Grounded Globalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World

ONE. A Model

* Softly, do you not hear behind that the gallop of Jeb Stuart’s cavalryman? Do you not recognize it for the native gesture of an incurably romantic people, enamoured before all else of the magnificent and the spectacular? wilbur j. cash, The Mind of the South c h a p t e r o n e A Model on memorial day 2006, I take a taxi from Raleigh-Durham airport after flying in from Dothan, in South Alabama. The driver has a trainee with him. “Where are you guys from?” I ask. “Guess,” answers the trainee. “Eritrea,” I suggest, succeeding after two wrong tries. “Where’s he from?” the trainee asks, referring to the driver. “Ethiopia,” I guess immediately. I then ask, “How can this be? You are supposed to be enemies!” (In 1998 I had flown out of the Eritrea airport just before it was bombed by Ethiopia.) They explain that they are friends, that it’s only the politicians who make the two countries enemies, that they are the same in culture. As we pass Barbee Chapel Road, I say, “Look at that sign when you return.” The sign says, “Adopted by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.” We discuss the parallels between the U.S Civil War and Eritrea’s secession from Ethiopia and the resulting war until we arrive at my house. 3 4 Orientation Such parallels are so frequent that patterns are easy to identify. The focus of my study is the U.S. South, but I begin by describing a model of movement from regional to global identity; it applies in the U.S. South but also elsewhere. This model features seven steps: 1. regional identity, 2. opposition to national identity, 3. rebellion, 4. defeat, 5. resentment and oppression, 6. transmutation by global identity, and 7. grounding of that identity in sustained regional identity. Consider each element. The first step, regional identity, is the development of an identity with a locale within a nation or with a region spanning national boundaries. The Committee on Regions of the European Union formally recognizes such identities: Scottish, Bavarian, Irish, Basque, and so forth. These are identities with distinct languages and customs, with ethnicities associated with a locale. Such identities can be poignant. “Will he ne’er come back again,” sing Scots or would-be Scots about Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Battle of Culloden. Just before the airport bombing in Asmara, Eritrea, in 1998, following Eritrea’s secession from Ethiopia, thousands of Eritreans danced in the streets, celebrating independent nationhood. The Kurds are another ethnic group with a strong independent identity, as we discover in Iraq. Regional identity can become actively oppositional to national identity —not just different from but opposed to and, at least in the region’s own perception, oppressed by the rest of the nation and the central government . This is step two. The Uigur, a large Muslim population in West China who are culturally and linguistically different from the Han majority , provide an example. The Uigur experience prejudice from the majority Han Chinese, who are colonizing them by sending Han officials to A Model 5 the Uiger region and pressuring the Uiger to learn Chinese and forsake their own culture. The Chinese justify these actions by deeming Muslims terrorists. This sense of opposition can lead to step three, rebellion. The Irish, the Basques, and the U.S. South have all rebelled, as have the outer islands of Indonesia against the central government on Java. Rebellion may be peaceful, expressed as calls for political clout or autonomy or independence in literature, songs, sermons, and the mass media, or it may be violent, expressed as guerilla activity, bombings, or extortion. Rebellion in the form of secession is a drastic step that may lead to war. The U.S. Civil War is one example, but hundreds of others have occurred. As in the Civil War, the seceding region fights for independence, while the nation strives to preserve the union. The next step, defeat, is a likely though not inevitable outcome, likely because the nation is larger than the seceding element and boasts a standing army. Defeat and its aftermath breed resentment (step five). The Lost Cause of the South is an example. The North’s military victory and subsequent occupation of the South was countered by the South’s claims to a kind of moral victory; the South had fought heroically against great...