Jesse Helms and Our Other North Carolina
As someone who grew up in North Carolina during the 80's and 90's, it is hard to find words to convey the role has Jesse Helms played in my worldview. One of the first memories I have of Helms is being told that he had said "vulgar and common" things about my grandfather, Thad Stem, a poet who wrote liberal columns for the Raleigh News & Observer at the same time Helms was a political commentator on a Raleigh television station.
Of course, this wouldn't surprise anyone who is familiar with Jesse Helms. Over the course of his career, "Senator No" made vicious personal attacks against anyone who disagreed with him, often with a racist or homophobic overtone. He called Martin Luther King, Jr. a "marxist and pervert," described the larger civil rights movement as being infested with "communists and moral degenerates," nicknamed UNC-Chapel Hill (my alma mater) "the University of Negroes and Communists," accused popular two-term North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt of being supported by "faggots, perverts, sexual deviants of this nation," called gays and lesbians "weak, morally sick wretches" (and was a key figure in blocking funding for AIDS research), and once said that sitting President Clinton "better have a bodyguard" if he visited North Carolina (note that Clinton lost in NC by less than one point in 1992).
Helms' career will probably be best remembered as the epitome of "the politics of personal destruction"; there is something symbolic about his passing away at a time when many Republicans are admitting that their party needs a new, less cynical playbook. But the various minority groups and politicians Helms targeted were not the only victims of his attacks. One of my biggest problems with Jesse Helms has always been a selfish one: during my lifetime, no one else has done more to hurt my home state's reputation.
During the seven years I have spent living outside of the South (in New York, and now, Washington) I have become accustomed to the extreme, inaccurate stereotypes many Northerners have about North Carolina and the rest of the South. I have had an employer who seemed shocked that my parents, and many of my friends' parents, were college-educated (when, in reality, Raleigh is one of the best-educated cities in the country). I have had people tell me racist jokes about black people, under the mistaken assumption that any Southerner is "safe company" for that kind of comment. And the biggest misconception of all is that everyone in North Carolina is as conservative as Jesse Helms was; in fact, often, the first thing that comes to someone's minds when you say "North Carolina" is "Jesse Helms" (I've even met Europeans who knew North Carolina primarily by Helms).
Of course, I am not claiming that Jesse Helms bears full responsibility for people's misconceptions about modern North Carolina. But he certainly did everything he could to re-enforce those stereotypes. At a time when North Carolina was becoming an example of Southern progress, Jesse Helms was providing the rest of the world with a crude, minstrel show-like caricature of white North Carolinians. Considering the country's changing views on race, it is hard to think of an American politician whose legacy will be as negative as Helms'. George Wallace and Strom Thurmond eventually apologized for their appeals to voters' racism; Jesse Helms was unrepentant to the end. To paraphrase the old saying, while many of us did not agree with Jesse on racial issues, we all know where he stood.
("Our Other North Carolina" is a reference to "Our Other South' ", a beautifully-named chapter in Tim Tyson's book Blood Done Sign My Name, about race relations in Oxford, NC, my father's hometown.)
Of course, this wouldn't surprise anyone who is familiar with Jesse Helms. Over the course of his career, "Senator No" made vicious personal attacks against anyone who disagreed with him, often with a racist or homophobic overtone. He called Martin Luther King, Jr. a "marxist and pervert," described the larger civil rights movement as being infested with "communists and moral degenerates," nicknamed UNC-Chapel Hill (my alma mater) "the University of Negroes and Communists," accused popular two-term North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt of being supported by "faggots, perverts, sexual deviants of this nation," called gays and lesbians "weak, morally sick wretches" (and was a key figure in blocking funding for AIDS research), and once said that sitting President Clinton "better have a bodyguard" if he visited North Carolina (note that Clinton lost in NC by less than one point in 1992).
Helms' career will probably be best remembered as the epitome of "the politics of personal destruction"; there is something symbolic about his passing away at a time when many Republicans are admitting that their party needs a new, less cynical playbook. But the various minority groups and politicians Helms targeted were not the only victims of his attacks. One of my biggest problems with Jesse Helms has always been a selfish one: during my lifetime, no one else has done more to hurt my home state's reputation.
During the seven years I have spent living outside of the South (in New York, and now, Washington) I have become accustomed to the extreme, inaccurate stereotypes many Northerners have about North Carolina and the rest of the South. I have had an employer who seemed shocked that my parents, and many of my friends' parents, were college-educated (when, in reality, Raleigh is one of the best-educated cities in the country). I have had people tell me racist jokes about black people, under the mistaken assumption that any Southerner is "safe company" for that kind of comment. And the biggest misconception of all is that everyone in North Carolina is as conservative as Jesse Helms was; in fact, often, the first thing that comes to someone's minds when you say "North Carolina" is "Jesse Helms" (I've even met Europeans who knew North Carolina primarily by Helms).
Of course, I am not claiming that Jesse Helms bears full responsibility for people's misconceptions about modern North Carolina. But he certainly did everything he could to re-enforce those stereotypes. At a time when North Carolina was becoming an example of Southern progress, Jesse Helms was providing the rest of the world with a crude, minstrel show-like caricature of white North Carolinians. Considering the country's changing views on race, it is hard to think of an American politician whose legacy will be as negative as Helms'. George Wallace and Strom Thurmond eventually apologized for their appeals to voters' racism; Jesse Helms was unrepentant to the end. To paraphrase the old saying, while many of us did not agree with Jesse on racial issues, we all know where he stood.
("Our Other North Carolina" is a reference to "Our Other South' ", a beautifully-named chapter in Tim Tyson's book Blood Done Sign My Name, about race relations in Oxford, NC, my father's hometown.)
posted at 8:07:00 PM | permalink
<< Home