In light of the Zimmerman acquittal, John Derbyshire’s concept of the cold civil war seems about right. The prosecution of this guy had nothing to do with race or racism. It had little to do this the facts of the case. This was about one group of white people taking a shot at another group of white people. John uses the labels Hutus and Tutsis, but that does not quite work. Those groups hate one another over blood and land, the time honored hatreds between tribes. In our war, one can pick sides. It’s the nature of a culture war.

I prefer to frame it as Whole Foods whites versus WalMart whites.  Whole Foods whites are mostly northern, mostly liberal and mostly college educated. Go to a Whole Foods and the creepy conformity is a little unnerving. The women dress the same, are roughly in the same age bracket, sound the same and do their hair the same. The men are mostly of the soft artsy variety. With a few exceptions everyone there is what David Brooks described as Bourgeois Bohemian. It’s an updated form of Puritan conformity.

WalMart whites have their own culture too. They are fat and wear clothes that displays their pop culture preferences. While Whole Foods whites will wear a plain t-shirt, the WalMart whites always have something scrawled on their shirts and it is never the name of a college. The parking lot will be full of domestic cars and pickup trucks, many with NASACAR bumbler stickers. That’s the thing with these folks. They like guns, car racing, country music and hearing fart jokes from guys like Larry the Cable Guy.

When George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, Whole Foods Whites saw nothing more than a WalMart white with a German last name and assumed he must be the heir of Bull Connor. Strangely, despite their educations, Whole Foods whites know little about the South and believe nothing much has changed since 1968. The case for them was just another chance to marginalize WalMart whites and their culture. In this regard it is reminiscent of the Snopes – Compson dynamic in the Faulkner novels