Cultural and Genetic Baggage in "Tuscaloosa Knights"

"Tuscaloosa Knights" is a story about two progressive intellectuals who find themselves observing a primitive, malevolent display of ideology. I think the realization that comes about from the action, dialogue, and undertones of this story is that these two individuals, though their politics differ sharply from the world around them, are ultimately the same as the people they despise. This sameness, I think, exists for two different reasons, and these reasons are the theme of the story: from cultural influence, which runs so deep one can apparently never completely escape it, and from genetic determinism, which creates an innateness in all of us that is so strong, neither the most obedient nor the most subversive politics can overcome it.
Pinion is very quick to distance himself from his alleged cousin, who must be at least his half cousin, unless the despicable uncle is his aunt's husband. But Pinion is a case study in the unreformed southerner, most overtly through his violent temperament. If you recall, the author implicitly mentions that his servant is black. While Pinion is in no capacity a slave-owner, or someone who acts like it, it is a curious thing that someone so consciously against that old Dixie mentality would employ a reminder of it. It is both symbolic and diegesisical evidence that Pinion hasn't completely shaken off the world of his grandfathers. Also, while drunk driving is not exclusively a southern vice, it stands out as unrefined behavior, especially for a congressman.
The theme of genetic determinism comes in when the narrator brings up Pinion's shooting of his cousin. His Klansmen kin, he is quick to point out (albeit with a flimsy denial) that this guy is very different from him, and they could not be from the same "family." But Pinion is very much like him - after all, he shot him! This is something given to him by genetics, and Pinion must be conscious of this, because he is extremely upset when the narrator vocally starts to piece together his past.
The narrator shows her primitive side in the sex scene. This woman is a feminist. You can tell in both her despising of the town she is forced to live in, and in the way she interacts with Pinion. Yet, notice the language she uses to describe the sex - "what he was about to do to me," "what could I do - go limp, fight, scream?" Sex is now a receptive act for her, the female, the opposite of who she wants to be, and just what this culture she hates would want from her.
But why consciously be the primitivism we hate so much? The answer, I think, is in the metaphor of Bryce patients running lost through the woods and toward the burning cross. The running, confused patients represent humans in their existential state, especially for our two characters who find themselves living in a culture they sharply disagree with. Lost, and seemingly directionless, they run toward the familiar, easily achieved primitivism of things drinking too much, sex in a car, and violence. In times of confusion, primitivism is a bright, burning oasis, both because it is the social norm and because it was innate in them all along.