The "gods" of the South

TNC's been doing some quality ruminations about the Civil War and white supremacy; you'd do well to check out his latest, which talks about the interesting idea that white supremacy was about white Southerners turning themselves into gods:

What occurs to me is that some time around the early 19th, late 18th century, a portion of this country decided to make themselves into Gods. They were not the first. And they aren't the last. But I can't get past the simple thrill, the utter charge man gets from dominating man. Southerners referred to white supremacy not just in economic terms, but as a lifestyle. Slavery did not just mean the right to exploit another man's labor, it meant utter and complete dominion over him, his wives, his children and all of his friends.

You could end his life in all manner of ways. Kill him, then take his woman as your own. Sell him, then take his woman and his daughters as your own. Keep him there, and do the same. It oversimplifies things to say, their would be no repercussions--but no one could stop you. In your own eyes, by birth-right, you would be Godkin.

I'd go further, and say that white supremacy was not just a lifestyle for Southerners, but an ontology. It was part of how they situated themselves in the cosmos--as demigods who walked the earth, who adhered to their own peculiar codes of chivalry, honor, and beauty. It's just like the prologue to Gone With the Wind:

"There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South….Here in this patrician world the Age of Chivalry took its last bow….Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave….Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind…."

I think this also helps explain why white Southern conservatives are seemingly in a perpetual state of being aggrieved about one thing or another: to them, it's not just that the political or even cultural situation isn't what they want, but rather, that the universe itself is deeply unjust, deeply flawed. In their imagination, 150 years ago they would be in an overclass--they would be special, priviledged, and lead lives of nobility--worthy lives. But this universe has been perverted--by outsiders, the Northerners, the liberals--and turned completely upsidedown. The beautiful, noble creatures, once gods, now languish on the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. The slaves have been elevated above them, and now even rule over them. They are victims of a fickle, unjust universe. And so when they come together to exert political power, it is to complain, to commiserate--basically, to lament the passing of the Old South of their imagination.