Dixie-Net

Tara McPherson the author of, “I’ll Take My Stand in Dixie-Net” has discovered a different form of racism. Upon the search of her name Tara she came across a few web-sites that advocate Southern separatism, nationalism, and sometimes via secession. McPherson is trying to enlighten us on the details about these websites that the untrained eye might miss such as: covert and overt racism.

“Certainly race is one of the nodal points around which public discourse on the South has turned throughout the twentieth century, but in the post-Civil Rights era representations of race and racism proceeded via different logics….” McPherson pg. 119. McPherson explains the different logics in more detail. She discusses overt racism as sketching the contours of whiteness in contrast to blackness as a racial difference. She also goes on to explain the other form of racism; the kind of racism that is unspoken of but can be derived from the pictures and the contents of these websites such as: www.dixienet.org, or www.conferderate.net as covert racism. These websites are designed and updated weekly by mainly White men between the ages of 18-50. The main purpose is to show the “reconstruction” that the South is undergoing. These men talk about maintaining their past and Southern ways, but something interesting they show is the “anti-Klan logo”. These men aren’t being racist in an overt way but in a cover way. The pages of the website also express dismay the perceptions that protecting Southern heritage means one must be racist.

These pages display one must be racist, but they also display “anti-Klan logos”? This is a complete contradiction in itself. Or is it? This is where Tara comes into play explaining to the reader the use of the covert racism. She goes on to explain it beautifully saying,
“If overt racial representation brings together black and white in order to privilege whiteness, and covert strategies repress difference to the same end, what seems necessary is an overt representation or racial difference without privileging either term. We cannot understand or learn from the South’s racial history by representing it any more than we can champion the identity-shifting potential of cyberspace without studying its racial contours.”

I have read this article with some new found knowledge but not much surprise. U can never fathom all the strange occurrences going on all over the world especially on the internet, but u can expect anything and everything is happening. People are still living the past even today and they are trying to speak out and get themselves heard in every way possible. The new form is through cyberspace as McPherson points out. I think it is kind of funny the things people try to do to get noticed without trying to bring in racial tension; this article is a prime example of what I’m talking about.