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Thursday, April 19, 2018

Prof. Howard Odum Explains Way of the South, 1947

A review of “The Way of the South” by Hoard W. Odum, April 20, 1947, The New York Times. The review of the book was written by Herbert Lyons

Dr. Odum has devoted his life to the study of Southern resources (both human and physical) and the most productive means of employing them. In an unused sense of the term, therefore, he is a professional Southerner. His investigations, conducted from the stronghold of the Southern academic conscience, the University of North Carolina, have made him one of the great men of American sociology. The effect of his studies on the South is growing; his is one of the most beneficent and changing influences at work in the Southern regions.

From such a man—humane, steadfast and tireless in the gathering of vital data about the most tumultuous of our sections—any book is welcome. This one has been eagerly awaited, for it promised to be a synthesis of Dr. Odum’s work. It is disappointing to have to report that, despite many enlightening passages, “The Way of the South” seems more a diffusion than a synthesis of his ideas. He has tried, unfortunately, to combine the Whitmanesque manner of his novels (“Rainbow Round My Shoulder” is the best remembered) with the plodding, repetitious approach of such systematic works as “American Regionalism.” As he points out in his final chapter, he has used “freely both form and substance from previous writings.” The substance is integrated enough; the form, so curiously mixed, makes difficult and occasionally irritating reading.

But the book’s unevenness has a deeper source. Toward the close “The Way of the South” exhibits a discouragement at odds with Dr. Odum’s earlier sober optimism. The cause of his dismay is the sudden renewal of bitter ideological friction between North and South. He is in evident agreement with an unnamed Southern writer whom he quotes as saying: “My belief is that people in other sections are beginning to regard the South with cold distaste that is worse than hatred.” An immediate emotional tension, rather than a considered judgement, must be responsible for the declaration, given virtually without preparations, that “it is not possible to approximate the balanced culture necessary to guarantee the Negro equal opportunity in America in any other way than through the migration from the South to all other regions of perhaps one-half its total Negro population.”

Directly afterward Dr. Odum acknowledges that he considers “such a program of planned migration” unrealistic. But he goes on to say that “such a program must be faced frankly and something of its equivalent must be planned if there is to be anything like the balance and equilibrium in this area of Negro-white relationships in the United States, and if stark tragedy is to be avoided in the present trends.” Even in a book devoted largely to recapitulations, it is astonishing that Dr. Odum’s entire discussion of “planned voluntary migration” is only about as long as a newspaper editorial. 
Obviously, Dr. Odum feels that the need for social peace between North and South is overwhelmingly urgent—so urgent as to plunge him into what a lesser man might be called loose thinking.

The wave of criticism against Southern mores would appear to have had consequences that the critics did not foresee. In more detached moments Dr. Odum is amiably aware that the northern portion of the United States seldom has anything on its own conscience and only confesses other people’s sins. It is clear, however, that he is disheartened by the current intensity of inter-regional conflicts.

Throughout most of the book Dr. Odum is explaining the South rather than seeking panaceas for conflicts between the sections. He is not an apologist for the South; he is an analyst. In the role of investigator, he is without equal. No one is a surer guide to the complex of forces that have produced the region’s “biracial culture.” And no one, when intra-sectional planning is under discussion, is less prejudiced and more clear-sighted. His discouragement, it is hoped, is only temporary. But it is there, and it cannot be ignored by those who, like himself, dream of bringing about “the regional equality and balance of America.”


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