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Chapter 2 i. Southern Conservatism and Liberalism 471
not quite understand, as they are never r^sed as issues and not talked about
straightforwardly. Petty changes are hailed as great victories. Southern
liberals are thus conditioned to being opportunistic. They often lack a clear
understanding of the common observation from all spheres of politics in
all count’^es and all times: that political actions, which for the moment
amount to little more than mere demonstrations and which may actually
cause a reaction in the individual case, in the long view may have been
tremendously important as powerful stimuli to progressive thinking.
It is apparent that this political approach—^which is well understandable
in the social context of the present South and against the background of the
last hundred years’ history of the region—^is now much less prevalent than
earlier. The New Deal has made liberals accustomed to rather rapid
reforms and, what is more important, reforms which have often challenged
local prejudices considerably. But as a general attitude, the indirect and
cautious Southern approach is still adhered to, especially among liberals
of an older generation. In sectors other than those in which they happen to
« be interested at the moment, many Southern liberals lean over backward
to be conservative and so to avoid suspicion. The individual Southern liberal
of an older school who is working to defend collective bargaining in his
locality, for example, may surprise the interviewer by starting out, without
any provocation, to explain why he thinks that birth control is wrong. A
stress on church and religion is generally such a front all over the South,
by which is meant that these values have a function to the Southern liberal
even besides their original one.
The Southern liberal, having to be critical of the South, has to emphasize
strongly his /oca/ and regiona/ fatriotism?^ He has also, if he wants to
keep respectability and the possibility of accomplishing something, to tread
most cautiously around the Negro problem. Southern liberals time and
again explain that they have to respect established rules of racial etiquette
in order to be able to do some real good for the South and, incidentally,
for the Negro people. It is, for instance, explained by many that it is most
important to keep the Negro out of sight in the fight for the abolition of
the poll tax, in order not to stir up the anti-Negro complex. The Southern
liberal, because he is suspected, has to be more afraid of the deadly blow
of being called a “nigger lover” than the conservative, who can more
easily shake it oflE as an absurdity.
Nevertheless—^and in spite of the real need for conservatism in some
issues, which should not be questioned—^the modern Southern liberal will
most often actually be liberal not only in the sector where he is active but
in other sectors as well. Again we must remember that the recruitment to
liberalism in the South is strongly selective in regard to courage. Southern
liberals are all fully aware of the function of the Negro issue in the con-
servatism of the region and how every reform proposal becomes so much
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