SPIRIT OF THE SOUTH
Times may not be as troubled as you think\
By Andy Brack, president, Center for a Better South
Sunday, May 31, 2009
(Published in The (Mobile, Ala.) Press-Register)

CHARLESTON, S.C. - A six-state Southern road trip this spring that covered 2,300 miles revealed something not found in polls about consumer confidence or on the nightly news: There's a lot more positive going on than you might think.

In places like Nashville, Tenn., and Jackson, Miss., cranes on the area skylines are a testament to construction that is ongoing during what most people now call "these troubled times."

During Sunday services at Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Norcross, Ga., hundreds of people seemed to glow with hope, forgiveness and a look to a better future. At a service station in Clarksdale, Miss., a banker looked forward to hitting a nearby casino one evening.

In small towns and large, people recognized the current economic pressures - upside-down mortgages, joblessness and financial fear. But the indomitable Southern spirit also pulsed.

People remain polite. They continue to work hard at whatever they are doing. Most are upbeat and looking ahead.

Throughout the South, our leaders today are pushing forward in many areas. In their recent session, Alabama legislators considered a bill to divert a portion of the mortgage recording fee into a new statewide fund for affordable housing. Supporters are expected to resurrect the proposal later.

In South Carolina, leaders highlighted the state's research capabilities for hydrogen and fuel cell research and development at a major conference last month.

Recently in Kentucky, Gov. Steve Beshear signed a controversial piece of legislation to rein in outrageous interest rates from predatory payday lending companies.

And in Elmwood, La., a former Winn-Dixie warehouse campus is being turned into the largest film studio east of Albuquerque, N.M.
While progress is being made, certainly some old Southern bugaboos still are visible. The burden of racial intolerance hovers, although on the whole it seems more distant.

Case in point: During the trip, some 40 percent of which was driven on rural roads, we saw the divisive Confederate battle flag in two places (if you don't count the South Carolina Statehouse grounds or part of the Mississippi state flag).

Poverty still is present all over - from the urban decay of cities like Memphis to the destitute streets of Helena-West Helena, Ark., and Bellamy, Ala. Unlike most places on the trip, there was a sense that people who lived in these particular places had given up, perhaps because there were few opportunities to do anything much at all.

And better education in the South remains a challenge, as former Mississippi Gov. William Winter reflected: "It's not black/white that divides us, but those who have not received an adequate education and those who have."

Perhaps now - a time when leaders across the South are trying to figure out ways to save money and restructure how government works - is the time to rethink how we do things in a positive way.

Perhaps it's time to rewrite our tax structures to make them more progressive by doing things like modernizing tax brackets. Maybe it's time for Southern states, which use more electricity per capita than any other region, to adopt energy efficiency standards and other measures, so we don't have to build as many polluting power plants.

And maybe it's time for us to stop skimping on education and be more serious about being world-class instead of just average. The lesson of this eight-day trip to learn what actually was occurring in the South is this: Yes, things might be bad, but they're not as bad as you might think.

In fact, there's a lot of good going on.

We need to take that spirit, work together and do even more good now.

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