Recently Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez remarked on Instagram that the South needed to be liberated from the Republican Party. Such a remark is an obvious reference to the Democratic victories in Georgia’s Senate races, as well as Joe Biden winning Georgia in the presidential election- races that have been disputed due to allegations of voter fraud.
AOC went on to say that the Democratic victories in Georgia’s Senate races were the result of multiracial and multicultural grassroots organizations in that state runoff elections, and that southern states were not red states, but rather “suppressed states”. She then added that the country must heal by liberating the poor, i.e. working people from economic, social, and racial oppression throughout the South.
Apparently, AOC is unaware of the Civil Rights Movement that did away with segregation in the South (and the rest of the country for that matter), and that race relations in South have greatly improved since then. Clinton Johnson’s book The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South (and Why It Will Rise Again) points out a couple of factors regarding race in the modern South:
- If the South is racist, then why was Virginia the first state in the country to elect a black man named Doug Wilder in 1989?
- Why did hundreds of thousands of blacks move from northern states to southern states (according to a 2003 Census Bureau report)? Johnson also mentioned in his book that people from all other races have moved to the South in large numbers.
And what exactly does AOC mean when she mentioned economic and social oppression?
Johnson also mentions in his book that there is an open, not-at-all-secret conspiracy to erase Dixie and all vestiges of the Old South from public memory (something being accomplished with the war on statues, flags, symbols, etc.), with the goal of taking away the South’s distinctiveness and making it a plan homogenized version of practically the rest of the nation, thus depriving the South of its accents, rebellious history, and cultural heritage.
Johnson adds that removing history and heritage in order to avoid offending someone deprives Southerners of who they are- not just as Southerners, but also as Americans.
There is the saying: the South will Rise Again. If AOC and her fellow liberals decide to follow through with their “liberation campaign” from the Republican Party, then the South will indeed rise again.
