My editor informed me that the Electoral Act prohibits media organizations from publishing information or evaluation about elections on election day that could possibly be interpreted as biased. In my view, that could be a unusual provision that’s opposite to the spirit of democracy, however each nation has the fitting to adapt its electoral legal guidelines to its peculiarities.
Since I can't write about electoral politics on Election Day, I've chosen to return to an previous pastime: evaluating America (the place I stay) and Nigeria (the place I used to be born and raised) and declaring intriguing parallels and variations .
It's all too straightforward to take a look at the USA and assume that the nation is impervious to inside divisions as a result of it places the adjective “united” after its identify—or to suppose that it’s proof against the sort of obstructive regional rivalry that we encounter. affiliate with our endlessly warring societies.
Though the regional divide in America is much less controversial than that in Nigeria, there are nonetheless robust, if reasonable, provincial jealousies between the American North and the American South which have surfaced in recent times.
Only a few weeks in the past, conservative firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene, who represents a Georgia congressional district within the U.S. Home of Representatives not removed from the place I stay, advised that the USA ought to have a “nationwide divide” alongside kind of regional traces. . A couple of days later, she added that when Democrats transfer to Republican states, they received't be allowed to vote till after 5 years.
Most southern states are typically Republican, and most northern states are typically Democratic, though that is an oversimplification.
Nicely, Greene's concepts aren't as uncommon as they sound. As Richard Kreitner, who wrote the guide Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret Historical past of America's Imperfect Union, informed The Atlantic on February 23: “There is no such thing as a golden age of American unity that you would be able to level to and say, ' That's once we had been united.' Even then, folks threatened secession in the event that they had been out of energy, and defended the Union as everlasting and inviolable as soon as they’d energy. Thomas Jefferson makes this well-known reversal. In 1798 he thought-about whether or not to threaten secession as a result of he didn’t like Adams' authorities. Then he wins the elections of 1800 and says, “We should preserve the Union collectively in any respect prices!” The individuals who supported Adams now proposed secession.”
The extra I study this, the extra parallels I uncover between America and Nigeria. The primary indication I bought of how the North and the South view one another as two separate nations inside a rustic was when, in 2005, I informed an American buddy whom I had met at Columbia College in New York someday in 2003 that I used to be moved to Louisiana.
He requested how I used to be adjusting to life there. I informed him I used to be nonetheless studying to take care of lots of tradition shock. His response stunned me. He mentioned, 'I perceive how you are feeling. Each time I go to Louisiana, I additionally expertise tradition shock.” He mentioned he thought folks in Louisiana and the South generally had been “bizarre,” and that all of them “speak humorous.”
This didn't make a lot sense to me. The thought of America I got here right here with was a rustic that had no noticeable inside variations. I had an idea of America as a rustic the place subnational identities had been so fluid and versatile {that a} New Yorker, for instance, may go to Texas and never solely change into a citizen, but additionally have the chance to be elected governor of the state. , and vice versa. Briefly, I had thought that there have been no “natives” or, as we are saying in Nigeria, “natives” in America; solely residents.
Why would an American converse so disparagingly of one other a part of his nation, even going as far as to say he skilled tradition shock when he visited? I quickly discovered that he echoed the mutual contempt and mistrust through which Northerners and Southerners in the USA maintain one another.
Someday in 2006, a buddy in Louisiana was watching a sports activities channel, however immediately turned off his TV as a result of, “It's only a bunch of northern groups!” I don't have time to observe fu****g Yankees.
That outburst caught me off guard too. First, I related the phrase “Yankee” with People generally. Actually, non-People generally confuse “American” with “Yankee” with out the slightest indication that they’re improper. At first I didn't suppose it made sense for an American to ridicule one other American as a “fu****g Yankee.”
Nicely, I discovered that day that “Yankee” really solely refers to an American Northerner. American Southerners don't name themselves Yankees; a few of them even take severe exceptions to being referred to as Yankees, and generally even specific outright indignation at being referred to as Yankees. Nevertheless, Northerners put on that label proudly. The phrase generally related to the South is “Dixie.”
However which states make up the southern and northern United States? Nicely, it is a powerful query. There is no such thing as a universally accepted demarcation of the South and the North. It’s a fluid identification. Nevertheless, it is not uncommon to outline the South with 16 states: Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Oklahoma.
The 19 states generally thought-about northern states are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota , South Dakota, and Nebraska.
In actuality, nonetheless, states like Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, and Kansas don’t match simply into the North-South divide. Residents of those states generally determine themselves in mutually unique regional labels. For instance, I’ve two buddies from Maryland, and whereas one calls himself a Southerner, the opposite calls himself a Northerner. Likewise, folks in southern Virginia name themselves Southerners, however it’s not unusual for folks in Northern Virginia to contemplate themselves Northerners.
The explanation for this ambiguity is that, as in Nigeria, regional identification isn’t just a chilly cartographic expression; additionally it is a socio-cultural, historic and geopolitical identification that generally mocks geography. Simply because the Niger and Benue rivers appear to be the dividing traces between the north and south in Nigeria, the American north and south are separated by what is named the Mason-Dixon line. It was and nonetheless is the symbolic dividing line between the North and the South round Virginia and Pennsylvania earlier than the American Civil Warfare.
In some ways it’s comparable in symbolic significance to the Niger and Benue rivers. For instance, states like Benue and Taraba could be thought-about Jap by a cartographer's creativeness, simply as Kwara, Kogi and components of Niger could be thought-about Western. Nevertheless, these states are situated within the North each theoretically and geopolitically.
Its equivalents in the USA are states like Maryland and Virginia, that are geographically within the north however geopolitically within the south. Virginia was even the political and army capital of the South throughout the American Civil Warfare. It's like Ilorin is the capital of the north.
In lots of vital methods, the American South jogs my memory of Northern Nigeria (with some apparent exceptions), whereas the American North jogs my memory of the Nigerian South. In dimension, the American South, like Northern Nigeria, is a geographic colossus, whereas the North is a comparatively small geographic area. (I've heard the joke right here a number of instances {that a} ranch in Texas is many instances bigger than the state of Rhode Island).
Once more, like Northern Nigeria, the American South is conspicuously non secular, culturally conservative, and emotionally hooked up to its sociohistorical identification. The North, then again, just like the Nigerian South, is extra city, extra culturally liberal and fewer hooked up to pre-established cultural values.
Within the American South, the climate and individuals are usually heat – actually and figuratively. The North, then again, is the alternative. It's not simply chilly; the individuals are additionally chilly, no less than on the floor, though they are often heat inside if you happen to get near them.
Politically, the South is smarter than the North. It has produced extra presidents than some other area, together with 9 of the primary twelve presidents of the USA. That’s akin to the north of Nigeria, which has produced extra presidents and heads of state than the south.
Nevertheless, after being mired in a four-year devastating civil warfare pitting it in opposition to the North, the American South didn’t produce a president for nearly 100 years till 1976. The remainder of the nation was reluctant to entrust the presidency to a Southerner. of the nation after the Civil Warfare. This jogs my memory of the plight of the Igbo in Nigeria. And that's the place the principle distinction between the American South and Northern Nigeria comes into play.
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