What's the deal with the stereotypically "angry racist rural person"?

In My Humble Opinion
81

No it’s not.
For certain people on this board to comment over and over that ALL rural people are racist and ALL rural people are stupid and ALL rural people are undereducated and ALL rural people are bigoted and that liberal city people are far superior is just another form of bigotry and hatred.
The see thread after thread where certain people try to justify why they feel that way and why they are correct for feeling that way is rather enlightening.
Anytime one group of people put another group of people down based on stereotypes it is WRONG.
That certain people cannot see the hypocrisy mind boggling to me.

Some people aren’t happy unless they have somebody to put down and some way to make themselves feel superior.
So it’s not COOL in their group to hate blacks, or Jews or Muslims so they change it to making fun of and picking on county people or Southerners and sit back and congratulate that they are so much better than those undereducated racist yokels.

It’s no damn different, it’s still an us against them mentality.
It’s still the same bigotry.

Saying ALL rural people are the same is No different than saying all blacks are the same. That YOU cant see that??? And you call me a dummy!!!

Before you go pointing your finger at me and calling me names you need to take a long hard look at yourself and why YOU think it’s okay to down an entire group of people based on the actions of a few.

And don’t ever accuse ME of bullying anybody or even wanting to.
It’s not what I said at all.
You don’t know me and YOU have no goddamn right to make that assumption.

82

I apologize for the length of this post ahead of time.

Normally, I don’t dive into controversial topics, but I must say that this particular topic is something I have first hand experience with. That is to say that I may have a different perspective on this entire issue.

I was born in Atlanta GA in the middle part of the 20th Century when the entire suburban population was only about 500,000. When I moved away that number was more than 5,000,000. My suburb in the 1960s was comprised almost entirely of non-Latino white people. I did not meet a single black person until I was about 8 years old, and was shocked to find out that my new classmates/friends were just like me but with what I called ‘a super suntan’. I was fortunate that my father was very progressive for his time. He did not allow people to use racial slurs in his house. I grew up accepting people as ‘humans’ as opposed to ‘others’ from as far back as I can remember. So, I have been by the side of the folks who have been bullied for their race and have been bullied myself because of it.

My home city grew from a culture of racial fear to racial acceptance and now even, perhaps, something approaching harmony. It took 50 years and a lot of “two steps forward, one backwards” kind of progress to get to the current status but it is certainly more sane and equitable than it was. However, that being said, the further you get from the center of Atlanta, the more racially unbalanced the communities become.

When I married my first wife, I moved to Athens, GA (60 miles east of Atlanta). The culture shock I got when I arrived was significant. There was an amazing amount of ‘plantation mentality’ still in play in everyday life. Nowhere near as bad as Jim Crow, but there were definitely racial barriers that I hadn’t seen in years still in place. That changed gradually in the 25 years I lived there to a more tolerant (at least superficially) environment, but lets just say that there are many social and racial imbalances that have yet to be equalized.

Now, I live on the very outskirts of the Great Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee. It is very rare to see any non-white people here in the nearby local’s (as opposed to tourist’s) town. And yet, when they are encountered they are treated the same as if they were any other person. I am quite certain that racial jokes and slurs are more common here than they were back in the ‘Big City’ but the effects are not that noticeable. A black family or even a mixed-race family who live here aren’t ostracised as far as I can tell. It actually feels more like Atlanta than it does Athens to me. I hypothesize that it may be because with a lower density of non-white people, even the less tolerant white folks are socially inhibited from exhibiting their intolerance. However, I live out here in the woods, not in town. I could be just viewing things through rose-colored glasses.

I like to believe that most people are essentially good when their basic needs are met. Many are even when they have to go without. Kind to their neighbors, open-hearted to those who are strangers. But it does not take many folks who oppose the norm to subvert the system and cause it to invert upon itself. The fear of the other has been used since time immemorial to consolidate power of the tribe for the use of a few or one by using distrust and fear of ‘The Other’.

Bigotry is bigotry irrespective of who is being bigoted against whom. Humans are humans. The sooner we realize that, the sooner this kind of foolishness will fade away into history like the divine right of kings. Or so I hope. I also want a pony.

83

I’ve lived in both, and agree that Stadtluft macht frei, with the proviso that only if you want to be free.

84

True. Even small Southern towns have lots of gay people and always have. Sometimes I think that my tiny hometown (pop 1600) in Louisiana must have something in the water because of the number of gay people that have come out over the years and some were completely unexpected. There has always been somewhat of a tradition of having a ‘town queer’ or two in such places. It was almost always a successful older gay man who was flamboyant and just didn’t care what people thought so they were open about it. Even in places that were very unfriendly to gay issues in general, people did not generally mess with the town queer and accepted them as one of their own. Today there are a whole lot more gay people coming out of the closet than there were in the past because gay people are just as likely to be born and raised in rural Alabama as they are in San Francisco.

85

Agreed. Dan Savage is an absolute idiot. And people that pay attention to him are morons.

86

I see what you did there. But Dan Savage (who most certainly is not an idiot) does not have a radio show AFAIK.

87

I live in a big city (a midwestern state capital), and my next-door neighbor is a professor of Agricultural Economics at the local land grant university.

He grows corn and soybeans on the weekends on a pretty big farm in the rural southwest of our state, about 150 miles away. He takes two weeks off at harvest time, and hires a few general farm laborers to help him out then.

He gets the stink eye from the local farmers whenever he stops by the local cafe or hardware store because his presence reminds them that he is doing part-time what they do full time. And because they probably think that he is too good to sit down with them and drink coffee with them all day long.

That’s the conclusion that my neighbor has reached, and I believe he’s analyzed the situation correctly, because he’s one of the friendliest people I know, and people just naturally gravitate toward him.

So, yeah, while there are some farmers who work 10+ hours every day of the year (probably dairy farmers, the poor things), there are a hell of a lot of them who definitely have a lot of time on their hands.

I mean, if my neighbor can accomplish on weekends (and probably only every other weekend, at that) what others consider a full-time job, then I’m going to conclude that there is a lot of free time among many crop farmers.

88

Thats what I found odd about this one town in south Dakota we visited. Its surrounded by famrland yet after talking to people, few are actually farmers since the farms are so big now only a few actually own land. Everyone else drives to other areas to find work. The biggest employer in the town is the nursing home.

89

Only if done on weekdays and to locals. If it’s a weekend, out-of-towners only thing then it counts as “hobby”.

90

I live in a semi-rural area outside of a mid-sized city and most of the change in this area occurs at a glacial pace. I have even had people called “colored” when that hasn’t been acceptable public vernacular in most place for well over 40 years.

People around here and in other rural places where I have visited or lived like to things to remain the way that they are. Many never left their rural upbringing for a hist of reasons from apathy to fear to prejudice. They remain where they are because going to the “big city” is scary and you have ( at leafs most of the time) step up your game to compete there.

Cliven Bundy lives in rural Nevada. WIth the exception of the odd Native American ( who are often treated poorly) and Hispanic migrant workers, he likely hasn’t had to deal with minorities or openly gay people much in his lifetime. As such, his worldview like his town, Bunkerville, is monochromatic. Anything that differs from that is treated with suspicion or fear and he reacts accordingly.

Are there enlightened rural people?
Of course.
However, since mankind began gathering in urban areas, it was easier for such people to move there to be around many more enlightened people than to stay in rural areas and be among the few (if only) ones around.

91

I think this is an important point. The self-selection of who stays there makes it more reactionary than it would be even naturally.

There are some places where this phenomenon operates in reverse: progressives from NYC moving to Vermont, for instance. Even near me, in rural Missouri: I know of three “intentional communities” where people have moved from all over the country, mostly from urban areas in blue states, to take advantage of the cheap land and fertile soil and live out their agrarian utopic dreams. But they amount to a few dozen people among thousands of others who are native to the area and pointedly do not share their values.

This reminds me to mention another big reason sparking the anger: a fundamental conflict, particularly in countries with large areas of rural land colonised by Europeans (meaning in particular the U.S., Canada, and Australia) between the descendants of white settlers and the modern urban intellectuals who have increasingly gained power in the federal government.

The settlers and their descendants mostly did not move to these very remote, rural areas of the West to enjoy the beautiful mountain vistas and clean air. They expended great effort to travel all those distances and set up outposts far from civilisation, either because of a general orneriness and desire to be apart from society, and/or with rapacious greed, a desire to rip resources from the land and enrich themselves with those resources. So you get Alaska politicians like Rep. Don Young, who during Democratic administrations constantly wars with the EPA, Interior Dept., etc.

These folks had a nice long run of either having no government interference in their efforts to wring as much profit as possible out of previously unspoiled wilderness, environmental consequences be damned, or had the federal government actually aid them in doing so while letting taxpayers from urban areas largely foot the bill. In the past few decades, the feds have intermittently (during Democratic administrations) tried to slow down this gravy train in the name of environmentalism and fairness, and these rural folks don’t like it one bit. That, I think, more than anything, is what they are all hopping mad about.

92

Quote: Originally Posted by Little_Pig

Maybe lack of post secondary education too?

You serious?

93

There are a thousand different kinds of farmer, from huge factory farms to high school kids who farm in their spare time for book money. Some have other careers, like construction jobs, that they pursue during whatever down time they may have, depending on their particular farm. Not every farm is a few fields of Milo and Alfalfa. Some, like my family’s, covered a lot of bases in several hundred acres: Soybeans, Angus Cattle, truck patches, walnuts, chicken coops, and quarter horses. There is always work to do, animals to feed, equipment and buildings to repair, horses to move in trailers. A week’s vacation at Xmas is a huge deal. I just think it’s funny that folks think farmers are like teachers, with three months off to hang out at the general store by the pickle barrel. Sure, some farms have slow time, some not so much. In other words, not all farmers are the same.

94

Yes, yes I am. Most of my classmates (This is from a Catholic High School, in small town Nebraska) went on to college. There are Nuclear Physicists, Poets and Molecular Biologists in Nebraska and the surrounding States.
All of them can craft a reply better than:

95

Quote:
Originally Posted by Little_Pig View Post
You serious?
Maybe, maybe not. I was responding to the first sentence of the OP. Wanna reread?

96

ROTFLMAO!

One doesn’t expect to see nuggets of pure humor like this in IMHO.

97

I got interrupted last night while replying to Spiff. What I was going to add was, my reply to boblibdem wasn’t worded very well … I wasn’t laughing at him, just at how hard my family worked as farmers and at the stereotype of all farmers having months off to do nothing at all. It’s absolutely true that crop farmers, many of whom lease the land they work, have lots of down time from working those fields.
Regarding your post, Spiff … point taken.

98

Which two weeks does he take off? How much work does HE get done in those two weeks? How does he account for bad weather or improper crop maturity if he plans his two week vacation at the wrong time? How much does he farm?

I can assure you the the “coffee shop crowd” that is supposedly there “all day” is comprised of a fewer percentage of farmers.

There are a few guys that hang out in the coffee shops but they are usually older, retirement-age guys or farmers that just stopped by for a half-hour to shoot the breeze. Don’t most jobs get a break throughout the day?

I can also assure you that most farmers gravitate towards work. If it’s raining, a lot of them are in the shop, working on down equipment or hauling grain. Livestock chores, especially for dairy or hog farmers can take up the better part of the day. Guys with beef cattle have spend a lot of time with their animals as well.

I know a thing or two about this subject because I am a part-time farmer as well. I farm 300 acres part-time myself. I also work rotating shifts at a full-time job. It’s not an easy life but I’m hoping that the land was a good investment.

It’s next to impossible to just pick a calendar date and just say you are going to “go out and get some farming done”. I tried that just last fall. What do you know, I was too early in my judgement call and the beans weren’t ready yet. I ended up having bean harvest spread out clear into November, which is very unusual. I believe it was pretty darn close to December before I put the tractor away from fall tillage.

Anybody who thinks that the majority of farmers are coffee-shop jockeys is utterly clueless.

I myself just woke up from sleeping a few hours after a night shift. I’m typing this during my own cup of coffee wake-up routine and am gonna run out and do some field cultivating until I can’t see any more.

99

To say nothing of the irony. City dwellers accusing rural populations of being indoctrinated into racism and hatred, as if city dwellers haven’t been indoctrinated to look down on provincials as long as there have been cities.

100

With justification, as long as there have been cities. At least, that would be my strong sense–obviously I wasn’t there.