The Absurd Fiction of "The Celtic South against The Anglo North"

Hello Everyone!!

Today I'd like to address something that I have been seeing more and more of over the past decade. When I first came across it in about 1999, I was literally scratching my head at the idea, based on my knowledge of some very basic facts.
When I saw James Webb's highly extravagant tome on the idea "Born Fighting", just after election 2004 I was shocked. And upon learning about Grady McWhiney's "Cracker Culture" and James Cantrell's "How Celtic Culture Invented Southern Literature", it became apparent that this idea is widely believed in some circles and is fast gaining traction.

Namely it is the idea that the Deep South and/or Appalachia are heavily influenced by Celtic culture, much more so than the North and that these Celtic influences account for traits such as hawkish politics, gun culture, distrust of education, hostility to labor unions, dislike of "yankee" movements such as women's rights, gay rights, and ecology, and last but certainly not least the stubborn and often violent resistance to carpet baggers and any move to provide African Americans with even the most basic human rights. According to this view Northern liberals are all a bunch of elitist, culturally Anglo Yankees who absolutely hate Celtic ways and just basically *don't get it*.

Now frankly, I find this a deeply troubling idea in part because it essentially hitches the "Southern Cause" to one of the few groups of Europeans that are well known for being historical underdogs. Or at least well known for it in the US!! Something that might jibe very well with the romantic idea of a victimized South, but not so well with actual history. And in fact, scholars of Celtic history and culture have been some of the biggest critics. While I am not such a scholar, I do think I know enough about American and European history to come up with a number of pesky facts that would clash with notion. Also it concerns me that this reminds me of other episodes in history where the idea of "racial" identity has been tied to a political agenda. And for trying to dress up the old Southern grievance that slavery, segregation, severe economic equalities and lack of investment in education, as well as some pretty horrible behavior is simply a matter of a culture and way of life that Northerners just don't understand and unjustifiably look down their snotty noses on.
Now this "ancient" grievance (Well, It's almost the same age as "The Troubles"!!) has been around since long before the American Revolution. And most of the time it has been around, almost any white Southerner would have fervently denied having any Celtic heritage, and would have considered Celts, just a few small steps above Africans and Native Americans.

Now certainly, there are people of Celtic ancestry and Celtic influences in the South. With the downright massive history of immigration first from Scotland's highland clearances, and later Ireland's Great Famine and economic aftermath, the sheer numbers of immigrants from Celtic countries to the Americas was so massive that it would have been very difficult for none of them to end up in the South. But the reality is that the overwhelming majority of Welsh, Scottish, and Irish immigrants to the United States ended up in the North or in the West rather than in the South.
Now there was another immigrant group that did heavily end up in and influence Appalachia, that has been known as Scots-Irish, Ulster Scot, Orangemen, or increasingly Borderers. The last term was coined by a historian named David Hackett Fischer one of the top historian of the American colonies and early US. In this book he argues that this group along with the Puritans, the Quaker Friends, and the wannabe Aristocrats who settled Virginia constituted the four most influential groups in creating America's core regional tendency and national cultures. Unlike Webb, Cantrell, or McWhiney, he did create a cogent argument in which you could say that the Borderers in the South and Appalachia had a profound influence on America than the Welsh, Scottish, or Irish immigrants didn't approach anywhere. However, this model also considers it an open question just how Celtic the Borderers actually are/were, both by physical ancestry and culturally. Fischer claimed that they were more English than Scottish. Others claim they were very Anglicized Scots or had yet other origins. I don't claim to know or even have a strong opinion on that question. Even genetic testing can provide ambiguous answers to such things as the documentary "African American Lives" made abundantly clear. It's also worth noting that only recently, when it became *cool* to have Celtic origins have these ideas begun to gain current.

But one thing is certain. Several of these traits that have been claimed to be "Celtic" by proponents of the "Celtic South" view, don't square with more unambiguously Celtic ethnic groups, or with modern Celtic countries. For example James Webb claims that the Scots-Irish reject labor unions because of their Celtic roots, yet the labor Unions in the North and the labor wing of the Democratic party were very heavily built by Irish Catholic Americans. Welsh Americans also have a very strong tradition of labor union involvement despite their smaller numbers. Also proponents of the "Celtic South" view heavily attribute the level of hawkism in the South to Celtic culture. Yet to describe the modern Irish Republic (the only modern democracy with a Celtic majority ethnic group) as a hawkish country, compared to the US, Britain, or certainly the American South is on its face laughable. In fact, proponents of "peacenik" causes such as banning landmines consider Ireland one of half dozen countries, that is most likely to be an ally the UN. And while many pundits claimed that Borderers in the US liked Bush's lack of English skills and took it as a sign he was "one of them", electing such a poor speaker would be unthinkable in Ireland. Irish citizens by and large were not charmed by Bush's poor grammar, and didn't care for his policies. Also in Ireland Obama is fairly popular as American Presidents go, in drastic contrast to his lack of success with Borderer Americans. And while relatively few studies have looked at Americans' political beliefs by ethnicity as opposed to race, some sociologists who have looked at it such as Andrew Greeley show that Irish and Scottish Americans tend to be among the more liberal white ethnic groups. Although of course every population produces its share of bigots and reactionaries, (Hi Bill O'Reilly! Sean Hannity!), on the whole the majority don't conform to James Webb's ideal of gun totting, hawkish, labor hating, Scots-Irish. And of course, many Scots-Irish or Borderer Americans, don't really fit his model either.
Finally, another attitude attributed to "Celtic culture" is anti-intellectualism in both the South and much of America. But again this doesn't gel with the fact that Scotland was among the earlier nations to adopt the idea of universal education and literacy, and did so when it was considered one of the poorest countries in Europe.

So whatever may the case with "Red State America" and there are many explanations ranging from low voter turnout among the poor to the idea that Colonial influences are relevant to this day, one things is certain. It can't be attributed to Celtic influences. That explanation is wrong. It's based on a severely intellectually dishonest view of history. And it's the kind of theory that lends itself to ideological myth making all too easily. And in fact, many Celtic scholars have expressed the concern that resistance on the part of academia in the US (perhaps the result of certain Anglophilic tendencies) to taking their field seriously, opens the door not only to a lot of New Age mush, but also a takeover by people with political and even racist agendas.

Say Goodnight Readers!!