W. J. Cash (1900–1941)
Author of The Mind of the South
About the Author
Works by W. J. Cash
Associated Works
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Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Cash, Wilbur Joseph
- Birthdate
- 1900-05-02
- Date of death
- 1941-07-01
- Burial location
- Sunset Cemetery, Shelby, North Carolina, USA
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Gaffney, South Carolina, USA
- Place of death
- Mexico City, Mexico
- Places of residence
- Gaffney, South Carolina, USA
Boiling Springs, North Carolina, USA
Shelby, North Carolina, USA
Mexico City, Mexico (death) - Education
- Wofford College
Wake Forest College (1922) - Occupations
- journalist
teacher
newspaper editor
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Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 1
- Also by
- 2
- Members
- 639
- Popularity
- #39,445
- Rating
- 4.2
- Reviews
- 5
- ISBNs
- 6
…. (second review) It is also true that the planters weren’t always as close with the crackers as they pretended to be, sharing their second-best beer, etc., even if the crackers usually responded by trying to differentiate themselves from the dem blacks by attacking them, this having some ‘hope’ of getting the planters to cosy up to them in their mind, even if, really, you know…. I mean, I don’t know how to put this, but it can be hard to like someone like that, at least if you have delicate airs to maintain, right. Intellectual ambitions, social graces. The crackers would have done better to ally with the dem blacks, but then, they wouldn’t have been crackers.
Of course, even though I heard about this book in I think some WEB DuBois book (and what happened to //that// book? 🙀), and race has basically formed the borders and much of the character of the South, the South isn’t //just// racism and various forms of phobia, and since Wilbur was only half modern and didn’t use the word “white” in the title, it might not be an Anglo-African American/whiteness book, but more of the more common sort of general American social history: local and regional history…. Albeit kinda a weird, if a very proud one, right…. I don’t know. I do feel like general history/sociology should edge out diversities histories/sociologies, so I don’t become angry/despairing, so it’s convenient to re-label this book…. And maybe someday I’ll be able to pick up Southern Living magazine, read Sarah Addison Allen even after my young years delusion that she’s a good-and-loving non-deluded writer are gone, or even listen to some country music voluntarily…. God knows I don’t see myself reading Confederate mythology anytime soon, at least until they give up presenting fighting for the extremist white man system (albeit against the moderate white man system) was //even more romantic// than deposing Hitler, you know…. But I try not to meditate too often upon the intellectual and moral failings of the crackers, anymore, you know, not because they deserve it, or don’t deserve it, but just because that works better for me, you know….
Maybe even, along the intellectual failings front, we ride them too hard, you know. You don’t have to have very complicated ideas, even if it helps if you don’t have too many deluded ones. And, as unbearable as they can be to pretend to be the real man of religion, completely de-sexed, and the real man of country music, down and dirty all night long, maybe fervently-held religious—unapologetically supernatural—beliefs and sexuality held together in the same person don’t //have to// be the marks of failure and hypocrisy. After all, they’re both deeply human, deeply emotional feels. And maybe Jesus would sometimes prefer to drink //a beer or two//—if not, you know—with a man of Dixie, than to try to bend and weave through the rather strange and unfelt world of a Boston scholar, you know.
…. Incidentally maybe it is general history—that was the first label that came to me, to change it to—than general sociology, since although it’s not terribly top-down, it’s probably I think a lot more narrative than abstract. Even though it’s kinda bottom-up and social, it goes era by era, not topic by topic, right.… (more)