Customer Reviews

The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America)

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Lassiter's book addresses the creation of contemporary Republican Party dominance in the South. Lassiter distinguishes the "Sunbelt" from the "South" on the basis of class and urbanization, but also history: the South is a complete society with a history going back to the 1600's, whereas the Sunbelt refers to recently developed, high-growth urban population centers. While the South comprises all classes, stata, subcultures, and races, the Sunbelt is specifically the new South of urban sprawl, suburbs, affluent regional immigrants, and (often) technology, finance, or mass retailing.

Specifically, the book addresses the urban legend that GOP operative Kevin Phillips won the South for the Republicans through a strategy of ostentatious appeals to racism. However, this question only dominates the preface and Chapter 10 (of a 12-chapter book); otherwise, the book is an outstanding study of the sociological divisions within a specific region of the Southeastern USA.

In particular, the book examines a period from around 1960 to 1975 when several policies of the New Deal came to fruition. During this period, Georgia and North Carolina (for example) experienced extremely rapid economic growth and something of a political thaw from the Talmadge & Shelby Dynasties. Federal programs, chiefly in defense and energy, stimulated manufacturing and research in the areas around Atlanta and Charlotte. In 1960, finally, Atlanta and Charlotte were associated with the "New South," in which White Power and paternalism were shunned by a cosmopolitan and business-oriented populace.

The wedge issue for these regions was the desegregation of the school districts. In 1959, the Open Schools Movement emerged to resist the scheme of closing all public schools (a scorched policy to resist desegregation, and the precursor to the "Voucher" schemes). The Open Schools Movement seldom or never endorsed the *Brown vs. [Topeka] Board of Education* decision (1954), but merely stuck to the position that compliance within the system of public schools was a practical necessity.

An important point that emerges from the complex struggles over desegregation, integration, and busing was that the affluent, managerial class of homeowners and voters (whose voting power and electoral influence far surpassed its actual numbers in the Southern cities) was opposed to the egregious racism of people like Wallace or Maddox, and insisted on colorblindness, attractive neighborhoods, safety, and "fairness" to [White] households living in the present day. Lassiter explains how the idealism and hope of the 1960's and '70's both enabled White acceptance of desegregation, and fueled the suburban sprawl that effectively restored segregation.

Definitely a first-rate, measured, and well-documented account of the era, with a strong focus on two specific cases studies (Atlanta and Charlotte).

Having had the opportunity to have learned from Lassiter at the University of Michigan, reading his book was quite a joy. Lassiter's insight and perspective on the growth of suburbia in the South and the move towards "color-blindness" as opposed to the racially conscious liberal movement offers a great theory that counters the somewhat accepted notion of individual racism as the driving force in the 1960s south. Really a great read for anyone interested in the subject, and even those who may not be as interested. Lassiter has a great way of writing that really makes this book readable.

I did not find this book to be "dry" or filled with "jargon." On the contrary I found it to be one of the most stimulating works of history I have ever read. Lassiter has new and interesting interpretations of the "Southern Strategy" and the idea of Southern exceptionalism. He explores a post civil-rights suburban culture of "middle class entitlement." Every scholar writing about race and class in the second half of twentieth century America has to grapple with the collapse of New Deal liberalism and the rise of conservatism. Scholars like Lassiter, Kevin Kruse, Robert Self, and Thomas Sugrue, who work in the fields of urban and suburban studies, have given us some of the most interesting explanations. They write that this political shift is located within the privatized, exclusionary, color-blind world of the white suburb.

Lassiter's narrative of the busing battle in Charlotte is riveting. He gives us exactly the micro historical perspective here that another reviewer claimed was lacking in this book. He examines all the key players in this drama, and most interestingly he discusses the attitudes of the working class white residents who could not afford to live in the suburbs. The book overflows with interesting observations on Southern and national politics, and how they were shaped by a new suburban consensus that was national in scope, and could not be simply attributed the peculiarities of Southern racial politics. Lassiter also lays out a metropolitan perspective that if adopted could finally begin to more equally distribute the power and wealth that the suburbs have seized at the expense of urban America.

This is one of those rare books that has a lot of interesting things to say, and is also a joy to read. An essential book to understand American politics and the limits of what the civil rights movement was able to accomplish.

The book could have been compressed to about 1/3 of its size with no loss of content and probably become 10 times more readable. I found myself reading some pages 2 and 3 times trying to figure out what Lassiter was trying to say only to realize he was just reiterating something he had already said in a previous chapter.

Wading through text such as:
"The primary explanation for the rise of massive resistance can be found in the failure of electorial reapporionment to keep pace with the metropolitan growth and middle-class expansion in the region's political economy."

and:
"a consumerist ethos of individual meritocracy grounded in a spatial landscape of meropolitan residental segregation and postware suburban prosperity."

made for very tedius reading.

His love of acronyms and terms, not defined in the book, leaves me to believe that this book was written only for professional historians and/or sociologists who are already vastly familar with the terminology and settings of his topic.

Not for the general reader. A piece of dry stone. After reading another book in this series, 'White Flight' by Kevin M. Kruse, I thought thhis would be another exciting and fact-finding experience. Nothing like it. While 'White flight' was packed with real life characters, day by day happenings, almost house by house storytelling, full people doing things and reacting to other people's doings, this one book, 'The Silent Majority' is all first person narration, full of jargon. Scholar's talk.

Definitely not for the general reader -and I pity the non-general reader.

Avoid all contact.