Have you ever noticed how changing a rule doesn't,
it doesn't immediately change how people actually
behave? Oh, absolutely. Like all the time. Right.
Like, think about this scenario. Say a city lowers
the speed limit on a major road overnight. The
official policy is signed. The new signs are
up. You know, everything is strictly by the book.
But the next morning... People are still speeding.
Exactly. Muscle memory just beats the law. Drivers
coast at the exact same speed they've maintained
for the last, I don't know, five years. Yeah,
the ink on the paper dries instantly. But human
habits, those take a whole lot longer to catch
up. In the way we actually move through the world
and interact with each other, that takes even
longer. So in 1997, a sociologist looked at the
American South and asked a much heavier version
of that exact same question. Right, the question
of timeline, yeah. When the government fundamentally
changes the rules of society, how long does it
actually take for human muscle memory to adjust?
And that is just one of the most profound questions
you can ask about human behavior, honestly. I
completely agree. And it brings us to the stack
of sources we are diving into today. So we're
exploring a Wikipedia article that details a
1997 nonfiction book. It was published by Duke
University Press, and it was written by Frederick
M. Wirt. A very prominent text in its field.
It really is. And the mission of our deep dive
today is to explore this book because it focuses
on one extremely specific location, Panola County,
Mississippi. Wirt uses this single county as
like a localized case study to understand what
happens to a community after landmark civil rights
laws are passed. Right. Serving as a case study
for the entire American South. OK, let's unpack
this because I want to start right at the cover
of the book. The title alone completely caught
me off guard. It is definitely not what you'd
expect. Not at all. When you pick up an academic
nonfiction text from a prestigious university
press about civil rights, you expect a highly
clinical, maybe even dry title, something full
of sociological jargon, you know. Oh, for sure.
You expect colons and very long subtitles. Exactly.
But this book is called We Ain't What We Was,
Civil Rights in the New South. And according
to the source material, we didn't even coin that
phrase. No, we didn't. It was actually a common
expression used by the African -American residents
of Panola County. And what's fascinating here
is that decision by word is highly deliberate.
It tells us so much about his methodology right
out of the gate. Oh, so? Well, by elevating a
local colloquial phrase to the cover of an academic
text, the author is refusing to impose an entirely
top -down external narrative on the community.
Ah, OK. He's letting them speak for themselves.
Precisely. He is centering the perspective of
the people who actually lived through the history.
The residents themselves are highlighting that
their situation had, in fact, genuinely improved
following the enactment of civil rights laws.
It's like an internal declaration of progress.
Exactly. They are owning their own narratives
of change. But I do want to push back on that
just a little bit, because progress is a very
loaded word, don't you think? Oh, absolutely.
It's incredibly subjective. Right. When the residents
say, we ain't what we was, they are claiming
a change. Sure. But how much of that change is
structural versus psychological? And that is
the exact tension Wirt is exploring. Because
the timeline of his research makes this incredibly
complicated. This 1997 book is actually a sequel
to his earlier work. Yeah, he wrote a previous
book called The Politics of Southern Equality,
which was published back in 1970. So he writes
the first book right on the heels of the major
civil rights legislation of the 1960s. And then
he waits 27 years to publish the follow up. which
is a massive amount of time in modern academia.
But that 27 -year gap is really the engine of
the entire study. Is it really enough time, though,
to measure meaningful cultural change? Because
I was trying to visualize this for our listeners.
OK, let's hear it. To me, the 1970 book feels
like the blueprints of a newly built house. The
architects draw it up. The government approves
the permits. The laws are passed. The blueprints
are finalized. I like that analogy. Thanks. But
the title of this 1997 book, We Ain't What We
Was, that represents the actual people moving
into the house and trying to figure out how to
live there together. Arranging the furniture,
dealing with the neighbors. Exactly. So my question
is, since the first book was written in 1970
and this one in 1997, does this 27 -year gap
essentially function as a sociological where
are they now? That's a really good way to put
it. Or is 27 years just a drop in the bucket
when we were talking about centuries of entrenched
behavior? Well, it is a phenomenal question because
in the grand scope of history, sure, 27 years
is brief. Right. It's just a blip. But in the
realm of observational sociology. A quarter of
a century is precisely what you need to filter
out the noise of immediate reaction. Oh, interesting.
What kind of noise? Well, when a massive legislative
shift occurs, the immediate aftermath, which
Wirt would have observed around 1970, is often
characterized by shock. There's intense resistance
or rapid, unstable adjustments. So people are
just reacting. They aren't really settled into
a new normal yet. Exactly. If you only study
a community in 1970, you are studying the shockwaves.
You're measuring the explosion, not the new landscape.
That's spot on. But 27 years, that constitutes
a full human generation. A child born when the
first book was published is an adult by the time
the second book comes out in 1997. Wow, yeah.
They're voting, working, maybe raising their
own family. Right. It allows a researcher to
see beyond the legislative shock and observe
actual settled societal shifts. The dust has
settled. The rules have been normalized. And
now you can measure what actually stuck. Precisely.
OK, so let's look at what actually stuck in Panola
County, because here's where it gets really interesting.
It definitely gets a bit uncomfortable here.
It does. It presents a really uncomfortable reality.
If the residents agree that things ain't what
they was, meaning things have structurally improved,
we have to look at what stubbornly stayed the
exact same. Right. What resisted the change.
Yeah. And Wirt argues that that African Americans
absolutely gained more rights. There was tangible
progress. However, his central thesis is that
true cultural integration did not occur. The
laws changed, but the source material explicitly
notes that black and white residents continued
to maintain highly race -segregated religious
practices and friendships. And this brings us
to the great paradox of integration, as outlined
in the text. We have this tendency, especially
when looking back at history, to conflate legal
equality with social unity. Yeah, we treat them
like they're the same thing. Exactly. But words
research forces us to untangle those two concepts.
Gaining rights is a structural legal victory.
It means access to the ballot box, public spaces,
employment, and education. Basically the public
square. Right, the public square. But cultural
habits, trust. intimate community bonds like
religion and friendship, those operate on a completely
different, much slower timeline. But I'm kind
of hung up on the mechanics of this. I mean,
how does a sociologist in 1997 even go about
measuring something as subjective as a segregated
friendship? It's definitely trickier than counting
votes. Right. A law is on paper. You can see
if a school is integrated. You can see if a workplace
is integrated. But friendship? Trust. How does
an academic definitively prove that a culture
remains divided on an intimate level? Well, it
requires observing the spaces where the state
has absolutely no jurisdiction. Wirt looks specifically
at religion and friendship because those are
the ultimate voluntary associations. Oh, I see,
places where you choose to be. Exactly. You can
pass a law that says two men of different races
must be paid the same wage at the same factory.
You could pass a law that says their children
must be allowed to attend the same school. The
state can enforce the public square. Yes, but
the state absolutely cannot pass a law that requires
those two men to trust each other or to share
their deepest spiritual beliefs in the same church
or to spend their weekends together. Wow. So
the lack of shared private spaces is the metric.
If the public spaces are forced to merge, but
the private spaces remain stubbornly separate,
that proves the culture hasn't actually integrated.
That's the core of his argument. Those private
spheres. are where people retreat for comfort,
for shared identity, and for safety. And they
require vulnerability. Right. They are governed
by internal human emotions, not external state
mandates. So I want to throw a hypothetical at
you for you and the listener to think about,
because this paradox makes me really question
how we define success in this context. OK. Let's
hear it. Is the fact that friendships and church
services remain segregated in Panola County a
sign that the integration laws somehow failed?
That's a heavy question. Or does it just define
the absolute limit of what the law is capable
of doing? Like, maybe the law's only job is to
open the door to the dining room. It can't force
you to sit down at the dinner table together,
and maybe it shouldn't even try. Based on Wirt's
findings, it is an illustration of the limits
of the law, rather than a failure of it. The
limit, not a failure. That's a crucial distinction.
It is. The legal mandates were designed to dismantle
institutional barriers and they largely succeeded,
which is the very reason the residents could
confidently say, we ain't what we was. The legal
floor was raised. Exactly. But human sociology
is fiercely protective of its private spheres.
The law altered the structure of Panola County,
but it could not rewrite the intimate interpersonal
fabric of the community. Which makes me wonder
how other experts in the field reacted to this
because if I am reading a book where a sociologist
claims he has mapped the absolute limits of cultural
integration based on observing friendships in
a single Mississippi county, well, I have to
imagine other academics immediately sharpened
their knives. Oh, they certainly did. You can't
make claims that massive without someone questioning
your methodology. And the academic reception
of this book is just as revealing as the book
itself. The source material outlines critiques
from several university professors, and it essentially
turns into a debate about the fundamental limits
of sociological research itself. I was looking
at the review from Richard L. Engstrom at the
University of New Orleans. Ah, yes. Engstrom
had some very specific thoughts. He did. He read
the book and noted that Wirt's analysis was strongest
when he was looking at economic and educational
changes. But Engstrom explicitly called the book's
political coverage weaker. Which is a very interesting
critique and I have to admit I don't fully understand
it We literally have voting records. We have
election results How is political change harder
to measure than educational change seems counterintuitive,
right? Totally shouldn't politics be the easiest
thing to track over a 27 year period Well, if
we connect this to the bigger picture, it makes
a lot of sense on the surface. Yes, you can count
balance But we have to consider what local county
politics actually look like, particularly in
the post -Jim Crow South. OK, so it's not just
about who won the election. Not at all. Economics
and education generate highly transparent paper
trails. A researcher can track high school graduation
rates, median income levels, property ownership,
business licenses. Those are concrete, undeniable
metrics. Right, concrete metrics of structural
progress. But again, a mayoral race or a city
council election is also a concrete metric. Someone
wins, someone loses. Someone holds the title,
yes. But does the title hold the actual power?
Oh. OK, I see where you're going with this. The
nuances of local political power, who actually
pulls the strings, how informal influence operates,
how backroom deals are made, those rarely show
up on a spreadsheet. Right, or subtle forms of
voter intimidation or economic pressure that
might persist under the radar. Exactly. In small
-count sociology, the people making the actual
decisions are not always the people sitting in
the official chairs. That is a really sharp distinction.
The numbers in education tell the whole story,
but the numbers in local politics might only
be telling half the story. Exactly. That informal
power dynamic is incredibly difficult for an
external researcher to definitively track and
quantify, even over 27 years. So, Ingstrom's
critique highlights the inherent difficulty of
trying to empirically measure political power
in a localized setting. That makes a lot more
sense now. But then we have the critique from
Am Permeloff of Auburn University. And she brings
up a totally different point of friction regarding
the methodology. Yes, she looked at the scope
of the claims. She actually praised the Panola
County content, though. She called it fascinating
and worthwhile reading and even agreed that the
county serves as a metaphor for change throughout
the South. But, and this is a big but, she criticized
the book for failing to adequately document southern
-wide interpretations. This touches on the classic
tension between microhistory and macrohistory.
Right. How far can you actually stretch a single
data point? Right. The best way I can conceptualize
Parmalov's critique for you, the listener, is
to think about it like reviewing a single specific
restaurant in one town. Oh, I like this. So imagine
you eat at this one spot and then use that single
meal to declare what the entire country's food
scene is like. Great details on the one spot,
but maybe a huge stretch to apply it everywhere
without more data. Is that essentially what she's
accusing Wirt of doing with his sociology? That
is a highly accurate way to frame it. Permaloff
is validating the depth and the quality of Wirt's
micro study. She agrees that his deep observation
of Panola County is genuinely valuable. But she's
saying he went too far with his conclusions.
Yes, she is warning against the scientific danger
of extrapolation. Just because Panola County
experienced this very specific paradox of public
integration and private segregation can work
definitively prove that every other county experienced
the exact same mechanisms. Right, because a county
in Mississippi might have a completely different
cultural ecosystem than a county in Virginia
or a parish in Louisiana. Exactly. The vast,
incredibly diverse American South isn't a monolith.
She is arguing that the book lacks the broader
comparative data needed to make sweeping claims
about the entire region. And the subtitle of
his book is literally Civil Rights in the New
South, not Civil Rights in Panola County. Right.
If you claim your book speaks for the entire
South, other academics will demand the documentation
to back up that massive geographical claim. Which
is entirely fair. If you put it on the cover,
you really have to prove it. But what strikes
me is that even with these heavy methodological
critiques from Engstrom and Permaloff, the academic
community didn't discard the book. No, not at
all. Like Glenn Feldman from the University of
Alabama at Birmingham reviewed it and called
it interesting and useful as well as valuable.
It seems like the raw data work collected, the
actual on -the -ground observation of this community
over almost three decades, was deeply respected,
even if they debated his broader conclusions.
Honestly... That is how rigorous academic discourse
is supposed to function. A study doesn't have
to be perfect to be profoundly valuable. Right.
It starts the conversation. Yes. Even if the
political analysis is slightly weaker due to
the invisible nature of local power, and even
if the southern wide interpretations aren't fully
documented with comparative data, Wirt's core
observation remains a vital contribution. He
managed to capture that profound, often uncomfortable
disconnect between legislative success and genuine
cultural unity. You force people to look past
the finish line. Yes. We love to think of history
as a neatly wrapped package. The civil rights
bill gets signed, the ribbon gets cut, the systemic
problem is solved, and society collectively moves
forward. But Wert's work proves that the signing
of the bill isn't the finish line at all. It's
just the starting gun for a much longer, much
more complicated race. A race that requires a
completely different set of tools to run. When
you study a community and find that they have
achieved measurable economic and educational
progress, but still instinctively retreat to
segregated corners for their spiritual and social
lives, well, it forces us to reevaluate what
it truly takes to build a cohesive society. It
demands that we ask hard questions about trust,
vulnerability, and the limits of state intervention.
Exactly. So what does this all mean? What does
this highly localized 1997 study of a Mississippi
county actually mean for you, the listener, today?
That's the real question. If we pull together
the timeline, the academic debates, and the central
paradox of where it's work, the main takeaway
is a powerful reminder about the nature of change.
You can change the laws of a land relatively
quickly. With the stroke of a pen, a government
can secure vital rights, open doors to economic
progress, and mandate educational shifts. And
that structural change is absolutely essential.
It is the very foundation that allowed the residents
of Panola County to look at their lives and declare,
we ain't what we was. Right. But the structural
foundation is not the house. Cultural integration,
the bridging of religious practices, the forming
of genuine cross -cultural friendships, the actual
intimate knitting together of a community's heart,
that is a much deeper human endeavor. It is a
slow generational process that legislation alone
simply cannot force. The law can dictate how
we behave in the public square, but it cannot
dictate who we choose to love, trust, and worship
with in our private lives. It requires a different
kind of work entirely. It requires individual,
intentional vulnerability. It really does. And
as we conclude our exploration today, I want
to leave you, the listener, with a final thought
to mull over, taking Word's historical framework
and applying it directly to your own present
reality. Oh, this is going to be good. Think
about this. If Frederick M. Wirt were to come
to your city today, right now to write a book
about the gap between your community's legal
equality and its actual lived cultural integration.
What exactly would he find? Wow. Look at your
own neighborhood, your own workplace, your own
places of gathering. Are we right now in our
own lives confusing shared legal rights in our
public spaces? with true cultural unity in our
private spheres. That is exactly the kind of
question that forces you to look at your own
backyard a little differently. Thank you so much
for joining us for this Deem Dive. Keep looking
closely at the rules, keep questioning the reality,
and keep interrogating the world around you.
We'll catch you next time.