[percy-l] AND...just one more post...

Karey L. Perkins karey at charter.net
Fri Jan 3 18:34:36 EST 2003


Mike --

I wasn't talking about politics, or Republicans, or Democrats -- Newsweek
was.  I was talking about RACISM, and Percy's attitude towards that.  I
agree Percy was interested in justice and not labels.  But Percy, and his
family, are well-born, wealthy, Southern, aristocratic and interested in
preserving the interests of that world -- which seemed liberal on race
because it wanted to keep the black in Mississippi, and happy to be in
Mississippi, but had a kind of paternalism that was, in the end,
self-interested.  While there was certainly altruistic, compassionate, and
"justice" motives in the Percy family's fight against the KKK and those of
that ilk, it was also mixed with self-interested motives -- nothing (and no
one) in REAL life is plain, simple, and purely black and white.  We're all
shades of gray.

Read Tolson's biography, Ch. 3, "Uncle Will," and what great-uncle LeRoy
asked Uncle Will to do to the black refugees in the flood of 1927.  Percy
was more progressive, but if you are equating my terms of
progressive/liberal with the Democrat then that is a mistake.  A liberal
from Mississippi is hardly a liberal.

I visited my sister's family (in England) for Christmas.  My brother-in-law
is British (and a professor at Cambridge University and quite bright) and he
said he was thoroughly confused by the Newsweek article.  I asked why, he
said because the American parties switched in the middle, (as did the Brits
also with their parties), so Republicans and Democrats became something
different than what they were -- hard for him to follow.  Read the
article -- it's good.  And worth reading, if only in that it describes the
world, culture and values that Percy, and Strom Thurmond, and Trent Lott
were given.  The Republicans HAD to get rid of Trent Lott -- regardless of
whether he still believed in the "Dixiecrat" platform of 1948 that Strom
Thurmond was running on -- because he propagated the image of the racist
Republican that would be the death toll of the party.  I personally happen
to believe Trent Lott is a racist and meant what he said -- as you see in
the next week's news, where Lott said he learned a lesson from this -- that
he needed to change -- though wished he hadn't had to learn it that way.

By the way, on a personal note, I vote against Republican on pretty much
anything.  That does not mean I think Percy would at all, nor was I implying
that.  But I differ from Percy on a lot of things, including a lot of
political issues, including also his attitude towards women, but not at all
on his attitude toward race.

Karey



----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Frentz
To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Friday, January 03, 2003 6:01 PM
Subject: Re: [percy-l] AND...just one more post...



Karey L. Perkins wrote:

  In this case, Newsweek quotes from Will's Lanterns on the Levee to
describe the liberal/progressive part of the state in contrast to the more
conservative/backwards northern Mississippi, with which Lott associates
himself.  Will Percy describes, and the article quotes him, that part of the
state as "ill-dressed, unintelligent and slinking -- the sort of people who
lynch Negroes, attend revivals, and fight and fornicate in the bushes
afterwards."

  However, Newsweek misses the better quote in capturing a Percy opinion --
Walker Percy's himself.  His Signposts essays dwell considerably on racism
and segregation -- timely of course considering the era of their writing --
and the Life in the South section was immensely illuminating to me, as a
non-Southerner, on the problem Southerners had with integration (which Percy
was for, of course).  His discussion of the fact that the South had no
public space probably goes as far to explain the problem as any I've heard
yet.
  I think the South's history of racism, his family's political heritage of
political activism and "noblesse oblige" as he himself calls it, northern
Mississippi's "backwards" political agendas that his southern-born relatives
spent their lives battling, the fact that just a few years ago the Germans
just barely failed attempt to decimate an entire race (and the U.S. did not
enter the war to save the Jew, but for other interests), the heated racial
conflicts and out-and-out riots of the 50's/60's, and the fact that much of
this was playing out on his home state's front yard, such as James Meredith
entering U. of Miss. -- all of this caused Percy to be intensely concerned
about racism.

Hogwash.  I can't help but feel sometimes that peopleon this list believe
that if Percy were alive today he would be a Democrat.  Even I was a
Democrat (Deathocrat, Damnednocrat..) around the time Percy died.  Percy
certainly did not fit the demographics of the current Democratic party if
you can believe the color chart from the 2000 election (big city, Northeast
or Pacific coast).  And his beliefs were adamantly pro-life (e.g. Signposts
340) (which is why I had to finally switch parties in '92, also flushing
100+ years of still rabid Democratic heritage down the potty).

 I think Percy was most interested in justice, not political labels ("If you
want peace, work for justice"  JP II). That's why Catholicism was so
important to him.  Catholicism is about the pursuit of truth, wherever it
goes, rather than wherever it "was".  (BTW, most fervent Catholics are now
Republicans if you believe the polls)

 The Republicans also did not start the Civil War to free the slave, yet
they did.  Go figure on Lott's remark, it is certainly not representative of
the Republican party.  Good riddance if there was any truth to it.  Nor are
the Democrats symbolic of progressive thinking (anymore) -- they now
represent the special interests that are the same bigoted special interests
that Percy's ancestors fought.  Only the color has changed.


Mike


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