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The South of the United States: Land of Conservative Whites? 

Even though US politics usually receives a fair amount of coverage in French media (especially presidential elections or major Supreme Court cases), this does not in any way mean that the complexity of the United States and especially its Southern states is portrayed accurately, far from it. While it is true that this region was the land of slavery, followed by Jim Crow laws, police brutality toward minorities, and a sweep for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, there is much more to the region than that. The issue is that the things that I just mentioned usually are the only ones that make their way to French classrooms, newspapers, and TV or radio stations. This means that while the view French people have of the US South may be steeped in reality, it is nonetheless warped.

For instance, the American South is far from being the white monolith that it is often portrayed or seen as in France. While it is true that a number of rural Southern communities are overwhelmingly made up of older whites, if one considers the entire region, less than 60% of its population is white, and among those younger than 14, whites are in fact a minority, Blacks and Hispanics being the other two main ethnic groups.[1]

    “The Demographic Statistical Atlas of the United States.”  

 

Furthermore, when one looks at maps showing the results of past American presidential elections, one might believe that the US South has been entirely Republican for the past 20 years, since it is represented in red.[2] However, because these maps may omit the percentage of votes each party received, they effectively hide the Democratic presence in the South. For instance, even though 13 of the 16 Southern states were won by Donald Trump in 2020, Florida, Texas, and North Carolina (representing a combined population of 60 million), each saw Joe Biden receive over 45% of votes.[3]Moreover, while it is true that the rural south is majoritarily on the conservative side, big cities constitute Democratic strongholds, even in the states of the Deep South such as Alabama or South Carolina. The political intricateness of the US South is thus squashed for the sake of simplicity, leading to an inaccurate portrayal of an entire region.

I believe the reason why the French view (whether it be in the media or, consequently, among the public) of the US South is inaccurate is fairly simple. White supremacists, extremists (whether political or religious), and police brutality receive almost all of the media coverage because they are representative of country-wide issues and because they are prone to extensive, sensationalist coverage that is likely to attract viewers and generate publicity revenues. This was the case for the Charlotesville Unite the Right Rally, for instance. On the other hand, the ethnic, cultural and political diversity of the US South is largely overlooked in the French media, as it lends itself less well to short news reports. So the “ordinary” South is therefore virtually absent from the French media . This means that short of actually visiting and even living in that region, or reading the US news on a regular basis, French people are condemned to perpetuate stereotypes which portray the US South as having barely made any progress in terms of mentalities and social equality since the Jim Crow Era, which does not correspond to the actual situation in those states. 

[1] “The Demographic Statistical Atlas of the United States.” Accessed October 24, 2021. https://statisticalatlas.com/region/South/Race-and-Ethnicity#figure/race-and-ethnicity.

[2] 270toWin. “Historical Presidential Election Map Timeline.” Accessed October 29, 2021. https://www.270towin.com/historical-presidential-elections/timeline/.

[3] CNN Politics. “2020 Presidential Election Results.” Accessed October 24, 2021. https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/president.

Photo Credits:

“Proud Boys at World Wide Rally in Raleigh (2021 Mar)” by Anthony Crider, licensed under CC BY 2.0 / Mirrored from original.


OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
pserp (6 octobre 2022). The South of the United States: Land of Conservative Whites? . EN-globe. Consulté le 10 novembre 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/oe7j


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