Sure, the video has it’s token blacks and latinos, but the song itself is just about as racist as it gets. What is a “redneck” anyway? A white guy with a sunburn, right? Wrong. So when did the term “redneck” grow to include minorities? Maybe this is just a misperception on my part but I have always marginally equated the term “redneck” to mean “racist”, among other things. Or was it is a conscious effort by the redneck community to branch out and commercialize the term “redneck” to sell more records? I wouldn’t put it past them.
I watched the video and all the while I wondered if any of the minorities felt odd or silly while they danced around lip synching the words to the brand new anthem of racists nationwide. Since I am not a monority I don’t feel it’s my responsibility to judge what a minority should find offensive, but I wonder if any did/do find it offensive. Did I mention that the minorities were included in heaps, far exceeding the average number in a country video. Can you imagine the kind of response they would have received had they not been so PC?
Maybe you have seen the video or heard the song and feel I am being overly sensitive, but I simply havn’t heard or experienced the positive aspects of being a redneck. I would be a fool to dismiss the fact that minorities too have their fair share of songs in support of their lifestyle which may be construed as marginally racist, but that doesn’t make their songs “alright” either.
I pointing the finger because I feel that certain words, including “redneck”, should be forgotten instead of stretched to include minorities. I feel it is a subversive plot, as unintentional as it may be, to further the racial divide. Don’t tell me it wasn’t subversive or that the video producers hadn’t considered the fact that the song may have racist undertones. Why else would they have packed the video full of dancing, smiling-faced minorities in every third frame? Because they wanted to sell racist music with the flimsy alibi that they had included minorities in the video. Dinch you see 'em? Of course I saw them. You made sure I saw them. It is a shame that even 150 hundred years after the fall of slavery, racism is still promoted as something “OK” or “alright”. Tolerence is the very root of racism.
So my final thoughts are these: Are all rednecks racists? Who knows? Is there a handful of minorities out there that have recently come to consider themselves “rednecks”? I very seriously doubt it. If you had asked a black man in 1950 if he considered himself a “redneck” he probably would have thought you were the biggest idiot on the face of the planet, or if there was a black man who considered himself a “redneck” he would be the sell-out of the century and a tool to the very racists who had him drinking from a different water fountain than them. The lyrics.
Redneck is an indication of class rather than an actual association with racism. Rednecks are(were) the white farmers who cannot(could not) afford machinery and who developed red necks with their heads bowed over their hoes trying to get their crops to grow. Since the 1950s/1960s version of the KKK was able to do their most effective recruiting from among that group (as opposed to the 1920s KKK that included the local banker, the mayor, and assorted town fathers), the term (always an insult) was often hurled by the louder civil rights advocates at poor Southern racists. In other words, the civil rights people were using a derogatory term of class to demean specific members of racist groups. That does not mean that everyone in that class is necessarily a racist–they’re just poor.
I’m not sure that it is fair or valid to take a term used in derision for a group and apply an additional negative connotation to it just because it has been hurled that way in anger.
If there are people who identify themselves (either by their current condition or by the conditions under which their parents grew up) with a name linking them to a specific “undesirable” social class, it sounds like the sort of thing that every group attempts to do: take the sting out of a word by embracing it.
This is a stunning revelation which goes against my theory that there are in actuality no rednecks at all: “I ain’t no redneck, but I suren’hell knowed some.”
In all seriousness, I knew some red plaid wearin’, Red Man chewin’, wouldn’t be caught dead without a Budweiser kinds of guys who (myself included) hung out with black guys, this in an area and at a time when the Tri-Kaps were still marching through town.
However, other rednecks did not feel this was acceptable behavior. Those guys were fuckin’ rednecks.
Maybe it is a misperception. I don’t automatically equate “redneck” with “racist.” Technically, I think the term came about as a derogatory description of farm boys — they were out working on the farm all day, and ended up with a sunburn on their necks (unlike the cooler, hipper folks who had time on their hands to go get a suntan.) We always used to tease my Dad about his “farmer’s tan” — a deep tan on the face and neck, and on the arms from mid-bicep down, but ghostly white everywhere else on his body.
I haven’t seen the video, and I just read the lyrics off the site you cited. (I don’t listen to country music. It has always seemed too … redneck to me.) It seems pretty innocuous to me. It seemed pretty much to fit the image of a redneck that I have — the guys who like to spend their time fishing and hunting, and take an unnatural amount of pride in their pickup trucks.
Honestly, of the character traits which I would ascribe to being a redneck, I don’t see anything that would preclude a black or Latino from being part of the group.
Does this group include some racists as a subset of the group? Absolutely. I would venture to guess that the rednecks, as a group, probably even include a larger proportion of racists than the general population, since, by definition, rednecks tend to be old-fashioned, and racism was once more acceptable than it is now. Does that mean that, by definition, every redneck is a racist? Nope.
A redneck is not what I would aspire to be, but I know several who are fine, decent people. I would agree that glorifying racism would be terrible, but I don’t equate rednecks with racism, so I just don’t get your outrage over this.
I thought I had said it once already, but I will say it again for the last time:
I was under the impression that the term “redneck” somehow equated to “racist”. Why? Because the majority of rednecks I have known were racist.
I am glad this discussion arose because I am pretty confidant that I am not the only person who has lived their entire life(except fot the last five minutes) with the same impression.
Thanks, but if you look very, very, closely you will notice that I included a link to the lyrics in the OP. Of course, those of you with your eyes closed will need to open them to clearly see it.
Sheee-it! We got lots of rednecks around here. Some are racist, some aren’t.
Truth be told I grew up in NYC and I think there’s a lot more racism there than here in Central PA. There’s a lot more differences between classes which run along racial lines in NYC, though.
Some rednecks here are racist. Others aren’t.
We have some black farmers who live nearby, and they qualify as rednecks, or blacknecks, or whatever.
Whe have lots of hispanic migrant workers come through to pick cantalopes and such. They drive up in old vans, camp out, and work like devils.
Most people think rather highly of them because of their longstanding work-ethic and polite behavior.
The chief editor of our newspaper is a black man, a member of the country club, a two handicap and much wanted partner for the club tennis finals every year.
When I lived in Louisiana I thought there was a lot of racism, but still a lot less than in NYC.
My experience is that your average redneck is probably less apt to be racist than Joe Liberal in the city.
YEESH! It doesn’t even SOUND like a redneck! You know, meeting a date at the family reunion, missing teeth, buttcrack showing, paintings of Elvis on velvet…
Although a stack of posts in a row disagreeing with your thesis, some of which seemed to repeat pretty much the same material, may seem like we’re piling on, it’s actually just a fact of life on the boards. When I read your post, it had 0 replies. I then took about 20-30 minutes to compose my reply. When I previewed it, I saw that much of what I had written had already been covered (in a much more scholarly fashion) by tomndebb, but by that time, I had invested enough time in the post that I wasn’t just going to just say “My work here has already been done!” and hit the delete key. I just left it in there as a wordy version of “Me, too.”
And if someone else has already jumped in ahead of me and said the same thing again, I’m STILL going to post this one, too.
The term “redneck” was still enough of an insult to appear as one when Jerry Clower told the story of Marcel Ledbetter and the chainsaw (around 1974). At that time the context of the word = White Trash.
Since that time I believe the world has been made safe for rednecks by Jeff Foxworthy.
I think Alan Jackson’s song is in honor of guys who like country music, shootin’ pool, bass fishing, and Monday night Football. Certainly there are blacks, American Indians, Jews, and Mexican-Americans who fit that profile - I live in west Texas, have lived in New Mexico, and have seen with my own two eyes many “minority” folks guzzle bear, go line dance, and attend rodeos. The other day I did a double take seeing a guy wearing a yamulke driving a huge ass pickup blaring country music near the New Mexico state line. I’m personally not in that crowd, but I don’t automatically associate “redneck” with racism.
Some rednecks are as racist as hell, and give the rest of redneckdom a bad name. But there are also racists that eat bris and sip Don Perignon, attend the opera, and participate in steeplechase events. But we accept a certain degree of “not my sort” elitism among the upper class don’t we? Personally, I think these racists usually do more harm to society than they ones who spend their free time in a bass boat with a case of Coors.
