Well, if you asked 1000 people to draw a picture of a great American composer, how many are gonna draw Duke Ellington? If you ask 1000 people to draw a picture of a college professor, or a doctor, or a lawyer, how many of them would be black? Yeah, I do think it has something to do with race, but not the way you’re setting it up. Up until very recently, the American idea of just about any American was white, because blacks - whether they were educated and lived in the city or poor country bumpkins - fell under the banner “nigger”. This despite the fact that there were plenty of black people who would have been described as “hillbillies” if they’d been white. Obviously this is conjecture, but I’d submit that the fact that both terms discussed are seen to apply strictly to whites is because of whites’ racism against blacks, not because the other races manufactured their own epithets for caucasians. It’d be interesting to trace the use of the words back, and see if they were used primarily by whites or other ethnicities through the majority of their existence.
Before forming an opinion about the validity of the term “hillbilly” I’d recommend renting (if possible) the video 3-part series on The Appalachians which was produced with the assistance of Nashville’s PBS affiliate WNPT. (This link is to a review by the Washington Post).
Anyone who lives in, or who has had dealings with those who live in, this region would be glad to discuss the significance of the term.
I mist confess to having no such link for Rednecks.
Shame on me. I was.
I suspect 1000 black folks might well draw someone black. We are not talking about superlatives here, but pejoratives. To call someone a bad name, and associate it with their race, is racist. I take my cue from Richard Preyer, who foreswore ‘nigger’ for that very reason. He concluded that it was a nasty, obscene, degrading term no matter who said it. It matters not the ethnicity of the slanderer.
You seem to be agreeing that ‘hilbilly’ refers to whites. Did I misunderstand you? You also seem to be saying that it does so because of white racism against blacks. This has me puzzled.
For a brief comment, see my post #21 in this thread.
For more insights, check out this conversation with Jim Comstock (bolding mine):
Ask them next to draw a picture of a kindergarten teacher, wouldja? If more than one draws a man, I’ll be shocked.
Hillbilly and redneck are slightly less offensive than dork and geek. Comparing them to “nigger” is absolutely ridiculous.
Daniel
I agree. Even supposedly derogatory terms such as “whitey” or “honkey” don’t quite have the same cachet.
Sounds like we need new epithets!
Redneck or nigger? You can pile layers of politically correct hot air and pseudo-etymological malarkey on it (and these threads are always full of it), but deep down, every minimally intelligent American grownup knows it’s the same damn thing. If one is hate speech, so is the other.
I’ll stop complaining about redneck, hillbilly and white trash the day the mods get rid of the hate speech rule altogether.
Why don’t you take your cue from Chris Rock, or DL Hugley, or Dave Chappelle or any the African-Americans who make a living the way Pryor did? Do their opinions on the subject not matter? If Pryor woke up tomorrow and said, “Dracula…Dracula? What kind of name is that for nigger?” again, would you take that cue and consider it okay for African-Americans to call African-Americans, nigger?
When ‘kindergarten teacher’ becomes a term of derision we can try your test.
Less offensive? To you, perhaps. I am fascinated by your ability assign meanings to words at your convenience, all the while claiming that they have no inherent meanings at all.
Find somewhere that I did that, other than to question why one set of standards is not applied equally. I was merely pointing out the ridiculousness of claiming that they are race neutral.
That’s a fair question, I suppose. I don’t find the three gentlemen you mention particularly shrewd, but I am not of their generation. And I am not saying it is ‘OK’ for anybody to call anybody anything, only that if a word is inherently racist it is so no matter who says it.
Irrelevant. The point is that, though a word may stereotypically be associated with a particular race/gender/etc., many people will, when confronted with the stereotype, admit that the word works perfectly well when applied counter-type.
While I hate to ruin your fascination, I gotta say that you clearly don’t understand me. I say they’re less offensive for a trio of reasons:
- I find them less offensive, so from my view, they’re less offensive; and
- I strongly suspect that most people who are called “redneck” and “hillbilly” are not quite as offended as most folks who are called “dork” and “geek”; and
- I strongly suspect that most people who call someone “redneck” and “hillbilly” intend slightly less offense than most folks who calls someone “dork” and “geek.”
That’s entirely consistent with the common-sense view that words have no inherent meaning, but that words derive their power from the shared meaning assigned to them by a culture.
T’ain’t all about you, friend.
Why, speak of the devil. So tell me, Hyperelastic, do True Scotsmen know that it’s the same damn thing, too?
Do you genuinely believe that folks stereotypically considered hillbillies would be as upset by your use of the word against them as folks stereotypically considered niggers would be by your use of that word against them?
Daniel
Contrapuntal you want fairness where there isn’t. You want the rules to make sense and they don’t. Is the term Rapper, racist?
If you ask 1000 people to draw a rapper, 999 will draw a black person; Is Rapper a racist term? If I walk up to a black person, who is “dressed” as a rapper and say, you Rapper, I’ve committed hate speech am I a racist? How about if I say “you stupid Rapper”, is that racist? How about, “you’re white, stop acting like a rapper?” Racist yet?
How does it work, again?
It needs to have the perception of a particular “race”. Check.
It needs to have a negative connotation. Check.
So, why isn’t Rapper a racist term or is it?
Yes, but you said you take your cue from Richard Pryor’s decision to stop using the word. So I ask again, if Mr. Pryor decided tomorrow that using nigger in certain contents and contexts wasn’t racist, would you agree?
Right, if you assume “redneck” and “hillbilly” are associated with race. Like I said, I’ve almost always used and heard it used to describe class differences, but maybe that’s a regional thing.
You mean the Richard Pryor who put out That Nigger’s Crazy? The Richard Pryor I hear nightly at work on Defcon radio using the word “nigger” as a general description in damn near every routine? Hey, I respect Richard Pryor, but I have to disagree. If the majority of young black people (at least where I live) use “nigger” (really “nigga”) as a sign of affection, pretty much interchangable with “blood”, I have to conclude it’s no longer nasty, obscene or degrading - at least not in every context. I was lectured a while back on these boards about the fluid nature of language, and I say if it’s evolving to defuse the hate behind the word, more power to it. Who knows? In 200 years, it might be a race-neutral word that connotes “friend”. The history of language is full of such flip-flops.
No, I’m arguing that if 999 out of 1000 people will draw a white person when given “hillbilly” it’s because whites already had a much worse catch-all term for blacks: “nigger”. Sure, some blacks might have technically been hillbillies because of location/background/upbringing, but why lump them in with what was a much milder (as epithets go) group when you could keep them in their place (and point out that they were inferior to even their “trashy” white counterparts) with something so hate-filled? Which ties into what Left Hand of Dorkness is saying: comparing these terms to words like “nigger” or “slope” makes you look somewhat foolish. Especially when it seems to be mostly white people who use the words (at least around here - “cracker” seems to be more racially charged).
Dork and geek are good examples. Ask people to draw pictures of a dork and how many would draw a guy? Probably all. So is “dork” sexist hate speech?
Ask people to draw pictures of a nebbish and how many would attempt to draw Woody Allen? So is “nebbish” anti-Semitic hate speech?
Well if a database on the internet calls it a slur it must be. Case closed. Although I do love hillwilliam and ditchpig and intend to use them liberally.
We seem to have yet more offense by proxy. I tend to doubt many people here have been wounded by being called redneck or hillbilly, but they feel a need to protect that nebulous group somewhere who is almost certainly feeling their self worth ebbing away under the burden of such ridicule.
I tend to doubt that these terms are causing the terrible suffering that the easily offended are imagining. I would be appalled if the administration were to classify these terms as hate speech and find this type of nitpicking and language policing to be juvenile. If you are offended then just don’t read it. Pretending that redneck is akin to nigger is nincompoopery at its finest and puts you both in a tiny minority and makes you look like a twit.
The fact that there are slurs used againt historically oppressed minorities doesn’t mean that white people have to have some offensive words to claim as their own. There are no words with the historical baggage that would justify taking deep offense. In short, relax people. Feel free to start a pit thread if you must, but butt out of threads where these words are used. If you want to live life in a constant state of high dudgeon I can’t stop you, but the endless whining over the oppression of white people is a bit much.
You know, that’s exactly how I would have said it had I not been completely frazzled by being up for 25 hours. Well, also had I not been born such an inarticulate fartwit. Good job! I hereby give you permission to speak for me for the rest of this thread while I attempt to attain sweet, elusive sleep.
Just curious, fruitbat. Do you take any personal offense whenever you hear somebody being called a “Washington DC dipshit”? If not, then I see you live by your own preachings.
If so, then perhaps you might see the point that not every use of the terms involved is an innocent and well-thought-out description of the people of a region or an economic class.
What irritates me most about your stance is that it appears to me that you can stand back and pronouce how people are to take whatever is said as if it’s just a word or a phrase.
If no offense is intended, why use a word that carries offensive overtones?
If the best one can find to be amused by is people with lower social standing than one’s own, I contend that those standards of entertainment are best suited to Beavis and Butthead level humor. That’s the effect that the thread being pitted had on me, and why I’ve chosen to express my disgust with it here.
If this all has no real meaning to you, why did you post here?
So, if redneck and hillbilly are offensive racial terms, why are so few white people offended by them? I’m not entirely unsympathetic to the idea that the terms are offenisive in and of themselves, but I just don’t buy the racial component. You use the word “nigger,” and there are very few black people who won’t take offence. You use the word “kike,” and there are very few Jews who won’t take offence. You use the word “hillbilly,” and some white people will take offence. If it were truly a racial slur, and not a geographic/economic/classist slur, I think reactions to it would be more universal among the target demographic.
Speaking purely for myself, as I have been in this thread, I make no pretense that “hillbilly” and “redneck” are racial slurs. Not racial.
The offensive nature is that lackwits and lazy people who have no better clue about other people in their environment will use such terms as if they are humorous. The fact that these terms are meant to poke fun at a class of people (many times located in the Southern – or at least rural – sections of the country) who are with less education, breeding, financial standing, just shows how inadequate these people’s (those choosing to use such terms) opinions are to begin with. It’s as if they’re saying, “Hey! I’m stupid. Ignore what I say.”
As a general rule, I do ignore them for that very reason.
It’s when people start acting as if this position has some merit that I get annoyed, and then I will say what’s on my mind about it. If you continue to think it’s funny to call people you know little about rednecks and hillbillies and crackers and white trash and trailer trash and yokels, I will use my prerogative to ignore you.
But if you choose to make an issue of it, then I feel it’s my prerogative to be heard as well.
If the shoe don’t fit, don’t wear it.