Author of the week: Colin Woodard

last updated 8 January 2015

Journalist Colin Woodard thinks he knows why America seems divided, said Julian Brookes in Rolling Stone. Forget red state/blue state. In his book American Nations, Woodard writes that the United States is in fact composed of 11 distinct regional cultures that have never fully shared a set of values. Consider the 300-year power struggle between “Yankeedom” and the Deep South. “Yankees have always had a drive to improve the world, with the community perfecting itself through individual self-denial—which is a very un-American idea!” Woodard says. The South, by contrast, is still influenced by its founders—aristocratic slave owners who “abhorred” democracy and organized a society that would serve their interests.

Woodard developed his thesis after reporting for years from Eastern Europe, where centuries-old cultural conflicts often transcend national borders, said Emily Badger in Miller-McCune. “These fissures exist on our continent as well. We just don’t recognize them,” he says. Take the ascendant “El Norte” region, which includes portions of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Colorado, as well as northern Mexico. “Not only do state boundaries not matter, national ones don’t matter either,” says Woodard. But he also argues that until we recognize the depth of these divisions, national unity will prove elusive. If we instead confront our differences, he says, “Maybe we can devise compromise where everybody’s grumbly but can live with it.”