The Jewish Cardinal
Daniel Lanois: Falling At Your Feet

The Eleven American Nations(?)

This has been getting some attention for several days now: a sort of cultural map of the U.S. based on the varying cultures of origin of current inhabitants. The first thing I noticed is that it conforms to what I was saying in a discussion with Art Deco a few weeks ago about the culture of the region including north Alabama and Tennessee.

In naming Vanderbilt as a university located in the Deep South, I asserted that if northern Alabama is in the Deep South, then so are the neighboring regions of Tennessee. Or, conversely, if those parts of Tennessee are not in the Deep South, then neither is the part of north Alabama where I grew up. As you can see, this map draws the line between Greater Appalachia and Deep South well south of the Alabama-Tennessee line. Call the regions what you will, there is a noticeable cultural similarity, at least in some classes, among people living in north Alabama and as far north as southern Indiana.

Upinarms-map-large

Any exercise of this sort can only be taken as an extreme generalization. Still, with that in mind, I think there's something to it.

The analyis, at least as represented in the accompanying article, is concerned only with regional differences in attitudes toward violence, and though the author seems to be trying for detachment is clearly written from a liberal point of view. It's pretty clear that the southern region is to be considered backward if not crazy.

One possible lesson that might be drawn from this is missed by the author, though he states the premise:

With such sharp regional differences, the idea that the United States would ever reach consensus on any issue having to do with violence seems far-fetched. The cultural gulf between Appalachia and Yankeedom, Deep South and New Netherland is simply too large.

The conclusion I would draw from that observation is that, given the deep differences among the regions, a great deal of latitude in ordering their own affairs ought to be accepted, and that an attempt to impose uniformity on the entire nation would a big mistake, and bound to cause more trouble than it prevents, not only in relation to the problem of violence but to many other disputes. Unfortunately that is not the conclusion the author draws, but rather:

The deadlock will persist until one of these camps modifies its message and policy platform to draw in the swing nations. Only then can that camp seize full control over the levers of federal power—the White House, the House, and a filibuster-proof Senate majority—to force its will on the opposing nations.

This is unwise. And, I might say, a characteristic northern mistake.

Comments

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He is a newsman, and one whose thinking apparently does not cross certain frontiers.

It does not occur to him to attempt to control for a single confounding variable. By way of example, I grew up in the Genesee Valley. There are about 1.1 million people there. About 10% live in urban slums and adjacent areas. About 55% live either in the more agreeable areas of the central city or in suburban tract development. About 35% live in small towns and countryside tributary to Rochester rather than one of the three proximate metropolitan centers (Syracuse, Buffalo, and Elmira, if you are interested). In 2005, to take one recent year, the homicide rate in the first zone mentioned was 47 per 100,000. The homicide rate in the remainder was 2.4 per 100,000. Now, that year was somewhat of an outlier. In an ordinary year, a rate of 35 per 100,000 in the first zone might be about normal. There are indubitably a number of vectors which form the resultant of that discrepancy. However, one thing you can say is that you do not have a homicide rate of 35 per 100,000 therein because that part of the city is occupied by Southerners.

The same phenomenon exists in the South. It is just less pronounced.

You might recall there was a book published in 1982 called The Nine Nations of North America. This man's work is derivative.

These things are all interesting, but necessarily flawed; my main objection, as a native of the region, is that the western portion of what he calls "Yankeedom", the Upper Great Lakes, deserves its own designation. Granted, there is an overwhelming New York and New England immigration pattern, but there is also a lot that is different: Finns and Swedes and Ojibwa and Germans, not to mention a very different topography. Maybe the southern parts of the region can be lumped with greater New England, but the norther, marginally agricultural region is a whole 'nuther world.

I was a little surprised at the area called Yankeedom, too. But yeah, like I said, extreme generalization.

No, I wasn't aware of that book, Art. I did think of one Daniel recommended to me years ago that I never read...Albion's Seed, I think it was..which does something similar.

I guess you're alluding to the very high black, or maybe black+Hispanic, homicide rate? I was going to gripe loudly about the author's excluding that, and certainly it skews the regional statistics. But he actually takes that into account, claiming that even if you take that out of the picture the white homicide rate is higher in the south. Which I can well believe. Not that it's all that high, not nearly as high as the black rate, but it doesn't surprise me that it's higher. The stereotype of the truculent redneck, like most stereotypes, isn't without warrant.

No doubt the homicide rate in certain northern and midwestern areas in certain periods has been considerably higher than that in the rural or small-town south due to Mafia-type violence.

No doubt the homicide rate in certain northern and midwestern areas in certain periods has been considerably higher than that in the rural or small-town south due to Mafia-type violence.

Actually, as of 1986 or thereabouts, the FBI calculated that the Sicilianate mob had about 1,700 'made guys' (associates not specified). I doubt they were a big contributor to the homicide statistics. The trouble with the mob in the post-Depression era was the manner in which they distorted and disfigured the trade unions and particular industries (construction, trucking, shipping, hospitality, certain distributional enterprises).

I doubt the man did any regression analysis. I have not looked at the literature, but I would wager if you put together an ecological study with a model with a half-dozen variables (a dummy variable for Southern v. non-Southern, a dummy variable for metropolitan v. non-metropolitan, the black/non-black ratio; the hispanic/non-hispanic ratio, local income levels, and local unemployment rates), the Southern v. non-Southern dummy variable would turn out to have one of the weaker weights.

(One thing I understand to be true is that the raw difference in perpetration rates across the color bar is much smaller in the South than in the north).

Oh, you would have to add the annual number of remands to prison (per capita) as a variable. You might also add a dummy variable for Louisiana v. non-Louisiana.

One other thing I should mention: in the Genesee Valley, about a third of the black population lives outside the slums. You see the same business in greater Detroit and greater Washington: about a third of the black population is nestled unobtrusively in suburban areas with low crime rates. In Upstate New York, such a population is scattered and modest (2% - 6% of a given municipality). In Washington, you have tranquil suburbs which top 20% black and in Detroit you have black majority suburbs. When you say 'slum', you exclude a great many people.

Unfortunately I am "at work", though at home, today, and don't have time to say much. But just a couple of things: by "Mafia-type" I meant organized crime in general, and I would have thought it murderous enough to make a statistical difference in at least a few places, e.g. New Jersey, New York (City), and Chicago. But maybe that was only true, if at all, during Prohibition

I'm not following your point about the slums. I mean, I understand what you said, but I'm not sure what point you're making. That black violence is mostly a phenomenon of black slums, rather than of race per se? I'm sure that's true.

Poverty always breeds crime. At one time it was the Irish slums that were violent and to be avoided. Though it is also pretty verifiable that southern culture tends more to violence, black or white. Maybe because it is so damn hot and humid, maybe because of Scots-Irish culture. I do know that in my all white Michigan small town the bar to avoid was the Virginia Tavern, hangout of the Appalachian Americans who had emigrated for the factory jobs; stabbings and such were pretty regular fare. And I am Scots-Irish on my dad's side, and my bride was born in WV, so this is not bigotry...

Poverty always breeds crime.

Crime rates do not track per capita income.

The criminal population is notable for impulsive behavior, which tends to stand one in bad stead in the labor market.

That poverty and crime are very often associated is an easily observable fact where I live. The cause-and-effect relationship is not so obvious. I don't think any single straightforward statement can fully explain most social phenomena. Or for that matter individual phenomena.

Elmira--famous from Its a Wonderful Life.

Was it Bedford Falls?

I think Seneca Falls is usually identified as the model for 'its a wonderful life'. Seneca Falls is a town of about 5,000 at the libration point between the Rochester and Syracuse sphere of influence.

Elmira is a depressed and depressing small city in the Southern Tier. You tally up the central city and the tract development outside it, you have about 60,000 people in Elmira. There are another 100,000 or so in the small towns and countryside in its ambo. The Corning Glass Works is in that area, but not in Elmira itself. The most consequential employer in Elmira was American LaFrance, a manufacturer of Fire Engines. American LaFrance shut down its factories in 1983. The place has seen secular demographic decline as bad as anyplace else in New York. The one minor silver lining has been that people moved out pari passu with the jobs, so Chemung County has not generally suffered elevated unemployment rates. After American Lafrance, the most consequential employer was...the state prison.

As the state government was building up the public system of higher education after 1945, it made some decisions about siting that were unfortunate in retrospect. A full-bore state university was placed in Binghamton down the road. Binghamton's economy was buoyant for decades from IBM and Endicott-Johnson. I imagine the state university has been an agreeable cushion for them in the intervening years, but if you had a do over, state colleges in Binghamton and Elmira would be more appropriate. Elmira's higher education inventory is the most paltry in the state. There's just nothing there but a small private college. The state even put the community college in Corning. You have to figure the state legislators from Chemung County must have pissed someone in a gatekeeper position off big time.

I think the link is rather evident. There are a lot of cities in Ohio where there are lots of folks cooking meth and taking oxycontin, whose dads or grandpas were prosperous steel workers. I really doubt that if good jobs were available that they would be wasting their lives in desperation...

Oh, there's a link. It is the direction of causality that is obscure.

Elmira is where the bank inspector was going to be with his family.

Pretty much a straight shot up state routes, with Watkins Glen the only town in between. The drive takes somewhat over an hour. It would not have taken much longer in 1946. There are no interstates running north to south there and in 1946 as now Seneca County is largely rural and there would not have been many cars on the road.

"New Netherland has always been a global commercial culture—materialistic, with a profound tolerance for ethnic and religious diversity and an unflinching commitment to the freedom of inquiry and conscience. Like seventeenth-century Amsterdam...."

Tolerance, kinda. See this article on the Schuilkerk

heh. Like I said, it's pretty obvious where that guy's ideological sympathies lie. He has that subtle and nuanced view that liberal = good and conservative = bad.

I would *never* have remembered about the bank examiner and Elmira.

"Elmira's higher education inventory is the most paltry in the state. There's just nothing there but a small private college."

The implication that you would expect more in a town like Elmira is pretty indicative of one difference between Yankeedom and the South, deep and shallow. No one would expect the average southern town of 29,200 (Wikipedi) to have anything in the way of higher ed. Some do, of course, but it's not an expectation.

In the past 30 years or so a big network of community colleges has been developed in Alabama, but I think empire building in state govt had at least as much to do with it as the wishes of the populace.

You apparently don't watch it every Christmas with your family.

No, although I've seen it several times...at least four, probably more like six.

No one would expect the average southern town of 29,200 (Wikipedi) to have anything in the way of higher ed

No, New York is New York. The State University of New York was incorporated in 1948 and state institutions were developed according to a consistent format. It's a three-layer cake with state universities, state colleges, and community colleges. Off on a sidebar are free standing professional schools and the state's old technical colleges, which have not much more than 5% of the enrollment. The siting decisions made through about 1965 and the esoteric process which generated the enrollment slots seem to have been done with an eye to distributing enrollments about the state. The campuses with the largest enrollments are less than half the size of Ohio State, the state avoided the loci of the extant private universities in siting, and most of the state colleges were located in small towns (away from extant private colleges). The absence off anything in Elmira is unique.

All well and good, but of course the real measure of a higher ed system is the success of its football programs, where we excel.

The year's not over yet, Mac.

"I did think of one Daniel recommended to me years ago that I never read...Albion's Seed"

I've seen that book referred to many times, and finally bought a copy a couple months back. This was after I read something that Marion Mongomery wrote saying that if you ever want to begin to understand the South it's something you need to read.

Well, I definitely should make the effort, then. Don't when I'll work it in.

Robert, I don't by any means assume we'll win the title. But history and two teams currently in the top 10 justify "excel."

Dept. of Meaningless Coincidences: the church where I attend Mass is on Elmira Street.

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