Comments on: Perspective by Incongruity, #3

By: Camille

Camille — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:07:27 +0000

You’re thinking late-20th-century. Go back further. To the origins of the Lost Cause and the discourse among the Southern Agrarians. Go read _Southern Tradition at Bay_ and John Crowe Ransom and others. Go back to Reconstruction.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:59:32 +0000

The migration of industry from the Rustbelt to the Sunbelt is a Lost Cause trope?

I rather suspect that Northern businesses relocated to the South and Southwest because of economic incentives and disincentives, not Lost Cause rhetoric. Then again, trying to escape stifling taxes, union intimidation, and government-protected monopolies has a rhetorical appeal all its own.

By: Camille

Camille — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:02:55 +0000

Yes, Paul, that is exactly the myth that BJU works so very hard to preserve. That is actually a Lost Cause trope — to convince the Northern business man that the Southern manufacturer is more desirable. And the facts and the history as well as the rhetoric don’t match that more “Northern” ethic whatsoever. You, like the rest of us, prove the thoroughness of the myth.

Further explanation will come at a later date. I’m headed to Wheaton as I type to get more primary source evidence.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:12:39 +0000

Bob Jones University was certainly guilty of institutional racism. But I do question the link to Lost Cause ideology. Bob Jones College, though founded in the Florida panhandle, was essentially a Midwestern school. The overwhelming majority of students came from Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio. Even after the move to South Carolina in 1947, most of the students still came from outside of the Old South. Only recently has South Carolina become the largest enrollment state (perhaps because of faculty/staff and Greenvillian kids). The same pattern is true of faculty and staff themselves; most are from the Midwest or the Rustbelt.

Now it is true that the Midwest was no less racist than the Old South. Even today, I’ve heard that Indiana has the largest KKK contingent in the nation. So it’s not surprising that a Midwestern-influenced BJU would be racist. But simply being racist does not make someone an adherent of Lost Cause ideology.

To employ a geographical analogy, BJU seems to have more in common with Greenville than with Columbia or Charleston. Greenville has become a community of immigrants, part of the Sunbelt migrations that saw a population transfer from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and Southwest. Columbia and Charleston on the other hand is the source of the good ol’ boy, Lost Cause-steeped, Old South culture. This distinction makes some of Bob Jones University’s idiosyncrasies less dissonant. For example, it helps make sense of Bob Jones III’s opposition to having the Confederate flag flying over the statehouse.

But this distinction between Midwestern and Southern origins of racism makes me question the connection that you draw between BJU and Old South ideology and rhetoric.

By: Watchman

Watchman — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:17:15 +0000

Noticed today that the University of Mississippi has banned playing “To Dixie with Love” at the end of football games because the students insisted on shouting “the South will rise again” at the end. The Cause may be lost, but to quote Ted Kennedy, it appears “the dream will never die.”

By: Lori R

Lori R — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:14:19 +0000

Please write more about this Lost Cause critique as it relates to Doug Wilson’s version of Federal Vision… that fascinates me. Plus your perspective (trained in rhetoric) is entirely new to me. Great stuff….

By: Jocelyn

Jocelyn — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:02:39 +0000

Yes, thank you. Sometimes you can’t put it into words yourself or even put it all together…but over time you realize how much this affected you. And neither my husband or I ever thought we were racist…just chose an institution that promoted it. And then again, it took us a long time to figure out it really WAS promoted there. sigh.

By: Mark Rosedale

Mark Rosedale — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:31:23 +0000

“The students from both the North and the South who attended and graduated after 1983 Supreme Court case—which includes every member of the Please-Reconcile team—were witless about the racist foundation. They had been raised in the prevailing notion of “color-blindness” which made them deaf to the coded racism. They were literal-minded, morally earnest, personally outspoken, and driven to “do right.””

FYI this is what I was trying to quote before. Thank you for saying this. When I went to BJU racism was furthest from my mind.

By: Mark Rosedale

Mark Rosedale — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:30:02 +0000

Thank you for saying that. The hardest thing about being a BJU grad is dealing with this very issue. I abhor racism in all its forms. I strive daily to ensure that I don’t have thoughts of racism or actions that are racist. Most of that comes naturally. I grew up with a diverse mix of friends and my parents taught me well to be accepting. That is why it surprised me when BJU hadn’t formally apologized, and it is why I signed the Please Reconcile petition.

By: Will

Will — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:13:31 +0000

You said:

Yeah, that was definitely me. Of course, being taught growing up that BJU could do no wrong had something to do with my deafness to the coded racism as well.

How much of our deafness was a result of cultural “color-blindness” and how much was a result of religious “brainwashing” that fundamentalist strongholds (like BJU) are always right?