Beyond Black and White in East Tennessee

By Steven White, east Tennessee native, and UFE intern

Earlier this year I went to a gathering of family and friends in east Tennessee. The food was good and we all sat around outside, talking and joking lightheartedly. I found myself in a conversation with one middle-aged man, an old-fashioned white southern Democrat. We agreed on many things, but then he brought up immigration. His face got red and he passionately declared we should round up undocumented workers and ship them back to Mexico. I told him I thought that was a little insensitive and unethical, but when I saw that wasn’t working I said it was also impossible. None of my arguments had much effect and in the end we agreed to disagree and enjoy our homemade desserts.

Race issues in the South are often discussed in the context of a black/white divide. Historically, there is truth to this, but things have gotten more complicated: now there is a triangle of white, African American, and Latino. The number of Latinos in Tennessee, for example, almost quadrupled between 1990 and 2000. Rogersville, my small hometown, saw a 5 times increase, from 9 to 45. In Morristown, a small city of around 25,000 where many people in my family work, the Latino population increased almost 29 times, rising from 91 to 2,603 over the 10-year period. Latinos went from being a tiny 0.4% of Morristown’s population to accounting for a much more significant 10.4%. Indeed, by 2000 Latinos were more commonly seen than African Americans in Morristown. In 1990, there were 836 more black people than Latinos. By 2000, Latinos had the edge by 733. In Tennessee 24.2% of African Americans live below the poverty level, almost double the state average. The rate for Latinos seems comparable at 21.8%, but that’s not accounting for undocumented workers, who live in far worse conditions than everyone else. Tennessee’s Latinos live disproportionately in areas like Morristown, where the poverty rate is 46% higher than the state average. 55% of households in Morristown make under $30,000 per year. Only 5% make over $100,000.

When people think of Tennessee, most think of a place like Memphis or Nashville, but the state varies significantly by section. The western side has more in common with places like Mississippi and Arkansas, which it borders. The largest percent of the black population is located there, and it shares in the cultural history of the Deep South. East Tennessee, on the other hand, is in Appalachia, bordering states like North Carolina and Virginia. Historically the whitest part of the state, the steady increase in Latino immigration is diversifying the region.

Anti-immigrant sentiments are pretty common in east Tennessee. The increase in immigration to the area – and with it, the increase in anti-immigrant prejudice – happened at nearly the same time as the gradual decline of the region’s industrial economy. My stepfather worked in a factory for a while, but he, like many others, was eventually laid off and left to look elsewhere for sustainable employment. My grandfather was more fortunate, being a lifetime employee and even a union member. The older factory workers had that benefit. Many of the newer ones found it nearly impossible, especially with Tennessee’s “Right-to-Work” laws, common throughout the South, the least unionized region in the country. Many working-class whites and some African Americans suffered after companies sent their jobs to cheaper labor in Mexico, something that fostered anti-Mexican attitudes. Most can recite a long list of family and friends who lost jobs when factories closed up and left town. According to the Census, there were 10 fewer manufacturing establishments in Morristown in 2002 than in 1992, despite population growth of around 5,000.

Throughout history, the Latino population in most of the South was quite small. Enslavement of millions of African Americans, on the other hand, was the norm for hundreds of years. Even after slavery, explicit prejudice directed at African Americans, often for political purposes, was common. In the first presidential election after the Civil War, the Democratic candidate Horatio Seymour ran against Ulysses Grant, vilified by southerners, with the slogan “This is a White Man’s Country; Let White Men Rule.” He lost, but the view was popular, especially during Reconstruction.

Today, while racism against African Americans is still significant, its expression is much subtler. In a sense, though, the public face of southern racism has come full circle, this time directed at immigrants from south of the border, especially those from Mexico. The strongest hostility is reserved for the undocumented. African Americans often echo these prejudices along with whites. Some contemporary politicians run on a platform of building a wall between the United States and Mexico, and deporting undocumented immigrants back to their country of origin. Discussing inequality in black and white alone clearly no longer suffices.

Moving beyond the black/white dichotomy in addressing southern racial inequality presents both challenges and hope. It challenges because it forces us to navigate the more open prejudice against Latino immigrants, something we must do thoughtfully and without merely writing off the concerns of poor whites. Many lost jobs, send their kids to subpar schools, and deal with the region’s significant healthcare problems. Their complaints have a material basis, but their blame is misguided. The hopeful part is that educational efforts could increase understanding of the complexity of the new Tennessee triangle of race relations. Such understanding may allow poor whites, African Americans, and Latinos to address their common problems, namely unfair policies of the government and their employers that hurt all of them. It could be the first step towards building the unity needed to really help all the faces of poverty in east Tennessee and beyond.

Maybe next time I talk about this with people back home, I should hang in just a little longer before dessert.