Harold Meyerson concludes an essay on the GOP’s Southern problem by comparing Wal-Mart and slavery:
Wal-Mart’s practice, for
instance, of offering low wages and no benefits to its employees begins
in the rural South, where it’s no deviation from the norm. Only when
Wal-Mart expands this practice to the metropolises of the North and
West, threatening the living standards of unionized retail workers,
does it encounter roadblocks, usually statutory, to its entry into new
markets.So: A Southern low-wage labor system is cruising along
until it seeks to expand outside its region and meets fierce opposition
from higher-paid workers in the North. Does that suggest any earlier
episode in American history? The past, as William Faulkner once wrote
of the South, isn’t even past. And now the persistence of Southern
identity has become a bigger problem for Republicans than it is for
Democrats.
