Why do white people write as though “the South” is comprised only of white people?
A friend of mine, interviewing candidates for a fellowship, once complained that students trained at Yale always wrote “southern history” this way, in the tradition of C. Vann Woodward: exclusive of African Americans. My sense is that it’s only a matter of time for white conservative southerners, who will eventually be outnumbered by white northern in-migration, Mexican and Central American immigration, and African American re-migration as the great-grandchildren of the Great Migration return to their ancestors’ native land.
History is powerful, probably more powerful in the American South than in other American regions, so this will likely take the majority of the present century, but the shift is already well under way. Texas and Florida lead the way, but North Carolina and Georgia aren’t far behind. Hotlanta is the capital of black America, after all, and North Carolina has more northern-born retirees every year. If these states retain a white majority, that white majority will be pretty darn grey, so although older Americans vote more conservatively than other Americans, it’s black and brown people who will be having and raising their children there.