Guilty Southern White Men – MediaMinded has an interesting addition to the ongoing discussion of GSWMs (Guilty Southern White Men), initiated by Andrew Sullivan and carried on ably by InstaPundit and kausfiles (I’m not linking; you read them already, or should), who remind us (actually, you) that Southerners who opposed racism and segregation were in fact on the side of angels and so somewhat understandably assume that they remain there no matter what issue they take up.
I heartily second MediaMinded’s enthusiasm for Albert Murray’s SOUTH TO A VERY OLD PLACE. Another unsung book by a deservedly famouse Southerner also has something to say to the issue of guilty white Southerners. I refer to Robert Penn Warren’s thin little book, more a long essay, really: THE LEGACY OF THE CIVIL WAR, Random House, (1961). In it, RPW argues that the most lasting legacy of the late unpleasantness was that it gave the South a “Great Alibi” for whatever was wrong, and it gave the North a “Treasury of Virtue.” Whatever the North’s failings, it had freed the slaves etc. and hence could do no wrong, or rather any wrong it might do must be excused because of its heroic accomplishent of freeing the slaves.
Many Southern liberals who became leftists (I was one, too) have, alas, inherited that same confidence that they have a bottomless treasury of virtue to draw on forever.
