The evolution of the Southerneconomic development
strategy
Rooted in Racism and Economic Exploitation: Part
One
Report • By Chandra Childers • May 6, 2024

• Washington, DC

View this report at epi.org/277201

Overview

The evolution of the Southern economic development
strategy
Rooted in Racism and Economic Exploitation: Part One

EPI
The evolution of the Southerneconomic development
strategy

Summary: The Southern economic development model has failed to create sharedprosperity in the region. In fact, this model was deliberately designed to do the
opposite—to extract the labor of Black and brown Southerners as cheaply as possible.
This report examines the racist roots of the model and provides the necessary context
to challenge the enduring racial hierarchy in the South.

By Chandra Childers
May 6, 2024

Read the full report
epi.org/277201

Key findings• From low wages to unfair tax policies to a weak safety net, the Southerneconomic development model ensures that businesses continue to haveaccess to cheap Black labor even after slavery was abolished.

• A key component of the Southern economic development model is low
wages. Twenty states still use the federal minimum wage of $7.25, and halfof these states are in the South.

• On top of struggling with low wages, many Southerners—particularly Blackand brown Southerners—have trouble accessing unemployment insurance
and other benefits, which are often inadequate.

• Policymakers have worked to limit Southerners’ rights to unionize andbargain collectively since unions make it hard to keep wages low andbenefits stingy.

Why this matters

Black laborers at Stockham Pipe andFittings Company in Birmingham in 1950
(Library of Congress).

Analyzing the roots and evolution of the Southern economic development modelshows that civil rights are deeply connected to workers’ rights. We need an
economic strategy that reverses the impact of 150 years of racist, anti-worker
policymaking in the South.

How to fix it
The Southern economic development model cannot create shared prosperity. To
uplift everyone in the South, we need policies that raise wages, make taxation
fair, strengthen the safety net, and protect workers’ right to unionize.

Economic Policy InstituteView online at epi.org/277201

M

any states across the Southern United States
utilize an economic development model thatprioritizes business interests and the wealthy
over ordinary citizens. This model—which we refer to as
the “Southern economic development model”—is definedby low wages, low taxes, few regulations on businesses,
few labor protections, a weak safety net, and fierce
opposition to unions. This model is marketed as the way to
attract businesses into the region, with the implicit promisethat this will generate an abundance of jobs and sharedeconomic prosperity for all Southerners.
In reality, this economic development model isfundamentally flawed as a strategy for improving living
conditions for most Southerners. In fact, the Southerneconomic development strategy was never designed tohelp the vast majority of working Southerners; rather, it
reflects efforts to ensure continued access to the cheap
labor of Black people following emancipation, and that ofBlack and brown people more generally today.
In this report, we describe the Southern economic
development model in detail and document the historicalevolution of various components of the model. We show
how politicians and the wealthy across the South haveused racism and drawn on notions of white supremacy todivide the population along racial, ethnic, nativist, andeconomic lines. This has prevented Southerners fromcoming together in solidarity to demand policies that would
uplift everyone in the region.

SECTIONS
1. What is the Southerneconomicdevelopment model?
•4
2. Race and theSouthern economy• 12
3. The Southerneconomicdevelopment strategy
helps maintain the
racial hierarchy • 15
4. Civil rights and laborrights • 18
5. The changing
demography of theSouth is an
opportunity to uplift
everyone • 20
Notes • 22
References • 23

Many Southern politicians try to obscure and distort thehistorical record on race and the origins and purposes ofmany of their policies. They point to population growthover the last 50 years and the increasing number ofbusinesses—primarily in manufacturing—that have locatedin some Southern states to try to sell their deceptive
narrative. In this report, and in the companion reports andfact sheets in this series, we will scrutinize such claims anddraw on empirical data to illustrate how the Southerneconomic development model has failed most workers andfamilies across the U.S. South.
This project exposes the exploitative policies and practices
that impoverish Southerners across demographic groups
and highlights their complex connections to the prevailing1

power structure in the South. This report begins with a detailed description of theSouthern economic development model. What follows is a brief history of the origins of themodel, which developed as a way for wealthy and powerful people to ensure continued
access to the labor of Black people following the Civil War and to that of Black and brown
Southerners today, for little or no compensation. Finally, the report emphasizes that civilrights for Black and brown Americans are intimately intertwined with the rights of workers,
independent of race. This reality is recognized by many conservative economic andpolitical leaders and has led to their vociferous opposition to unions, an institution that cancreate cross-racial solidarity, empower workers, and undermine the racial hierarchy acrossthe region.

2

Figure A

The South is made up of 16 states and the District ofColumbia
Map of the four regions of the United States and the states that make up thoseregions
Region

Maine

Vt.

N.H.

Mass.

Wash.

Idaho

Mont.

N.D.

Minn.

Ill.

Wis.

Mich.

N.Y.

R.I.

Ore.

Nev.

Wyo.

S.D.

Iowa

Ind.

Ohio

Pa.

N.J.

Conn.

Calif.

Utah

Colo.

Neb.

Mo.

Ky.

W.Va.

Va.

Md.

Del.

Ariz.

N.M.

Kan.

Ark.

Tenn.

N.C.

S.C.

D.C.

Okla.

La.

Miss.

Ala.

Ga.

AlaskaHawaii

Texas

South

Fla.

West

Northeast

MidwestSource: EPI analysis of U.S. Census Bureau 2021.

How we define the SouthIn this report, we use the U.S. Census Bureau’s definition of the South Census
Region, which includes Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South
Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
We note when analyses focus on only a subset of these states. Figure A shows
the states that make up each of the regions compared in this report.

3What is the Southern economic
development model?
The Southern economic development model is designed to enable businesses to extract
labor from large pools of workers as cheaply as possible. Businesses in the South haveparticularly sought the labor of Black and brown Southerners. For over 300 years, theselaborers have been used to cultivate cotton and tobacco, produce the food we eat, carefor our children and the elderly, build the nation’s infrastructure, and perform many othercritical jobs—often for little or no compensation. The labor provided by enslaved men andwomen was overwhelmingly unpaid.1 After emancipation, many Black men andwomen—who faced limited employment opportunities—were often forced intosharecropping. They worked the land and grew crops on plantations owned by former
enslavers who typically took half or more of the value of their crops (Bode 2020; USDA
2003). It was also common for Black men and women to work as porters and maids on
Pullman railcars, where they were forced to rely on tips for most, if not all, of their income(Hasso 2021; Trotter Jr. 2019; Tye 2005). Today, incarcerated workers can be required towork without pay and they often are (ACLU and GHRC 2022; Mast forthcoming a).
The racist roots of this model have been obscured in favor of a more acceptable “probusiness” narrative. The pro-business narrative suggests that low wages, low taxes, antiunion policies, a weak safety net, and limited regulation on businesses creates a “risingtide that lifts all boats.”
Below we examine the key features of the Southern economic development model indetail. We then trace the development of this model over time, highlighting the ways civilrights for Black and brown Southerners are necessary for ensuring that all workers are
empowered.

Low wages
Many states across the South promote low wages for many workers by the policies they
implement or, in many cases, the policies they choose not to implement. For example, five
Southern states—Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina—have
no state minimum wage at all. Georgia has a minimum wage set at $5.15 per hour. Because
the federal minimum wage is set at $7.25 per hour and $2.13 per hour for tipped workers,
all workers across the South are supposed to be paid at least these minimums (EPI 2023).
Fewer than half of the Southern states (six states plus D.C.) have a minimum wage higher
than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. In every other region, most states haveminimum wages higher than $7.25 (EPI 2023). In fact, of the 20 states where the federal
minimum wage applies, 10 are in the South.
Many Southern states have weak, if any, labor law enforcement. This means that workers
in the South, who are already receiving low minimum wages, are particularly vulnerable towage theft. This is especially true in industries such as food and drink services, agriculture,4and retail (Cooper and Kroeger 2017).
Cooper and Kroeger (2017) analyze data on the share of workers who have experienced
minimum wage violations—i.e., were paid less than the applicable minimum wage—in the
10 most populous U.S. states. They find that large shares of low-wage workers in Florida(24.9%), North Carolina (12.3%), Texas (10.8%), and Georgia (9.4%) have experienced
minimum wage violations.
Failing to pay the minimum wage is just one of the ways employers cheat workers out of
their earnings.2 Employers who commit wage theft are rarely punished (Cooper andKroeger 2017). In Florida, for example, there is no state Department of Labor to enforce
wage standards; all of the state’s wage and hour enforcement is deferred to federal
authorities. While Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina
are states which technically do have Departments of Labor (DOLs), their DOLs do notmake any concrete effort to recover wages that are stolen by employers (Mangundayao et
al. 2021).
Wage theft victims can technically pursue action against an unscrupulous employer bysubmitting claims with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. However,in the absence of in-state enforcement, businesses face little risk of being held
accountable if they cheat their employees.
Notably, some Southern states have actively fought against federal government efforts toraise wages in their states. In 2022, the attorneys general of Texas, Louisiana, andMississippi sued the federal government to prevent an increase in the wages of federal
contractors (Texas v. Biden 2022).
It is important to understand that federal standards governing minimum wages, overtime,and even what activities are to be included in the number of hours worked were designed
to keep wages low in the South. When the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was enacted in1938 establishing these rules, large categories of workers—primarily agricultural workers,
domestic workers, tipped workers, and public-sector workers—were excluded from its
protections.
Agricultural workers, domestic workers, and tipped workers were excluded specificallybecause the formerly enslaved were limited almost entirely to these lines of work acrossthe South; Southern lawmakers would not agree to vote for the legislation without theseexclusions (Dixon 2021; Perea 2011). The practice of using tips to compensate service
workers in the United States in fact proliferated in the 19th century after the end of slavery;it allowed businesses to hire the formerly enslaved without having to pay them, instead
forcing them to rely on tips (Dixon 2021; Tye 2005).
When the FLSA was amended in 1966 to include service workers—among other coverage
expansions—a special “tip credit” was created that allowed employers to count tips
received by staff against a portion of the minimum wage the employer was required topay, effectively creating a separate, lower minimum wage (Allegretto and Cooper 2014).
Today, Southern tipped workers continue to rely heavily on their tips. The federal minimum
wage for tipped workers, which applies in most Southern states, is only $2.13 per hour—a5

level that has remained unchanged since 1991 (Schweitzer 2021).
We continue to see the influence of racism and sexism in the low wages and lack ofprotections offered to workers in jobs that were historically held by enslaved people.
Domestic work, for example, has historically been—and continues to be—performed byBlack, brown, and immigrant women. These women work as nursing, psychiatric, andhome health aides; personal and home care aides; and nursing assistants in privatehouseholds. Across the South, Black women make up 43% of home health care workers,
followed by Hispanic women at 17% (Childers, Sawo, and Worker 2022). Workers in thesejobs remain undercompensated despite the clear value of this work—providing care thatallows families to work and that allows elderly and disabled Southerners to age in theirhomes (Childers, Sawo, and Worker 2022; Robertson, Sawo, and Cooper 2022).

Minimal levels of regulation
Another key component of the Southern economic development model is regulating
businesses as little as possible. As noted in the previous section, this means lack ofregulation or enforcement around labor laws such as federal minimum wage laws,
overtime laws, and safety standards for workers (Cooper and Kroeger 2017; Fleischman
and Franklin 2017; FPI 2022; Terrell and St. Julien 2023; Waldman 2017). It also includes
minimal regulation of business activities that pollute the air, water, and soil, whichdisproportionately impact Black and brown communities.
In Louisiana, there is a roughly 130-mile-long area between Baton Rouge and New Orleansrunning along the Mississippi River that is known as “Cancer Alley.” Cancer Alley has aheavy concentration of 200 or more oil refineries and petrochemical plants spewing toxic
chemicals into the air, elevating cancer and other health risks among the area’s
predominantly Black residents (Laughland 2023; Terrell and St. Julien 2022). Terrell and St.
Julien (2023) found that lax permitting processes in the state have resulted in Black andbrown communities across Louisiana having a seven to 21 times greater exposure to air
pollutants—especially those from chemical manufacturers—compared with white
communities.3
Younes et al. (2021) mapped the spread of cancer-causing chemicals in air pollution acrossthe country that moves into residential neighborhoods and exposes residents. They
identified places across the country where residents were exposed to hazardous
chemicals, with or without their knowledge. Younes et al.’s study found that almost allstates with the highest levels of exposure are Southern states, with Texas and Louisiana
being the states whose residents have the greatest excess exposure. In Texas, forexample, one of the largest refineries globally has put millions of pounds of toxic
chemicals in the air over the years. The result is an excess risk of cancer in these areas ofthree to six times what is considered acceptable by the EPA (Younes et al. 2021).
These communities are exposed to these dangerous chemicals because of the lax
regulations of policymakers in Southern states. For example, in Louisiana, land use plans
which label many majority-Black districts as “industrial” or “future industrial” have been

6

approved despite these being residential communities (Laughland 2023). And according
to a lawsuit by residents of these communities, every request by these large industrial
corporations to locate in predominantly Black communities is approved by local
governments (Laughland 2023).
Instead of expanding their staffing for pollution control, states with the worst
environmental exposures have actually cut funding to state environmental agencies. In
Texas and Louisiana, the states whose residents face the highest rate of exposure to toxic
chemicals, funding for state environmental agencies was cut by 35.2% and 34.8%
respectively between 2008 and 2018. Funding was down by 33.7% in North Carolina,
32.8% in Delaware, 20.8% in Georgia, 20.3% in Tennessee, and 10% in Alabama. But not all
Southern states cut their operational funding for state environmental agencies: Maryland,South Carolina, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Florida, and West Virginia increased their funding(EIP 2019).

Low income and corporate taxes
Next, the Southern economic development model seeks to severely limit corporate andpersonal income taxes, particularly any that would increase the tax burden on higherincome households and individuals.

The roots of the South’s tax structure
To understand public attitudes toward taxes across the South, it is important to consider
the roots of the current stance on taxes in the Southern economic development model.
Before the Civil War, taxes on enslaved people were paid primarily by wealthy plantation
owners and constituted a significant source of revenue for states across the South (Hill et
al. 2019; Lyman 2017).
After slavery was abolished, plantation owners represented themselves as “concerned
taxpayers” who opposed compensating for lost state revenue from taxes on enslaved
people with rising property taxes. They were joined by poor white farmers who would now
also be subject to rising property taxes raised by newly—and temporarily—empoweredBlack political leaders.
These leaders were raising taxes to provide basic services such as public education andto rebuild infrastructure after the devastation of the Civil War. But wealthy Southerners
stoked racial animus to divide poor and working-class Southerners along the lines of raceand ensure majority support to implement highly regressive tax policies (Williamson 2021;
Young 2023).

Low corporate and income taxes force reliance on
regressive sales taxes
Today, Southern politicians, business interests, and other wealthy Southerners continue toseek to eliminate or severely limit corporate and personal income taxes. For example,

7

several Southern states used temporary budget surpluses—surpluses resulting from the
distribution of federal dollars to states intended to address COVID-19 and the associatedrecession—as an excuse to further cut already low income-tax rates (Das 2022b).
Corporate and personal income taxes tend to be progressive, meaning they are structured
such that higher-income earners pay a larger share of their income in taxes, while lowerincome earners pay a smaller share. But when collection of corporate and personal
income taxes declines, states are forced to rely more heavily on sales and property taxes,
which are regressive. When sales and property taxes are assessed, lower-income people
end up paying a larger share of their income for those taxes than higher-income people do(Wiehe et al. 2018; Young 2023).
Texas, Florida, and Tennessee have no income tax. In other Southern states with income
taxes, tax rates are so low that they fail to raise adequate revenue, requiring the state torely on sales and property taxes and fees and fines to pay for many public services
including education, public health, public safety, infrastructure, and other services.
In 2019, sales tax accounted for more than 40% of all state and local tax revenue in many
Southern states. These included Tennessee (56.6%), Louisiana (53.3%), Florida (50.9%),
Arkansas (49.6%), Alabama (48.0%), and Mississippi (45.5%). These shares are substantiallyhigher than the 34.4% of state and local tax revenue that sales taxes account for nationally(Das 2022a).
To generate this revenue, these states had sales taxes ranging from 4.0% in Alabama to
7.0% in Mississippi and Tennessee. And while most states at least exempt food from sales
taxes, as of January 2023, Mississippi, Alabama, and Oklahoma did not (Tax Policy Center2023).4

This approach to taxes means that public services areunderfunded in the South
Proponents of this tax model argue that it increases the incomes of all households by
allowing them to keep more of their money. Further, they argue that it allows businesses toreinvest and grow their businesses, thereby increasing tax revenue. But this regressive
approach to taxes simply means there is not sufficient revenue to properly fund education,
health care, public transportation, water and sewer system maintenance, and the manyother public services Southerners rely on (Das 2022b).
The lack of resources to provide services for ordinary Southerners is further exacerbatedwhen state governments give huge subsidies to private companies. For example,
Mississippi gave a $247 million subsidy to Steel Dynamics in 2022, and South Carolina
spent $1.3 billion on a subsidy for Scout Motors in 2023 (Good Jobs First 2023a, 2023b).
To illustrate how these subsidies harm South Carolinians specifically, we can consider the
impact of abatements on public education. In fiscal year 2021, South Carolina publicschools reported that they lost $534 million in property tax revenues to abatements,
money that would have gone to funding school staff and providing services to students(Wen 2022). The districts that lost the most funding had a majority of students coming from8

low-income households that qualified for free or reduced-price lunches (Wen 2022). Thisharms students, families, and communities—with the harshest impacts on those facing thegreatest hardships.

A weak safety net
The Southern economic development model is further characterized by a weak social
safety net. Most Southern states offer relatively few and weak protections against hardshipfor individuals and families who suffer some kind of economic shock, such as the loss of ajob, an illness, or the need to care for someone. This weak social safety net cements lowincome Southerners’ precarity, further disempowering the labor force by making any
economic shock all the more harmful. In this context, a Southern worker with little private
savings is more likely to take or endure exploitive or underpaid work.

Southerners face greater insecurity when they lose theirjobs
Unemployment insurance (UI) , is a crucial component of the social safety net, meant toensure families have economic security in the face of a job loss by replacing somepercentage of their prior earnings (Bivens and Banerjee 2021). During times of crisis, suchas the COVID-19 recession, UI also helps stabilize the broader economy by enablinghouseholds to continue spending, which helps maintain overall consumer demand (Bivens
et al. 2021). While the UI system is funded jointly by federal and state funds, it is the statethat has primary control over who is eligible to receive benefits, the levels and duration of
benefits, and how the system is financed (Bivens et al. 2021).
UI is also a system that, if properly designed, helps support workers’ bargaining power. By
giving workers support when they lose a job, UI allows those workers to take the timenecessary to find a job that matches their skills and that pays as well as the one they lost.
Conversely, weak UI benefits force many workers to take the first available job—even if itsuits their skills poorly or pays less than the job they lost.
While many states’ UI systems need reform, the level and ease of accessing benefits inmany Southern states is particularly problematic. Data show that of the 10 states with thelowest maximum weekly UI benefit amounts, seven—Mississippi ($235), Alabama ($275),
Florida ($275), Louisiana ($275), Tennessee ($275), South Carolina ($326), and North
Carolina ($350)—are in the South (The Century Foundation 2023). Many Southern states
also have particularly onerous requirements for accessing benefits, which are madeavailable for incredibly short durations. For example, most states make standard UI
benefits available for a maximum of 26 weeks. Only 13 states set their maximum number ofweeks below 26, more than half of which are Southern states: Alabama (14 weeks),
Arkansas (16), Florida (12), Georgia (14), Kentucky (12), North Carolina (12), South Carolina(20), and Oklahoma (16) (CBPP 2023b).
The fact that the states where most Black Americans live have the least accessible UI
systems with the least generous benefits, shortest durations for receiving benefits, and9some of the most onerous requirements is not a coincidence or an accident. The UI
system as structured is rooted in a racist agenda: Southern Democrats agreed to support
the New Deal only if states controlled access to UI and other social benefits. This allowed
them to design systems that would limit Black workers’ access to benefits (Edwards 2020;
Traub and Diehl 2022).

Southerners face barriers to health care access
Full participation in the economy—not to mention in one’s family and community—aremuch easier when one is healthy both physically and mentally. Unfortunately, far too many
people in the United States lack access to quality, affordable health care. This problem isparticularly salient across Southern states; Southerners are less likely to have access tohealth insurance than those living in other regions. In 2020, 7.7% of all children living inSouthern states lacked health insurance coverage compared with 3.3% in the Northeast,
4.4% in the Midwest, and 4.9% in the West. For working age adults, the share was 16.4% in
the South, 6.6% in the Northeast, 8.6% in the Midwest, and 11.3% in the West (KeislerStarkey and Bunch 2021).
The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) included an expansion of
Medicaid eligibility to adults with incomes up to 138% of the official poverty line. Whilemost states have adopted and implemented the expansion, 10 states have failed to adopt
it, seven of which are in the South: Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida,
Tennessee, and Texas (KFF 2023).5 This is one reason Southerners are less likely to have
health insurance coverage, which is particularly concerning given high rates of illness andcomorbidities across the South (Akinyemiju et al. 2016).
The failure to expand Medicaid creates additional challenges even for those who haveinsurance coverage but live in rural areas, denying increased revenue to many rural
hospitals that were already facing closure (Levinson, Godwin, and Hulver 2023).

Southern states have some of the lowest levels of cash
assistance for families with children
Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), a cash assistance program for poorfamilies with children, was established in 1935 as Aid to Dependent Children (ADC).6 In
1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (PRWORA) replaced AFDC
with the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). TANF differs from AFDC inseveral important ways. Under AFDC, states could receive unlimited federal matchingfunds. Under TANF, federal support is distributed to states through a block grant. TANF
also has five-year lifetime limits on the receipt of benefits and requires that states increase
their work participation rates for TANF recipients (DHHS n.d.).
TANF is funded by the federal government, but states determine benefit levels, set income
and resource limits, and administer or oversee administration of the program. They have agreat deal of discretion in how they use TANF funds because the specific goals of the
program are so broad. The stated goals of the program are to (1) assist families in need so

10children can be cared for in their own homes; (2) reduce parental dependence on
government by promoting job training, work, and marriage; (3) prevent out-of-wedlock
pregnancies; and (4) encourage two-parent families (CBPP 2022; DHHS n.d.).
Under the first goal, states can provide direct cash assistance to families to provide for
their children (CBPP 2022; DHHS n.d.). In 1997, 71% of TANF dollars were spent in direct
cash assistance, but by 2020, this share had fallen to just 22% nationally (AzevedoMcCaffrey and Safawi 2022). There are, however, large variations in TANF spending bystate. In 2021, 15 states spent 10% or less of TANF dollars to provide cash assistance tofamilies. Almost half of these—Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Louisiana, Mississippi, North
Carolina, and Texas—are in the South.7 Alabama spent just 7% of their TANF dollars on
general spending, most in cash dollars. They spent 1% of their TANF dollars on work
supports, 11% on childcare, but 29% on “other” services (CBPP 2023a).8 Mississippi spent
6% in general spending, with only 3% going to childcare, while 17% of spending fell underthe “other” category (CBPP 2023c). Across the South, only the District of Columbia and
Kentucky spent 30% or more of their TANF funds on direct assistance, and in Kentucky,
more than half of those funds went to foster care for children fostered by relatives andadoption and guardianship subsidies (Azevedo-McCaffrey and Safawi 2022).
Despite spending millions of dollars on TANF-related activities, states had millions ofunspent TANF dollars as of 2021.9 For example, Alabama had $113 million in unspent TANF
dollars in 2021—amounting to 122% of their $93 million block grant for the year (CBPP
2023a). At $98 million, Mississippi’s unspent TANF funds amounted to 113% of their $86
million grant for that year (CBPP 2023c). Texas and Oklahoma each had more than $300
million in unspent TANF funds (CBPP 2023d; CBPP 2023f). Tennessee was even worse,with $798 million in unspent funds (CBPP 2023e).
Compounding the impact of unspent TANF dollars are low benefit levels in many states,
especially in the South. The maximum monthly benefit for a single mother with twochildren ranges from $204 in Arkansas to a high of $1,151 in New Hampshire. There are
only four Southern jurisdictions with a benefit amount of $500 or more for a one adult
three-person family: the District of Columbia ($665), Maryland ($727), Virginia ($587), andWest Virginia ($542) (Thompson, Azevedo-McCaffrey, and Carr 2023).
The maximum nominal TANF benefit in 2022 is the same or lower than it was in 1996 in 16
states, seven of which—Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina,
and Oklahoma—are in the South. The result is that the inflation-adjusted value of TANF
benefits in these states is 45% to 56% lower than it was in 1996 (Thompson, AzevedoMcCaffrey, and Carr 2023).10
The current structure of TANF in many Southern states reflect efforts of politicians tocontrol the behavior and reproduction of Black women and compel their participation in
the low-wage labor market (Floyd et al. 2021; King v. Smith 1968; CBPP 2022). Historically,
states have used concepts of “deservingness,” “suitable homes,” and the “man in thehouse” to exclude Black families from the program.
To be deserving, a mother needed to be widowed, have her husband be unable to provide
due to disability, or have been abandoned by the children’s father “through no fault of the11mother.” A home was “unsuitable,” by definition, if the mother was unwed or engaged insexual activity outside of marriage (Floyd et al. 2021; Floyd and Pavetti 2022). The “man in
the house” rule denied mothers benefits if a man was found in the house or if the motherwas found to be sexually active even if no man lived in the house with her and herchildren. These rules applied regardless of whether the man the mother was involved withwas the children’s father (Floyd et al. 2021; King v. Smith 1968; O’Connor 1969). Today,
states with larger Black populations—primarily Southern states where most of the Black
population lives—tend to have more stringent requirements for accessing TANF benefits,
and those benefits tend to be more meager (Shrivastava and Thompson 2022).

Anti-union policies
Crucially, advocates of the Southern economic development model vociferously oppose
unions and other collective actions in which workers band together—especially acrossracial, ethnic, and immigration statuses. Research has shown that higher rates ofunionization are associated with higher wages, better working conditions, less inequality,
less racial animosity, greater economic mobility, and greater civic participation (Banerjee etal. 2021; Freeman et al. 2015; Frymer and Grumbach 2020; Mishel 2021; Mishel, Rhinehart,
and Windham 2020). Given these effects, it is unsurprising that states across the South
have adopted policies that hamstring workers’ ability to form unions, which pose a threat
to the Southern economic development model.
First, unions threaten the Southern economic model because they have historically been
the primary counterweight against businesses seeking to keep workers’ wages andbenefits low. In this way, unions threaten the central economic goal of the Southern model,
which is to keep labor costs as low as possible. Second, the labor movement in the U.S.
today is one of the foremost institutions promoting cross-racial solidarity. Strong unions
could potentially undermine the racial and class divisions that the wealthy and theirpolitical supporters have used to promote and preserve the Southern model. Third, they
are a key driver of greater equity in the workplace; racial and gender wage and wealthgaps are smaller among unionized workers, and union contracts ensure that all workers
receive negotiated benefits. Further, unions protect Black and brown workers fromdiscriminatory, retaliatory, or other arbitrary firing with the “just cause” and “due process”
protections they provide (Bivens et al. 2023; EPI 2021; Gould and McNicholas 2017).
Finally, unions threaten the Southern economic development model because they educate
and encourage civic engagement among union members. Unions shape how voters
understand their interests by discussing issues and candidates. They also activate theirmembers to actively engage in campaigns and to turn out voters (EPI 2021; Feigenbaum,
Hertel-Fernandez, and Williamson 2018).

Race and the Southern economy
Historically, the economy of the American South was largely agrarian and heavily
dependent on cotton, tobacco, sugar cane, and other labor-intensive agricultural products(Baptist 2014, Conlin 2018). The intense need for large pools of labor and the desire to12

retain the wealth generated from that labor lies at the heart of the economic policies
implemented across the South since even before the colonies became the United Sates.
This includes policies of enslaving African people, supporting child labor, opposing unions,and allowing corporations to pollute the environment and poison the air and water—all in
the name of keeping costs low and profits high.
Even as workers have fought to improve working conditions, many Southern lawmakers
have used their power to ensure employers in their states retain access to large numbersof workers at poverty-level wages. While the economy was predominantly agrarian in thepast, today there are significantly more auto manufacturing, professional, technological,
and business services jobs across the South. There remain many jobs in oil and gas
production, animal slaughter and processing, and service jobs as well. Yet even as theindustrial composition of the South has modernized, much of the region’s businesspractices, labor standards, and underlying political economy has not. Below is a brief
historical overview of the battle to maintain a low-wage labor force, particularly one
comprised of Black and brown workers.

Extracting cheap labor from indentured andenslaved people
Since before the founding of the United States, the states that would become theAmerican South have relied on cheap labor to drive economic growth and generate theillusion of widespread prosperity. The colonies imported white indentured servants andAfrican people to meet their labor needs. The African people would eventually shift frombeing indentured to becoming enslaved people (Bennett 1962; Hannah-Jones 2021). Theirenslavement ensured a consistent source for Southern businesses and landowners laborneeds, while minimizing the costs of that labor. Plantation owners in the South used asmuch cruelty as was necessary to drive ever-increasing productivity from those enslaved
Africans who worked in the fields producing ever-higher yields (Baptist 2014). This not only
benefited wealthy Southern planters, but also Northern industrialists, financiers, anduniversities. The cotton that was produced in the South was processed in Northern
factories and financed by Northern banks, creating wealth for everyone except those
whose labor produced the wealth (see Baptist 2014).

Little changed following emancipation
Following the Civil War, the South remained tied to an agricultural economy. Instead of
relying on enslaved people to provide much of the backbreaking labor required, theyshifted to a sharecropping and tenant-farmer model which still relied on “freed” Black men
and women’s labor. Plantation owners would “lend” newly freed men and womenresources for sharecropping, but they ensured the vast majority would never be paidenough to pay off their debts. This was a system known as debt peonage which effectively
meant that most freed Black men and women were often forced to work on the sameplantations and for the same wealthy white landowners who had enslaved them. Thiseffectively tied sharecroppers to their employers and, for many Black sharecroppers, their13

conditions under this system were difficult to distinguish from bondage.
States across the South also employed many other ways of ensuring they could retain
access to Black labor for little or no compensation. They passed sets of laws known asBlack Codes. These codes were designed to closely control the actions of Black men andwomen and maintain the racial hierarchy. These laws made it illegal for Black people todrink from white water fountains, attend white schools, or have a supervisory position overwhite workers (Dewey 1952; Hill 1965). In fact, Black men and women were often limited tothe same menial jobs they held before the Civil War and were often pushed out of skilled
work they had previously performed (Hill 1965). And to ensure that Black people would
have no other choice but to take these jobs, it was common to require proof of
employment from Black men and women. If they could not prove they were employed,
they could be arrested and “rented” out to work on plantations, to build railroads, or just to
provide general unskilled labor. Black women were often forced back into the same
domestic work roles in white homes or in agricultural work alongside Black men. Theselaws were justified using the constitutional loophole in the 13th Amendment that allows“slavery” and “involuntary servitude” as a punishment for crime (Alexander 2020; Mercer2022).

Extracting cheap labor from Black and brown
Southerners today
This loophole enables Southern states to incarcerate a disproportionate number ofAmericans. For every 100,000 people nationally in 2021, the U.S. had 664 people
incarcerated in prisons, jails, and other forms of confinement. This rate far exceeds theincarceration rates of our peer nations, such as the United Kingdom (129 for every 100,000
people), Canada (104), France (93), and many other democratic nations (Widra and Herring2021).
While the national U.S. incarceration rate dwarfs those of our peers, the prison and jailincarceration rates of 13 of the 16 Southern states and the District of Columbia exceed thenational average, with Louisiana (1094), Mississippi (1031), Oklahoma (993), and Georgia(968) having the highest rates of incarceration (Mast forthcoming a; Widra and Herring2021). Further, Black Americans are disproportionately represented among the prison
populations. While Black people are just over 32% of the population in Louisiana, they are
66% of those incarcerated in prisons and 57% of those in jails (PPI 2021a). In Mississippi,
they are 37% of the population but 61% of the prison and 49% of the jail population (PPI
2021b). In Oklahoma they are 7% of the population but are 27% of the prison populationand 23% of those incarcerated in jails (PPI 2021c).
Of the 1.2 million state and federal prisoners in the U.S., nearly 800,000 are forced to workin the prisons themselves, in prison industries, for other state or local government
agencies, or for private-sector businesses (ACLU and GHRC 2022; Mast forthcoming a, PPI2017).11 These prisoners, disproportionately Black men, are often paid very low wages, if
they are paid at all—the vast majority of work done by prisoners in Alabama, Arkansas,
Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas is unpaid (ACLU and GHRC 2022).

14

In many instances, mass incarceration effectively reinstates the slave system (Alexander2020).
Hispanic men and women, especially immigrant workers, also continue to face exploitation
by wealthy business owners and corporations across the South. According to Gershon(2020), by the early 1960s, 95% of meatpacking workers outside the South were unionizedwith wages comparable to those of steel production workers. Meatpacking companies
responded by moving operations to more rural areas, and, by the 1990s, they beganseeking immigrant workers to keep wages low. Black workers make up the majority ofmeat processing workers in states across the South (56.4% in Maryland, 67.1% in South
Carolina, and 73.1% in Mississippi) but the representation of immigrant and Hispanic
workers in these grueling, low-wage jobs is high. Hispanic workers make up 25.8% of theSouth’s meat processing workers and 26.2% are foreign-born workers (Gershon 2020;
Hickey forthcoming).12

The Southern economic development
strategy helps maintain the racialhierarchy
Race and ethnicity have long been used by politicians and varied economic interests todivide Southerners along racial lines and increase animosity and distrust between groups(Haney López 2014; McGhee 2021). Southern politicians fearmonger about immigrants orBlack and brown people receiving “unearned” benefits as the population of young Blackand brown Southerners continues to increase. This is often achieved by drawing onstereotypes or racist tropes. One example is when politicians make receiving benefits(e.g., food stamps or Medicaid) conditional upon fulfilling work requirements or passing
drug tests.13 Such practices create deep divisions, which are likely among the key reasons
why the South has not become more progressive—given that Black and brown
communities generally favor more progressive policies and politicians—despite theincreasing diversity of the population.
In the current political climate, it has become common, particularly among conservative
politicians and commentators, to hear arguments that “American” voters are being
disenfranchised by voters who vote “illegally” or who “cheat.” Typically, “American”
appears to apply to white voters while “cheaters” and “illegal” voters seem to refer toBlack and brown Americans who are simply casting their ballots legally. For example, theplaces where challenges and lawsuits were filed in the 2020 presidential election wereprimarily places with large Black and brown populations (Phillips 2020).
We also see that in many states across the country, with the South being well represented,
there is a push to privatize public education and to push public dollars into privately run
charter schools (Pierce 2021). Pierce (2021) writes that this move toward privatization waslargely in response to the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education which
ordered states to desegregate. In other words, the push towards privatizing education in15

the United States aimed to preserve the racial hierarchy. Similarly, it is not uncommon tohear arguments about immigrants coming to the United States and living on publicbenefits (Thomas 2020). The goal of these arguments is to make the broader white
population feel that their tax dollars are going to people who are deemed “undeserving”
and increase the white public’s support for policies that would exclude Black and brown
Southerners.

Using dog whistles to divide
Politicians and other influential and powerful interests activate racism in ways that theyand their supporters can deny by using dog whistles. A dog whistle in political speechrefers to discourse that uses a code that specific segments of the population understandas racial but that gives people cover to deny that they are being racist to those who abhor
racism. Haney López (2014) refers to the practice of dog whistles as “a steady drumbeat ofsubliminal racial grievances and appeals to color-coded solidarity” (3).
The development of the concept of the “taxpayer” provides one clear example of thispractice. The common appeal to the “taxpayer” developed out of racism and white
supremacy. During the Reconstruction period directly following the abolition of slavery,large Black populations in states like South Carolina were large enough, especially withthe support of some poor whites, to elect Black leaders. Many poor white men voted insupport of policies that required raising taxes on white landowners to fund things likeschools, roads, and a basic safety net. Williamson (2021) reports that the wealthy whitelandowners developed the identity of the “taxpayer” as a means of dividing poor whitelandowners and Black freedmen. Since most Black freedmen lacked any substantial
landholdings, wealthy landowners could engender hostility among poor white landowners
toward Blacks, even if their material conditions were not dramatically different. Thisapproach allowed powerful interests to oppose paying taxes for general welfare andencouraged poor white Southerners—especially poorer landowners who would also be
taxed—to identify with the wealthy white landowners rather than with Black elected
officials (Williamson 2021).
When the concept of “taxpayer” is invoked, it is used as a dog whistle to imply that
“undeserving” people—particularly “undeserving” Black, Hispanic, and immigrantpeople—will take advantage of public resources paid for by hardworking white people
who pay their own way and do not ask for “handouts.” This also instills the idea that asking
for assistance is shameful, which further reinforces the status quo.
Meanwhile, poor, working- and middle-class workers of all racial backgrounds—especiallyBlack and brown men and women who are disproportionately low-income—pay muchlarger shares of their incomes for sales, income, social security, and other taxes (see Mast
forthcoming b).

The conservative strategy
While these dog whistles have been part of the conservative strategy at least since16Reconstruction, they have been essential in convincing the majority to support racist,
exploitative, and regressive politicians and policies. For example, John Ehrlichman,
Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under then President Richard Nixon,
admitted that the Nixon administration intentionally linked anti-war hippies and Black
people with drug use and then proceeded to heavily criminalize drugs in order to “arrest
their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on
the evening news” (Baum 2016). Campaigns based on “law and order” or appeals toincrease criminal punishments for violence and/or drug use were thinly veiled racial
appeals. This was especially the case following the tumultuous era of the Civil Rights
Movement when Black Americans were demanding equality. Many white Americans
opposed that equality, and Black rebellions—often called “riots”—broke out across thenation. These so-called riots were in response to police violence, high poverty rates, poor
housing, and the many other inequities that Black communities were, and are, facing(Alexander 2020; Haney López 2014; Purnell and Hinton 2021).
When Ronald Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign, he began in the South,
specifically in Philadelphia, Mississippi, which is known for the murders of James Chaney,
Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner for trying to register Black people to vote.
Reagan used this first campaign stop to state his support for states’ rights, a signal tosegregationists to support him (Sharon 2021). As his campaign moved forward, he became
ever-more explicit in his racist appeals. He painted a picture of a “Chicago welfare queen,”
who drove a Cadillac while using 80 different names to receive Medicaid, food stamps,
and welfare totaling over $150,000 annually and of “a strapping young buck” buying Tbone steaks (presumably with food stamps) while the implied hardworking white person
whose taxes provided the food stamps could only afford to buy hamburger for their family(Haney López 2014).
The key to the effectiveness of dog whistles is to deny that they have anything to do withrace. It is common to hear political and economic leaders claim that it is in fact the people
calling out the racism that are racist. Fortunately, we have the words of one of these
conservative political leaders who was willing to admit this was indeed what they were
doing. According to Lee Atwater, they had to adjust the way they used race in theirelectoral strategy:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say“nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So, you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’
rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about
cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things
and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… (Perlstein 2012)
This shift can also be seen in the work of MacLean (2021). She describes how white
supremacists—who wanted to maintain Jim Crow segregation in education and who had
been explicitly using race to resist the Brown v. Board of Education decision—learned fromMilton Friedman that they could make more progress by using more “neutral” language.
They thus began saying “personal liberty,” “government failure,” and the “need for market
competition” to move toward school vouchers and private schools to preserve Jim Crow
segregation.

17

In many of the Southern states with the largest Black populations—such as Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Georgia—state legislatures have been more likely to implement regressive
policies that produce higher negative outcomes such as poverty, food insecurity,
incarceration, reliance on fees and fines to fund government, high infant and maternalmortality, and a host of other negative outcomes. Although all low- and middle-income
Southerners are negatively impacted by these policies, Black Southerners experience theworst outcomes.
Despite large and growing Black and brown populations in many Southern states,
communities and workers of color still struggle to enact policy changes that would
improve their economic conditions. One reason for this is state lawmakers—who are
overwhelmingly white—enacting “preemption” laws to prevent elected officials in cities
and counties from enacting their own local policies. Southern legislatures have preempted
local governments from passing laws on everything from environmental protections andprogressive taxes to minimum wages and paid sick day requirements (Blair et al. 2020).
State lawmakers further interfere with these communities’ ability to improve economic
conditions through restrictions on voting and practices such as gerrymandering legislative
districts. Gerrymandering disempowers and dilutes the voting power of Black and brown
communities, denying them greater representation in state legislatures. Yet the Black andbrown populations of cities, counties, and states across the South will keep growing—even
as state lawmakers continue their efforts to prevent them from deviating from theSouthern economic development model.

Civil rights and labor rights
While the fight for civil rights is often discussed separately from the fight for workers’
rights, these movements have often been one and the same. Race and racism has been
leveraged to weaken both movements. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the face of the Civil
Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, was standing with striking sanitation workers inMemphis when he was assassinated. He was fighting for the poor and for workers andfamilies independent of race and ethnicity.
Whenever civil rights and labor leaders have been able to bring Black and white workers
together to fight to improve their working conditions, Southern elites wielded notions ofwhite supremacy and implemented policies to undermine labor generally and labor unions
specifically. This was designed to ensure permanent divisions along racial lines andmaintain Jim Crow race and labor relations (Pierce 2017). While right-to-work laws were
pushed across the country, they initially took root in the Southern states where—due to
racial terrorism, poll taxes, literacy tests, and outright violence—most Black people (andmany poor white people) could not vote. Working together would have empowered bothBlack and white workers, but it also would have undermined the racial order in the South.
According to Pierce (2017) and Griffith (1988), while unions like the Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO) were organizing both Black and white workers, the Christian American
Association was raising money from wealthy Southern planters and industrialists to get
anti-union laws enacted. This same group was also enlisted to help fight against the New

18

Deal. Similarly, when Black and white workers came together to form the Knights of Labor
following the Civil War in Virginia, Black voters were disenfranchised once white politicians
were able to regain control of state government and white workers were offered privileges
not available to Black workers to maintain the racial hierarchy (Scribner 2021).
Opponents to interracial solidarity and union organizing warned:
White women and White men will be forced into organizations with Black African
apes…whom they will have to call ‘brother’ or lose their jobs. (Pierce 2017)
Other material designed to maintain the racial divisions include Figure B, a flyer produced
to motivate support for right-to-work in North Carolina, which highlights that George
Benjamin, a Black man, would be in charge of organizing white workers.
In 1944, Arkansas and Florida became thefirst two states to adopt the anti-worker
right-to-work laws. When the key leader ofthese efforts, Vance Muse, was called out
for his use of racism to achieve his goals,
he reportedly said “They call me anti-Jew
and anti-nigger. Listen we like thenigger—in his place” (Pierce 2017).
Southern politicians and employers were
not only interested in using their state andlocal policies to maintain the racialhierarchy; they also wielded power at thenational level as well, threatening to
oppose federal legislation that did not
exclude Black workers and families fromthe protections and benefits of federallaws. The exclusion of Black workers was
not explicit in the legislation. Testimony
and debates over federal legislation leaves
little doubt about their goals, however. For
example, when the Fair Labor Standards
Act was being debated, Southern
Democrats threatened to tank thelegislation if Black workers were included:

Figure B. This flyer was an effort to mobilize racial
prejudice against the CIO. The irony here is that,
according to Griffith (1988), the Tobacco Workers
International Union under criticism was an American
Federation of Labor (AFL) affiliate, one which did notshare the CIO’s progressive position on interracialorganizing. (Photo by David Haberstich. Courtesy of
Donald McKee, cited in Griffith 1988.)

The organized Negro groups of thecountry are supporting [the FLSA]
because it will, in destroying statesovereignty and local selfdetermination, render easier the elimination and disappearance of racial and social
distinctions…. (Congressman Cox of Georgia, cited in Perea 2011)
Another congressman, Representative J. Mark Wilcox of Florida remarked:

19

There has always been a difference in the wage scale of white and colored labor.
So long as Florida people are permitted to handle the matter, this delicate andperplexing problem can be adjusted; but the federal government knows no colorline and of necessity it cannot make any distinction between the races. We may rest
assured, therefore, that …it will prescribe the same wage for the Negro that itprescribes for the White man. …Those of us who know the true situation know that it
just will not work in the South. You cannot put the Negro and the White man on thesame basis and get away with it. (Perea 2011)
It was not just politicians; however, employers shared the same sentiments with one
employer stating:
A Negro makes a much better workman and a much better citizen, insofar as theSouth is concerned, when he is not paid the highest wage. (Perea 2011)
These attitudes and threats to the passage of important legislation was not limited to the
FLSA. The same threats were made to ensure the exclusion of agricultural and domestic
workers—jobs primarily filled by Black men and women across the South—from theprotections of the National Labor Relations Act. As noted above, racism and maintaining
the racial hierarchy in the South was at the root of many policies including taxation,
policing, and economic policies. In institution after institution, efforts were made to ensurethat Black labor could be extracted as cheaply as possible. And while there was also agreat desire to get white labor cheaply as well, there was a clear sense that white workers
must always be above Black workers to maintain the racial hierarchy (Perea 2011; Dixon
2021).

The changing demography of theSouth is an opportunity to uplift
everyoneThe American South is a dynamic region of the country with a growing population that isincreasingly diverse. Made up of 16 states and the District of Columbia—including Texas
and Florida, two of the largest states in the country—the South is home to almost four in 10
Americans. These are Americans whose lives and livelihoods are heavily shaped by thestate and local policies implemented across the region. Not only is the South the largest
region of the country, but it is also the fastest growing. Figure C shows that over the lastfew decades the share of the population living in the South grew faster and larger than the
population of any other region. In fact, the share of Americans living in the Midwest andthe Northeast declined.
This growth in the population of the South reflects a natural increase in the region—more
births than deaths. It also reflects international immigration–especially across the Southernborder from Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean—as well as domestic
migration to the region. While politicians point to population growth across the South to20

Figure C

The share of Americans living in the South is thelargest of any region and growing
Share of U.S. population by region, 1910 to 2020.

1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020

31.9%

28.0%

32.4%

7.7%

31.2%

28.0%

32.1%

8.7%

30.7%

27.9%

31.3%

10.0%

31.5%

27.2%

30.4%

10.9%

31.2%

26.1%

29.4%

13.3%

30.7%

24.9%

28.8%

15.6%

30.9%

24.1%

27.8%

17.1%

33.3%

21.7%

26.0%

19.1%

34.4%

20.4%

24.0%

21.2%

35.6%

19.0%

22.9%

22.5%

37.1%

17.9%

21.7%

23.3%

38.1%

17.4%

20.8%

23.7%

South

Northeast

MidwestWest

Source: Author's analysis of U.S Census Bureau’s Historical Population Change Data.

argue for the positive impacts of their policies, this increase tends to be concentrated in
specific states and cities. For example, while Texas and Florida had the highest population
growth from 2021 to 2022, Louisiana, West Virginia, Maryland, and Mississippi were in the
top 10 for population decline (U.S. Census Bureau 2022).
Many of those moving to the South from other regions, including New York and California,
are seeking cheaper housing (Henderson 2016). Land generally tends to be cheaper
across the South, contributing to housing that is much more affordable than places like21

California and New York. Texas and Florida also benefit from immigration across theSouthern border and the Caribbean.
The widespread use of air conditioning during the 1960s and 1970s further contributed topopulation growth across the region. The oppressive heat during summer months alongwith high humidity left many Southerners in misery. This has been fundamentally changed,
however, by air conditioning in cars, homes, and businesses (Arsenault 1984). As Figure C
shows, before 1980 the share of the population living in the South fluctuated around30–31%. From 1980 onward, it has continued to increase in each subsequent decade.
This report highlights the true origins of key components of the failed Southern economic
development strategy—the extraction of labor from Black Americans after the end ofslavery and from Black and brown Americans today as cheaply as possible. The emphasis
on low wages, lack of regulation, regressive taxation and giveaways to corporations has
not, and cannot, produce broadly shared prosperity. It was never designed to do so.
The youthful and increasingly diverse population across the South, however, presents agreat opportunity to shift the policy landscape across the region. While wealthy andpowerful people across the region have fought long and hard to keep the people divided
and to maintain the racial hierarchy that maintains these divisions, Southerners canchoose a different way forward. Southerners can demand an economic strategy that raises
wages, strengthens the safety net, implements fair and progressive taxation, and perhaps
most importantly, empowers workers to act on their own behalf by unionizing. Thisapproach can help eliminate the racial hierarchy that holds all Southerners back from an
economically secure future. But, as long as the powerful can keep low- and middle-income
Southerners focused on racial, political, and economic divisions, they can keep them fromseeing what they have in common: They are all being exploited by those at the top.

Notes
1. Enslaved men and women might be “hired out” to a third party if their labor was not immediately
needed. In some instances, they might be allowed to retain a portion of the money generated(Butler 2022).
2. See Cooper and Kroeger 2017 for descriptions of other forms of wage theft.
3. While “Cancer Alley” is a high-profile area in the environmental racism literature, Terrell and St.
Julien (2023) report that there are other industrial areas of the state with higher exposure to thesetoxins.
4. As of September 1, 2023, the sales tax on food in Alabama dropped from 4.0% to 3.0%. For more
information, see Sell 2023.
5. North Carolina has adopted the expansion of Medicaid, but as of September 2023, it had not yet
been implemented; implementation is dependent on the passage of the 2023–2024 budget.
Virginia and Oklahoma adopted the Medicaid expansion in 2016 and 2021, respectively (KFF2023).
6. ADC was changed to AFDC in 1962.

22

7. The remaining states spending 10% or less of funds in direct assistance were primarily in the
Midwest, with two in the Northeast. The Midwestern states spending 10% or less are North Dakota,
Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas. The Northeastern states are Connecticut and New
Jersey. See the complete map here.
8. “Other” includes a wide range of expenditures across states, but can include short-term benefits
for families in crisis; transfers to the social services block grant; after school programs; pregnancy
prevention; and programs promoting two-parent families (Azevedo-McCaffrey and Safawi 2022).
9. States can carry unspent federal TANF dollars over into future years.
10. To a see graphic representation of change in the real value of TANF benefits, see here.
11. Mast (forthcoming a) is a fact sheet focused on mass incarceration and how it continues the
tradition of extracting cheap labor from primarily Black Americans in states across the South. It
describes ways that Black Americans continue to have their labor extracted by the state or leased
out to private companies.
12. Hickey forthcoming includes fact sheets that will address the experiences of immigrant workers
and provide a deep dive on domestic workers and food processing workers, especially meat
processing workers.
13. Arkansas Department of Human Services 2023 and Reuters Fact Check 2022 are examples ofthese dog whistles.

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