brand oranges on the box covers. It is a whole slew of racist collectibles produced in China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea for the racist American market, and in particular the white southern market. It is simply continuing a southern tradition where blacks remain as ever assailed in cartoons and articles as “lazy,” “brutes”, “savages,” “imbeciles,” and “moral degenerates.” Reams of college fraternities have been exposed for holding slave auctions. The list of politicians, sports figures, radio talk jocks and other celebrities is too long to enumerate, but their racist jokes and wisecracks, their slip-o-the-tongues never cease because there is still a highly receptive audience out there. So who says southern racism is dying?

Southern Social Capital

Harvard Professor Robert Putnam talks about the concept of “social capital,” drawing its analogy with physical and human capital. Physical capital refers to physical objects used to enhance a community or society. Human capital refers to individual human education, mental capacity and potential for productivity. Social capital refers to social networks and the value of those networks within the society. The term “social capital” can also be called the cousin of the terms “civic virtue” and “civic engagement.” The difference, Putnam explains, is that “social capital” becomes maximally powerful due to the heavy networking amongst hundreds or thousands of individuals, in contrast to those same individuals working alone or isolated from one another. Social capital “makes us smarter, healthier, safe, richer, and better able to govern a just and stable democracy.” The good will, collegiality, empathy, compassion and social interactions that derive from social capital are the most powerful kind of capital available to man, and can lead to civil rights movements and revolutions.

Some ways that social capital can be measured according to Putnam is the extent to which individuals are active by serving on local organizational committees, serving as officers of clubs or organizations, attending organizational meetings and voting on the issues, voting in local, regional and national elections, and volunteering for nonprofit organizations. Mississippi ranks at 17 percent for social trust (the belief that most people can be trusted) compared to North Dakota which ranks at 67 percent. Membership in organizations in Louisiana and North Carolina is 1.3 percent, and 3.3 percent in North Dakota. For every 1000 people in Mississippi there are 1.2 nonprofit organizations as compared to 3.6 in Vermont. Volunteering ranges from 5 times per year in Mississippi and Louisiana to 10 times per year in Utah. Attending public meetings ranges from 10 percent in Georgia to 32 percent in New Hampshire. Putnam describes the range of social capital in geographical terms, saying that the highest social capital lies over the headwaters of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and moves east and west adjacent to the Canadian border, while the region of lowest social capital hovers over the Mississippi Delta and expands in concentric circles to include the former southern Confederacy. In exploring whether social capital was cause or effect, Putnam points out:

“Still more striking is the spatial correlation between low social capital at the end of the twentieth century and slavery in the first half of the nineteenth century. The more virulent the system of slavery then, the less civic the state today. Slavery was, in fact, a social system designed to destroy social capital among slaves and between slaves and freemen. Well-established networks of reciprocity among the oppressed would have raised the risk of rebellion, and egalitarian bonds of sympathy between slave and free would have undermined the very legitimacy of the system. After emancipation the dominant classes in the South continued to have a strong interest in inhibiting horizontal social networks. It is not happenstance that the lowest levels of community-based social capital are found where a century of plantation slavery was followed by a century of Jim Crow politics. Inequality and social solidarity are deeply incompatible.”

Peter Turchin likewise comments on the geographical divide that reflects greater social capital in the north and lowest social capital in the south as having its historical origins in southern slavery. It was important to the white, well-off oppressors, he says, for social networks to be minimal, as such networks could potentially lead to rebellion and revolution amongst the oppressed.

Growing Poorer By the Day

Bearing in mind that the South is defined in great measure by its poverty, racism, classism and culture (reflected perhaps by its magnificent cooking and unique music like no other in the world), poverty is thriving in the south. Infant morality rates are a prime indicator of poverty levels in a region, and are a direct result of the erosion of the social safety net (pensions, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.) starting specifically when Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996. From that point onwards, the number of Americans receiving cash welfare assistance has dropped by a whopping 57 percent. Those who receive any assistance today are bound by strict minimum weekly work-hour requirements – rules that are killing the lives of impoverished single mothers. While poverty is worst traditionally in urban areas, the year 2006 became the year that poverty rose higher in suburbia (with 12 million impoverished people) than in urban centers. Since 1999 the suburban poor account for 52 percent of the total metropolitan poor in America.

One of the greatest indicators of poverty is infant mortality rate, defined as the number of infant deaths (children dying in their first year of life) per 1,000 live births. The United States ranks at the bottom of so-called developed countries as regards infant mortality rate. In fact Sri Lanka, Poland, Cuba and scores of other countries have lower rates. When it comes to southern states, the infant mortality figures just shoot up drastically. In 2005, infant mortality in Louisiana rose to 10.4 per 1,000 births. In Caddo Parish (Region 7 of the state) the figure is 13.3. The Shreveport area has an infant mortality rate of 32.7 – something many Americans would find hard to comprehend. It is poverty “like you’ve never seen” according to registered nurse Linda Brooks. In 2005 Mississippi had infant mortality rates of 11.4, and the rates are similarly rising in North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee. It is about Congressional legislation that just goes on cutting social services, health insurance and any kind of public health infrastructure. What will it take to get the people of America in a rage over lack of basic health care? And given these appalling infant mortality statistics, who says southern poverty is dying?

Katrina Says It All

Eighty thousand people were marooned in New Orleans, thirty thousand trapped in the Superdome, three thousand in the Convention center, with no food, no water and no bathroom for five days. While in third world countries this is the norm for millions, while it is the norm right now (as these words are penned) for millions of Iraqi refugees along the Jordanian-Syrian borders - but in America? The richest country on earth? Some called Katrina the worst disaster in the history of the nation. It was aggravated by the steady but vast erosion of precious wetlands along the Louisiana coast – wetlands which are critical for maintaining ecological balance, which earlier served as life-saving buffers to incoming storms. Forty to fifty square miles per year have been gobbled up in the past half century by capitalists looking to profit through conversion of wetlands into fastlands for commercial development.

It comes back again and again to capitalism and ensuing exploitation of the masses. Capitalism will not work successfully without exploitation. In this case the exploitation was manifested by screams for help from a sunken black metropolis turned into a floating mass of neglect and abandonment. Here is the real history of the American south in the 21st century. When the poor black people dared to protest their neglect and abandonment, dared to hunt for food and water, dared to flee from the jaws of death, they faced soldiers with guns aimed and ready to shoot them down like dogs on the road, until finally Lieutenant General Russel Honore ordered guns lowered and told his men, “This is not Baghdad. These are American citizens!”

So why did the poor and the black people of New Orleans get left behind in the Superdome for five days without food or water and no place to defecate but in their pants? And as the great Michael Dyson asks, why does Mr. Bush hate black people? Why were the poor people – black, white, Vietnamese, Filipino, Korean and Native Indian - living wholly marginalized lives down in Louisiana, and so very invisible? And why have they again returned to their pre-Katrina invisible status? What we saw on television screens for a few fleeting moments caused real cognitive dissonance, because that did not even look like America. It looked like the slums of New Delhi, Bangladesh or Sao Paolo. Katrina exposed the extremes of inequality in America that existed since time immemorial but which is growing worse by the day. As Dyson says, we are all responsible. We let the politicians cut programs for the impoverished people. And some of us condemn the poor for not being appropriately ambitious to succeed materially. Katrina showed not just America but the whole world that the south, with all its racism, classism and poverty exist. It is a deplorable, despicable revelation of the extant American culture.

Time to Redeem the Dream

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King had a glorious dream. He talked about the joyous daybreak to end the long dark night of captivity. Yet still today millions are prisoners, shackled by economic exploitation and crippled by the mental disease of racism. The guarantee to all citizens of life, liberty and the pursuit of economic, intellectual and spiritual happiness has yet to be realized.

The Reverend King talked about the “fierce urgency of now.” I believe that now is the time to make good on the promise of democracy and a world free of racism. The time is indeed now. Gradualism is not acceptable. Rather, it is intolerable. The only way today is revolution – accelerated acceleration of change. The time has come to redeem that dream because the bank of justice will never be bankrupt. We need to empty that bank and spread justice all over the world. We need to stop the forces of predatory capitalism, particularly disaster capitalism that uses the desperation and trepidation created by disasters to engage in radical social and economic engineering driven by obscenely lucrative construction contracts controlled by corporate capitalists who grab land and privatize it before the stricken masses have time even to blink an eye. We need to unite all the exploited people of America – nay, of every country, and those united oppressed people need to wage a war against the oppressors. In America the oppressors are billionaire capitalists. In other countries it may be fundamentalist priests. But even behind the priestly talk is the hidden agenda to grab more capital and resources. The obsession to get more and more money is a kind of mental disease that must be checked by force.

The common factor that must drive the common people into one collective body is the sentiment of anti-exploitation. Political parties started from the grassroots level must be formed to fight this exploitation, for the simple reason that the suffering of the exploited people became unbearable. Simultaneously, movements for economic democracy must be started with concrete, on-the-ground plans to divest money from the wealthy and distribute it amongst the masses, empowering local regions and communities with control over their own economies. Organizations need to work day and night to counter religious extremism and ensuing hatred of others who dare to be different. And all people need to commit themselves to developing revolutionary education programs to be implemented starting from kindergarten (when the fundamental moral character is formed) right through university graduation. Let those education programs include detailed study of the basic rights and civil liberties of all human beings, and let those new curricula be infused with unbounded love for humans, animals and plants – the entire biodiversity of our planet. Finally, people everywhere, not just in the south but in every nook and cranny of the globe, need to demand the immediate formation of a world government and world constitution that will have the capacity to prevent all injustices and human rights violations (such as persecution of minorities) and that will provide the regional guarantee of food, water, shelter, health care and unlimited education to every citizen of the world. This is the work cut out for us today. Let there be no rest for any of us until this work is done. Using our soul force, our heightened morality and our spirituality, let us get engaged in this revolution. It is the work to build a new society, a new world, a new and elevated moral character. It is work based on infinite hope in the glory and dignity of all human beings. By the grace of God, we can start this work without a moment’s delay.
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Garda Ghista is author of The Gujarat Genocide and Founding Director of the World Prout Assembly. She can be reached at editor@worldproutassembly.org.