Lee Habeeb writes in National Review:
September 29, 2011 4:00 A.M.
Southern Like Me
What Americans, and President Obama, can learn from the Great Migration South.
limited to white Yankees like me. The nation’s African American population grew 1.7 million over the last decade — and 75 percent of that growth occurred in the South, according to William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. What those stories and studies failed to report were the reasons propelling that migration. The economic and cultural forces driving this migration south have been ignored by the press. And by the Obama administration
So I figured this Jersey boy who now calls Oxford, Mississippi, home could explain why. This Yankee turned good ol’ boy could explain the pull — no, the tug — of the South.
To which I say: great.
You can keep your southern stake. Been there, done that.
You can keep that southern heat — 100+ degrees or more in summer. With concomitant 100+% humidity as well. Closer to the southern and eastern coasts: worse.
You can keep your hurricanes and tornadoes and droughts and floods. You can keep your fires and triple-digit weather.
I’m shucking Fornicalia and I’m moving north. I’m moving to a place where the rain almost never stops and there are no droughts and electrical generation is a “given” because hydraulic generation is the norm. Where all is green every season and people wish for less rain than what they get.
What an incredible luxury!
BZ
20boy could explain the pull — no, the tug — of the South.
To which I say: great.
You can keep your southern stake. Been there, done that.
You can keep that southern heat — 100+ degrees or more in summer. With concomitant 100+% humidity as well. Closer to the southern and eastern coasts: worse.
You can keep your hurricanes and tornadoes and droughts and floods. You can keep your fires and triple-digit weather.
I’m shucking Fornicalia and I’m moving north. I’m moving to a place where the rain almost never stops and there are no droughts and electrical generation is a “given” because hydraulic generation is the norm. Where all is green every season and people wish for less rain than what they get.
What an incredible luxury!
BZ
