Talk:Southern strategy/Archive 8

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Archive 7

Archive 8

Scholarly consensus

Ok who wants to start? DN (talk) 19:20, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

You may want to check the archives. This has been kicked around some.Rja13ww33 (talk) 19:23, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I would agree this has been discussed, and while Wikipedia is by no means set in stone, scholarly consensus is typically more settled regarding this "debate". This section is more a preventative measure to help editors avoid edit wars. I am also of the opinion there is already a scholarly consensus "that racial conservatism was critical in the post-Civil Rights Act realignment of the Republican and Democratic parties.", but if someone wants to discuss it there's nothing wrong with that. DN (talk) 19:31, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Do we have a source that states what the scholarly consensus is? We have a source that says the top down narrative is generally believed but that's not the same as consensus. I don't think any of our sources claim "consensus" thus we shouldn't either. Does "consensus" pass WP:V? At the same time we do have scholars who dispute the Southern Strategy narrative. That certainly suggests no consensus exists. Springee (talk) 19:33, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Just putting this here for clearer examination...DN (talk) 20:40, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

This top-down narrative of the Southern Strategy is generally believed to be the primary force that transformed Southern politics following the civil rights era. The scholarly consensus is that racial conservatism was critical in the post-Civil Rights Act realignment of the Republican and Democratic parties.

I believe the latter citation is the one you are taking issue with, is it not? "Crespino, Joseph (2007). In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution. Princeton University Press. p. 10. "Whatever the shortcomings of the southern strategy thesis, on one score it has been exactly right: it has placed white reaction against the modern civil rights movement at the center of the conservative resurgence since the 1960s." DN (talk) 21:29, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

So this cite Harvard Kennedy School by Denise-Marie Ordway does not explicitly say there is a scholarly consensus but I think it is one worth some examination here. “Racially conservative” attitudes were the primary reason white Southerners abandoned the Democratic Party after party leaders began to advocate for civil rights legislation during the last half of the 20th century, finds a new study from researchers at Princeton and Yale universities. the study...DN (talk) 19:58, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

I think you are correct that the article does answer the question but I think the paper makes it clear this is a currently debated topic and thus an academic consensus doesn't exist. From the paper's opening, "In this paper, we reexamine one of the largest and most debated partisan shifts in a modern democracy: the exodus of white Southerners from the Democratic Party in the second half of the twentieth century. Benefiting from recently released data, we offer new evidence on whether racial attitudes or economic factors best explain this political transformation." Springee (talk) 22:06, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm concerned that your interpretation might be somewhat premature and possibly WP:SYNTH...See the opening paragraph...

"A long-standing debate in political economy is whether voters are driven primarily by economic self-interest or by less pecuniary motives like ethnocentrism. Using newly available data, we reexamine one of the largest partisan shifts in a modern democracy: Southern whites’ exodus from the Democratic Party. We show that defection among racially conservative whites explains the entire decline from 1958 to 1980. Racial attitudes also predict whites’ earlier partisan shifts. Relative to recent work, we find a much larger role for racial views and essentially no role for income growth or (non-race-related) policy preferences in explaining why Democrats “lost” the South."

...DN (talk) 22:22, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

For reference, you are quoting the abstract, not the article itself. My quote is from the article intro. The paper is specifically examining the shift associated with the southern realignment. They are specifically trying to answer if the shift was motivated by racial conservationism or economics. If there is already a consensus, why would they write the paper? Why would they say this shift is debated? Would they mean debated but not in this context? I admit I haven't had a chance to read the whole paper but the simple fact that they felt the question needed to be answered strongly suggests this is a open question. I think the paper's intro makes this clear, this question is debated and thus no consensus exists. Is this the paper that puts the nail in the question's coffin? Hard to say. It has been cited 124 times but without reading some of the citing papers it's hard to say. Prior to you introducing this paper we had no source claiming a consensus existed. This paper is yet further evidence there was no consensus so we should not claim as much in the article lead. Springee (talk) 23:16, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Here is later in the paper where the authors specifically describe the debate:

As with the contemporary debate over the underlying causes of the recent rise of anti-establishment political movements, no clear consensus has emerged as to why the Democrats “lost” white Southerners, despite 50 years of scholarship.2 On one side are researchers who conclude that the party’s advocacy of 1960s Civil Rights legislation was the prime cause.3...[more detail] On the other side is a younger, quantitative scholarship, which emphasizes factors other than Civil Rights.5 These scholars most often argue that economic development in the South made the redistributive policies of the Democrats increasingly unattractive...[more detail]

Springee (talk) 23:23, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

After looking at the source that DN provided I think some of the generalized claims in the scholarship section need to be revisited. The new source makes it clear that there isn't a consensus on what drove the southern realignment. We have the several avenues. The Kuziemko and Washington paper says the debate between racial and fiscal motivation is not resolved. Our earlier sources talk about a top down (appeal to racism) vs bottom up (self interest including fiscal). The bottom up sources would tend to align with K&W's fiscal motivation view of the debate however, some of the bottom up sources note a racial component to the bottom up motivation (for example, moving to the suburbs to avoid inner city crime and thus creating a defacto segregation). I think the intro to the scholarship section should be change to present the range of views and avoid claims which is the dominant view since the sources don't agree. I regret that I no longer have access to the research library I had when I was more active on this topic last time. It would be good to review many of the papers that cited K&M and were cited by them. Springee (talk) 12:25, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I only meant for this cite to be used for examination (see original post), since this study does not seem to mention the words Southern Strategy even once, let alone, in the context you mentioned. Therefore, it would most likely be considered WP:SYNTH. It's conclusion, however, is that the (paraphrase) realignment of the south is still more likely due to racial conservatism rather than economic or otherwise. I suppose, since there is yet to be a citation that explicitly states a scholarly consensus (correct me if I'm wrong), we could add a CN tag for the time being. DN (talk) 15:14, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

The synth question is valid. We have A (the southern strategy) caused B (southern realignment). If we have a article that says the causes of B are debated is that due in an article about A? Generally I would say no unless we are claiming A is the cause of B then sources that say B is caused by something else (or say the cause is debated) are due but only for that narrow context. While the paper in question is compatible with a southern strategy based realignment (it says racial conservatism was the primary causes, it doesn't specify top down or bottom up versions of that), the paper makes it clear this is debated in scholarship. So what does that logically say about the southern strategy? It doesn't mean that the southern strategy was/wasn't tried (even if the paper concluded the shift was 100% economic self interest, that wouldn't preclude an appeal to racism on the part of the politicians). It does mean we can't claim academic consensus that the southern strategy was causal to the shift. This incidentally is an issue with the intros to both the Democrat and GOP articles as both claim the shift in the south was due to the southern strategy (via a Easter Egg link). I think the CN tag is a good start but it would probably be best to be clear that the cause of southern realignment is debated among scholars and leave it at that. Springee (talk) 13:14, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm confused as to how you can come to this conclusion in spite of the mountain of RS that seems to disagree.DN (talk) 15:22, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

The conclusion that sources disagree regarding the cause of the southern realignment? The 4 year old source you presented said the cause of the realignment is debated. That source makes their view clear but that doesn't mean it has been settled. Springee (talk) 18:05, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

That there is RS that explicitly says "scholars debate the majority viewpoint (ie top-down version) of the southern strategy"? I somewhat recall from the archives Scoobydunk and Getoverpops having a similar argument, but I don't think they are active anymore. Have you gone through much of the archives yet? DN (talk) 01:58, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

I think one of the sources does say the top down was the original view and the bottom up was the more recent one on the southern realignment. I don't know the date of that source but it's one of the ones in the current article. I'm saying your new source says there is a similar debate regarding realignment between those who claim race was a motivation or not for the southern realignment. The connection is some people will claim the southern strategy was the cause of southern realignment. Since the top down southern strategy is a subset of racial motivation we can say academic sources do not agree (no consensus) on this point. Springee (talk) 02:38, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

My source doesn't mention the southern strategy or a lack of scholarly consensus on racial conservatism as a critical factor on it explicitly. We've been over that. DN (talk) 03:08, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Archive 3

Springee, could you look through your previous discussion here [1] to see if this issue was previously addressed and explain what may have changed? I don't have time right now to go through all this. Thanks DN (talk) 22:03, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

This was also discussed in Archive 6 & 7.Rja13ww33 (talk) 22:09, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

It was somewhat discussed here [2] but only indirectly. Authors Polsby, Shafer, Johnston are noted as saying race wasn't the primary issue. At the time Rja13ww33's opinion was probably the wisest one, don't make the claim in the lead. Leave it for the scholarship section where it can be disputed. Springee (talk) 03:13, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

• I think that in context it is unreasonable to interpret It is generally believed to be the primary force that transformed the once overwhelmingly Democratic South into a reliable GOP stronghold in presidential elections as referring to anything but the scholarly consensus. Based on that, I take issue with pulling out generally believed and just saying that because, stripped of the context of a scholarly work talking about and citing the beliefs of academics, that gives the implication that it could be talking about eg. a general belief among the public that might not be held by scholars. That is simply not an accurate representation of the source. The scholarly consensus is that... is a far more accurate summary of what the sources say, in addition to being a broadly accurate summary of the contents of the article as a whole. --Aquillion (talk) 06:53, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

So you are arguing we should should take a claim from one source and change what it has said to something else because you feel that is what the author really meant. Sorry, that isn't taking the cautious approach to interpreting a claim, ie what we responsibly should do. That is putting words or meanings in the speakers mouth that they themselves didn't say. That is something we should never do. Springee (talk) 10:17, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure that is what Aquillion is saying but I wouldn't presume to speak for them. Let's all WP:AGF. DN (talk) 17:27, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

The dissenting views are explained in Southern Strategy#Scholarly debates. It seems significant enough to say that there is no scholarly consensus. Their alternative view is that it was the growth of the suburbs that led to Republican majorities. TFD (talk) 23:37, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

After giving this discussion further thought and looking through the archives, some new thoughts occurred. BTW I think we all should look at the archives for a while, if not for nostalgia's sake at least to help ourselves avoid becoming a broken record. Some of us have been working on this article for over 10 years and are literally part of it's WP:10YT. I think those of us that have been doing this a while need to remain cautious, myself included, as not to carry a WP:STICK. Discussing new information is good, especially when it is called for, like when new information becomes available. We should also try to avoid argumentum ad infinitum for the sake of other's sanity and our own. Cheers! DN (talk) 15:34, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Do you think that there is consensus support for the Southern strategy explanation or do you think there is not? TFD (talk) 04:25, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Looking at the diffs, Bearmanmcgrizzly originally made the claim, then Drmies asked to take to TP for consensus, Total random nerd disputed, claiming The end of southern exceptionalism somehow disproves it without actually showing how on the talk page [3], then made close to 10 more edits. Then Rja13ww33 basically reverted due to no TP activity. Then Bearmanmcgrizzly reverted, then Aquillion countered with this diff [4], then Springee changed the scholarly consensus to "generally believed" [5], then Snoog reverted [6], then Springee reverted, then I reverted back to Snooganssnoogans version.... That does not seem like there is going to be a consensus for change to me. There has been no new evidence or cited sources presented that explicitly support this change, so I think this is likely going to be an unproductive discussion, and until there is, I'm just going to refer to the archive which shows that even Lassiter et al still acknowledge that racial conservatism was a critical factor (ie top down view). The archives also show that some editors have been trying to make this argument for quite some time now. Unless we see some RS that explicitly states that the majority top down view, ie racial conservatism, is still debated as a major factor, I suggest we drop the WP:STICK and move on. DN (talk) 17:53, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

But you presented a paper that said the cause of southern realignment is debated, "no clear consensus has emerged as to why the Democrats “lost” white Southerners, despite 50 years of scholarship". With that we shouldn't claim there is an academic consensus. Springee (talk) 19:24, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree. This is not the first case btw where scholars have argued about why left-leaning constituencies have moved to the Right. Was it because certain demographics flipped or was it because demographics changed? Much of the earlier work was based on treating an entire voting district as a single entity. But more recently, scholars are able to drill down on individual voters. The theory that the working class in the Weimar Republic switched from left to right, which was widely believed, turned out to be a gross over-simplification. TFD (talk) 02:16, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

This article is called Southern Strategy, not Southern Realignment. You changed the lead without any consensus, and, without any new explicit evidence or citations to back it up. Not even a mention on the talk page first. Now you are persistently ignoring me and cherry-picking a paper that doesn't even mention SS, but not the part that confirms the role of racial conservatism, just the part that mentions a scholarly debate within the realm of Political economy not the realm of the Southern Strategy. Why? Because it suits your POV? What you are doing appears to be WP:SYNTH and possibly WP:OR, and at this point I really want no part of it, in case it isn't already obvious enough. I am tired of repeating myself and others just to be ignored over and over. I will now refer you to the archive, again, where you have already beaten this dead horse beyond recognition. I'll let someone else try to explain it for however long it takes. DN (talk) 07:07, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

DN, understand, we do not have any sources that claim "scholarly consensus" for a racially driven realignment yet the article makes that claim. You, rightly, put a CN tag on the claim. What we have in the paper you provided is a specific claim that there is no consensus on the matter by scholars. That should be sufficient to remove such a claim from the article. Springee (talk) 11:33, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Roots

This edit [7] by editor Zasz62 doesn't seem to clarify anything, although I'm not sure what exactly needs clarification. The tag can always be replaced but I wanted to call attention to it before reverting good faith edits. DN (talk) 00:27, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree. While it's good to hyperlink (once) to the Byrd Machine, adding those links doesn't clarify the rest of the position hence the tag. Then again, the tag has been there for a while. I see a 2015 discussion about the text but not much else that might explain the tag. Springee (talk) 12:45, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

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