Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

["Karey L. Perkins" <karey AT charter.net>]

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