Harper Lee and the Myth of the Benevolent and Enlightened Elite

I read To Kill a Mockingbird when it was first published back when I was in high school. While I still love the story of the kind and intelligent father and the precocious siblings, I have long rejected the mythology behind the main theme of the book. You may remember: A noble lawyer defends a black man in the face of the fierce racial hatred from the uneducated masses. He receives assistance from some of the town’s better citizens – the judge, the sheriff, some middle class neighbors. Nice story, but IMO not historically accurate.

In the United States racial and ethnic hatred has long been used by the ruling elites to divide the working classes and keep them in their place. This occurred during Reconstruction, the labor union movement, the populist movement, the sharecroppers union of the 30s, the civil rights movement, Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign, and more recently the Tea Party movement. 

When it appears that groups of working class and poor people might unite across ethnic lines, those in power use race and ethnicity to divide and conquer, or they simply move in to crush the movement. Those powerful interests are very good at making it appear that racism is a lower class phenomenon. But whether it was the captains of industry using race to break strikes, or the politicians race-baiting to win votes, the reality is that that most of the ruling elites looked with disdain at all working and poor people.

Everyone is familiar with the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan. The conventional wisdom for many years suggested that even though the organization was started by Nathan Forrest and other Confederate officers, it was quickly abandoned by the elites and was taken over by the less educated. 

That apologia for the Southern patricians has been proven false but beyond that what is overlooked in this whitewashed version of history is the role of the White Citizens Councils throughout the South. These organizations most often included the leading citizens of their communities. While the Klan might have done the dirty work, it was the WCC that often set the agenda. 

Thus in the fictional town represented in To Kill a Mockingbird, the leading citizens would not have been working to give an innocent black man a fair trial. The folks from old Sarum who threatened to lynch Tom Robinson would most likely have been incited by racist rhetoric from their betters. Southern elites didn't oppose lynching. Southern congressmen in fact filibustered against anti-lynching laws. And though there were courageous individuals such as Atticus Finch, they did not receive adulation or support from their communities. At best they were tolerated. At worst they and their families were threatened and attacked. 

Reading Harper's novel one might conclude that the better classes wanted justice but were powerless in the face of the racist rabble. The reality is of course that the Southern aristocracy controlled society. To make certain that their power was not challenged, they passed laws that not only disenfranchised black voters but also significant percentages of poor and working class whites as well.

As a result of property requirements, literacy laws, poll taxes, and complicated registration requirements, the number of black voters in Louisiana to drop by 90%, but these laws also caused the number of white voters to drop by 60%. In Florida, white voting dropped from 75% to 40%. In Texas, 80% of whites voted in 1900; by 1910 it fell to 29%. 

This disenfranchisement wasn't accidental. Jack Bloom wrote in Class, Race and the Civil Rights Movement, "The Southern upper class knew what it was about. The disenfranchising measures it introduced had the desired effect of virtually ending black voting, and they drastically curtailed white voting as well."

Nineteenth century Mississippi Congressman Eaton Bowers stated that the state's post-Reconstruction Constitution had "disenfranchised not only the ignorant and vicious black, but the ignorant and vicious white as well, and the electorate of Mississippi is confined to those and those alone who are qualified, by intelligence and character for the proper and patriotic exercise of this great franchise."

The mythology of the enlightened elites standing at odds with the racist underclass continues today. There is a belief among many liberals that the Republican base consists of Joe and Jane Sixpack. The reality is that though there are working class people who support Republicans, the upper middle and upper classes form the base of the party. 

And then there is the Tea Party. A primary source of its funding are the Koch front organizations, Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity.  A survey by the New York Times found that Tea Party members were generally more affluent, had more education than the general public, and were driven but ideology rather than economic anxiety. (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/36528044/print/1/displaymode/1098/)

The Tea Party organization goes back to at least 2002 but after the 2008 elections, it grew rapidly as it became the vehicle to mobilize opposition to President Obama. There is an intense contempt for Obama by many of the well-to-do. It certainly isn’t because of his centrist policies. I have witnessed this contempt on several occasions. It was depth of the anger that first surprised me; and their sense of entitlement. 

I live in a poor rural town filled with what some on this site condescendingly refer to as rednecks and trailer trash. Though it is a Republican area, I have worn Obama pins, displayed Obama yard signs and car decals without any negative reaction. Certainly not the visceral hatred that I have experienced during encounters in some more affluent communities.

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When I was in school back in the fifties and sixties, history courses promoted the myth of the happy contented slave, the Gone ​With the Wind stereotype. Thankfully that stereotype has disappeared and if the actual horror of slavery is not portrayed as accurately as it should be, at least it is not presented in a positive light.

It is now time to correct the myth of the benevolent upper and upper middle classes who struggle to enlighten the unwashed masses regarding their bigotry and racism. There certainly is bigotry among the working classes, but more often than not it is the elites who inflame this bigotry and who use ethnic and racial hatred the promote their agenda.