Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads by Paul Theroux, book review
Theroux undergoes a journey of self-discovery in the American Deep South
After a lifetime spent travelling as “an alienated spectator on a train” or suffering the indignity and boredom of the airport security check, Theroux loves to wake up in New England and just get in his car to achieve “the bliss of a sudden exit”. As he explains, “even in the poorest places in America, where there are shacks and rotting house-trailers, the roads are wonderful”. Those shacks – and the poverty of their inhabitants – are as much of a contrast with his home as anything he has seen in sub-Saharan Africa, where, paradoxically, the American government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in aid while ignoring the plight of its own citizens a few hours down the highway.The small town of Glendora, for instance, with its “hideous street of shacks and hovels… where men in rags, with glazed dog-like eyes, [sip] from bottles and cans”, is profoundly depressing. This is where, in 1955, the 14-year old African American youth Emmett Till, visiting from the North, was murdered for having whistled at a white woman in the post office in the nearby hamlet of Money. An all-white jury acquitted his openly gloating killers, an event that riveted Theroux as a teenager. Fifty years on, African Americans he meets tell Theroux that “nothing’s changed”.
Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads by Paul Theroux, book review | The Independent
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And here is Emmett's cousin speaking about the incident:
(from minute 6)
BBC Radio 4 - Soul Music, Series 17, Strange Fruit
BBC Radio 4 - Soul Music, Series 17, Strange Fruit, An 'orderly, humane' lynching
Try listening to this:
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Trump Supporter Tearful About His Louisiana Visit - YouTube
And what's gonna happen if he loses?
'Time for revolution': Trump's Deep South diehards ready for revolt if he loses
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'Time for revolution': Trump's Deep South diehards ready for revolt if he loses - World - CBC News
In the Year of Trump, the South isn’t just red vs. blue — it’s black vs. white
Businessman and chef Santi Jones (right) and his unidentified associate prepare to work at their stand offering barbecue pork tacos to tailgaters in a parking lot near Bank of America stadium in Charlotte on Sept. 18. Jones ruminated on Hillary Clinton and whether black voters will win her the White House. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)
A new poll in Louisiana shows Donald Trump leading by 20 points. And the reason is no surprise: white voters.
What is surprising, though, is the degree to which that statement is true — i.e. just how much Trump dominates among whites. Hillary Clinton takes just 12 percent of them in the Mason-Dixon poll; Trump takes 75 percent.
Huge racial polarization in new Louisiana poll
Trump
Clinton
A late-September Quinnipiac University poll in Georgia showed something similar there, with just 16 percent of white voters backing Clinton and 74 percent backing Trump.
In both polls, Democrats completely dominated among black voters, as they regularly do. So the end result was that almost all black voters were going for Clinton and the vast majority of white voters going for Trump.
This is not a new phenomenon, it should be emphasized. But it is notable that racial-political polarization in the South, and especially the Deep South, appears to be sticking around even with the nation's first black president no longer on the ballot.
In 2012, white voters in the Deep South (defined here as five states: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina) favored Mitt Romney 77 to 22. In 2008, it was even more lopsided — 78 to 20 in favor of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). As Nate Cohn put it back in 2014, “the Democrats have become the party of African Americans and . . . the Republicans are the party of whites.”
These polls and others suggests that gap is going to be similar in 2016 — if not bigger in a state or two. A Washington Post-Survey Monkey online poll of all 50 states last month showed white voters favoring Donald Trump by a 71-to-22 margin in these five Deep South states — on a par with the 2012 margin.
Very few whites going for Hillary Clinton in Deep South
That racial polarization is not nearly so big across the rest of the country. Exit polls in 2012 showed Romney winning white voters by much smaller margins elsewhere: 6 points in the Northeast, 5 points in the West and 16 points in the Midwest. McCain in 2008 actually lost white voters to Barack Obama in the Northeast and West. And today, those regions remain much more competitive in Trump vs. Clinton, within margins of 10 points or less in the Survey Monkey poll.
In the Year of Trump, the South isn’t just red vs. blue — it’s black vs. white - The Washington Post
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