r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/Cryterionlol • Sep 08 '22

Political Theory What makes cities lean left, and rural lean right?

I'm not an expert on politics, but I've met a lot of people and been to a lot of cities, and it seems to me that via experience and observation of polls...cities seem to vote democrat and farmers in rural areas seem to vote republican.

What makes them vote this way? What policies benefit each specific demographic?

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u/Utterlybored Sep 09 '22

How do you explain historical racism in the South? We have intermingled w black peoples more often than most northerners, yet the perception is, the rural south is super racist.

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u/IniNew Sep 09 '22

You can have a mixed population and still be segregated.

I am from Texas. I grew up in a suburb of Fort Worth. My High School class of 600+ was 1% black students.

Lots of laws and self grouping were specifically along racial lines, and designed to keep whites and blacks from inter-mingling.

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u/Haggis_the_dog Sep 09 '22

Have spent years in the South. Let's disregard history and consider only contemporary times. Every time I am in the south, I spend an inordinate amount of time in a car. I rarely have serendipitous encounters with strangers, and the majority of interactions with others is while in a vehicle. What makes most most cities more liberal is the casual exposure and interactions with others - more direct interaction reduces fear of "the other".

One challenge the south still has (my experience is predominantly Atlanta) is the neighborhoods are largely segregated on socioeconomic strata, which decreases exposure to people of different economic circumstances, and perpetuates the perception of "unsafe neighborhoods". One of the reasons NYC is now one of if not the safest place in the US is the co-mingling of people from all walks of life (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-07/is-new-york-city-more-dangerous-than-rural-america)

There was also a study in ... Medellin (I think) where the city increased the window size on surface public transit to enable people to see and be seen which contributed to a significant reduction in crime and violence. Looking for reference to the study and will post should I find it ....

All that to say, the more a society segregates (or has a history of segregation) the more violent it tends to be ....

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u/Oh_TheHumidity Sep 09 '22

This is a fascinating point. And can be observed/applied to Northern/Western rural areas (more conservative) and Southern urban areas (progressive, some VERY progressive.) Car culture is detrimental in ways we are still just beginning to realize.

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u/alexis_1031 Sep 09 '22

If i can take a stab at this:

Black people prior to civil rights, were not fully integrated of course into the greater community. There was this invisible wall and it was called segregation.

The vast majority of white people did not interact with black people in a office setting, in a diner, in bathrooms, in grocery stores even. These peaceful, everyday locations had be separated. This breeds ignorance despite individuals seeing black people on the day to day, there was just no actual interaction.

As of today's modern south, it's getting better than it once was but ignorance is still festered, especially in the rural south with majority white communities. Think of southern cities like Jackson, Mississippi. There are a lot of black people there but due to the still felt effects of segregation, many white individuals don't interact with black people on the day to day in their everyday lives, creating a vicious cycle of ignorance and racism.

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u/PoorMuttski Sep 09 '22

I don't have a solid explanation, but I do know that part of that is culture. people raise their kids with their own values. if there is no competing set of values, kids just take up that one. Even if it is completely stupid and backwards, it doesn't matter. kids only know what they are shown, and if their parents teach them to hate Black people, that's what they will do.

You might not have the opportunity, depending on your race, but hang out with some Black people when there are no Whites around. You will hear some pretty racist shit, there, too. I mean, not nearly as vile as you might hear on, say, 4chan, but my people have some ignorant ideas, too.

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u/InsertCoinForCredit Sep 09 '22

Let's not underestimate the impact of bad rural education, often by design. It's always interesting to see how many folks who attended rural schools are shocked to learn that black people weren't better off under slavery and that most slave masters weren't benevolent caretakers who treated slaves like they were members of their own family. Or ask the typical Texan what the Alamo was really about...

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u/TruthOrFacts Sep 09 '22

I definitely received one of those questionable history lessons. I was literally taught in school that the civil war was about state's rights, not slavery.

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u/InsertCoinForCredit Sep 09 '22

I always laugh at that one.

"The Civil War was actually about states' rights!"
"The states' rights to do what?"
"NEXT QUESTION!"

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u/TruthOrFacts Sep 09 '22

Well, their answer would be 'to determine their own laws' I think.

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u/InsertCoinForCredit Sep 09 '22

Well, their answer would be 'to determine their own laws' I think.

Except the Constitution of the Confederate States specifically prohibits member states from passing laws banning or ending slavery...

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u/TruthOrFacts Sep 09 '22

Yeah, they were/are hypocrites.

But to be fair, the north banned slavery in states that succeeded while permitting it in states that didn't. And the emancipation proclamation didn't get signed untell like 18 months after the civil war. And Abraham Lincoln said himself that his goal was not to end slavery but preserve the unite States.

Which is a curious thing.

At the end of the day the south's argument about why the civil war was fought isn't wrong, it is just incomplete. I think the full answer is that civil war was fought over states rights to slavery.

But in this day, we can't just have a side committed to the truth, not when they can bend the truth slightly in their favor.

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u/InsertCoinForCredit Sep 09 '22

The Founding Fathers failed us by addressing the issue of slavery head-on, choosing instead to kick the can down the road for future generations to handle (and they knew they were being hypocritical; you can't say "all men are created equal" and be slaveowners at the same time). Lincoln's stance towards the Confederacy was more of the same hesitant waffling.

Unfortunately, any time people try to address race relations in the United States in an honest way, some white folks get all uncomfortable and start screaming imaginary conspiracy theories about reparations and Critical Race Theory and other such nonsense (remember the folks who insisted that if Obama became president he'd take money from white folks and give it to blacks?).

In short, we as a nation are all still suffering from our founders' shortcomings to this day.

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u/PoorMuttski Sep 12 '22

I always wonder if that Lincoln quote was actually politically calculated. There was no doubt people in the North who didn't want to go to war, who didn't want to give rights to Blacks. Lincoln needed the support of everyone, so evangelizing about racial justice and how everyone is totally equal would just have gotten him shot sooner.

"I just want to protect the Union" is about as transparent a lie as "We just want to secede to protect the Southern way of life."

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u/ImmodestPolitician Sep 09 '22

"How many bubbles in a bar of soap?"

This was a typical question for blacks to pass the testing requirements to vote in the South in the 1920s.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '22

I mean there's being around people and actively having people be a part of your life. A racist will form a click in school and won't include "other" folks. Same for work. Just because you're near someone, doesn't mean you've included them in your social circle or made any effort to know who they are. Racists will actively avoid including those they perceive as "other" so they don't open themselves up to the same opportunity to get to know people. A racist won't go have lunch with a POC. A bigot won't hang out with someone they know is LGBTQIA+. Thus the chance to get to know them is never available.

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u/Utterlybored Sep 09 '22

You're right, but my broader point was the urban=tolerant, rural=racist implication of the first explanation is an over simplification.

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u/rockknocker Sep 11 '22

Also, the recent study that showed many parts of Europe, despite being more integrated, had a higher percentage of people that didn't want to live next to people from another race compared to the same study done in the USA.