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

[David Alan Beck <dabeck AT iupui.edu>]

Karey,
If I remember right, in one of the conversations books, Percy said that,
if forced to choose, he would choose Republican. I'm not a strong
Republican in many ways, but the abortion issue is one that sways me. I
was wondering if this is what you meant by Percy's "attitude toward
women"? I was wondering what you meant by that.
-DB

On Fri, 3 Jan 2003, Karey L. Perkins wrote:

> 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
> 
> 
> 


David Beck

"Life is what happens when you are making other plans." 
                                         - John Lennon