The excellent George Hawley, assistant professor of political science at the University of Alabama, asks “Is There Really a Racial Divide Between North and South?”:
Whether it is primarily due to migration, mass media, federal policy, or the homogenizing effects of global capitalism, the cultural and political differences between the North and South have become less pronounced in recent decades. But it remains unclear just how different Southerners remain from their fellow citizens in other parts of the country. White Southerners’ attitudes on the issue of race remain a question of particular interest and importance…
White Southerners who are frustrated when described as racists by their fellow citizens to the north can note that the Mason-Dixon Line is not a clear divider when it comes to racial attitudes. This may also be a relief to people concerned that the North-South divide is once again becoming dangerously wide.
White nationalists who hope the American South will be a vanguard of a white racial awakening will be discouraged to see that Dixie is, on most of these questions, only marginally different from the rest of the country. Anti-racists, who may want to blame the South for all of America’s racial divides, will be frustrated to learn that it is not just reactionary white Southerners holding racial progress at bay.
This polling contradicts my prior assumptions that a natural retreat (aka segregation) of whites to whiter and whiter areas (e.g., redder and redder states) meant that more whites would be moving to the South.
Is that happening? Or is it that non-woke whites are moving to the South?
