Hadn't thought of this in years but do remember.
Ultimately, I would argue that this sense of belonging can only be found
in God and the Kingdom of Heaven, because it is for that eternal,
transcendent destiny that our hearts crave. Nevertheless, in an
imperfect, if very real manner, that longing can also be satisfied by
truly investing ourselves in a particular place, taking pride in its
unique history and culture, and binding ourselves to it so tenaciously
that our children will in turn desire to preserve it. There remain
pockets of such ancestral communitarian across Dixie, though globalist
economic forces, secular materialism, and sexual libertinism are doing
much to unravel them. We, like the Southern Agrarians, must take our own
stand against this, lest our children discover that they themselves
have no people.
“Who’s your people?” Though now somewhat rare, one still hears that
question in Dixie, usually uttered from the lips of older or rural
Southerners. Much is implied by the question.
There is the implicit belief that one’s extended family — or clan,
given much of the region’s Scotch-Irish roots — serves as an
inextricable part of one’s identity. Also implied is that one’s clan
says something about you, whether for good or for ill. But perhaps most
saliently, it communicates the fact that Southern culture is in
important respects intrinsically communitarian, and rejects the sort of
radical individualism that has often defined the broader American ethos.
Southern historians Eugene and Elizabeth Fox Genovese in their 2005 book The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview,
devote an entire chapter to this quality of Southern identity. Titled
“Between Individualism and Corporatism: From the Reformation to the War
for Southern Independence,” the chapter explores the way Southerners
sought to make sense of themselves both as members of a particular
American subculture and participants in a broader socio-political
project. Like much of the Genovese’s scholarship, their expert research
exposes the inadequacies of popular caricatures of the South, while also
serving as a catechesis and warning for those seeking to defend their
way of life.
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