(November 7, 2012 at 8:48 pm)Minimalist Wrote:Quote:So be careful with the word "redneck" because I can personally tell you they do not fit that stereotype.
Look at the map. Is every person who lives in Alabama a redneck asshole? No. But they are still the majority in those states.
If Romney was running for President of the Confederacy, he wins.
Look, I really am not a sensor Nazi and hardly pollically correct. What is really going on is that you take hurting people who mostly do not have higher education and live mostly within a confined bubble with no exposure to the outside world and that combo with the feeling of hoplessness transends labels.
Yes Romney would win a Presidency if the South did seperate. But again, just like we should not scrap brave progressives like 14 year old Malala who is a Muslim in Pakistan wanting better for girls and women. My "redneck" friend is a stereotyp broken in the fact that he is a liberal and an atheist.
Time really is on the side of progressives regardless of what state they may live in. Texas voted 40% for Obama and in 2016 it will get more purple and may even turn blue by 2020.
I drove through Allabama taking my mother to a weding a few years back. It is as much a geographical issue because it is an island so it is much more easy for the poor and middle class to get sucked into theocratic thinking.
The good thing is that media is making it harder for bubbles to exist. And I can tell you I am damned glad to know there are "rednecks" like Woody Guthrie who supporte liberal ideas like workers rights. I am damned glad that Billy Ray Sirus endorced Obama.
The way to break that grip is to grow a bigger tent. We did it with women, gays and blacks and we can do it with "rednecks" too.
Even that guy who wrote "Mammas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys", Willie Nelson. But he even wrote and produced a song about equality for gays. Google Willie Nelson's "Gay cowboy song".
It is ok to be mad about the right wing monopoly about the south, but they are victims too, and my friend Hillbilly Atheist is an example of escaping that dogmatic mind trap. Lets grow to include, not exclude.
In fact, the next time I talk to him I am going to tell him I stuck up for him and I damned sure know he will cry just like he did when I wrote the poem about Woodie Guthrie "Dusty Banjo".
My point is to treat individuals as such and that will and can be the attraction to break the "rednecks" away from the vultures who have sold them a bill of goods.
They can be educated like HB IS they can love sports like baseball and NFL like we do. They can be liberals and progressives like we are.
I even told HB and I damned well mean it. If he ever starts a bluegrass band that has atheist themes, I damned well will support it, and would go backstage and support it, maybe with earplugs on but, he is that crack in his world that their bubble needs.
While we cannot ignor or should not ignore bigotry, at the same time when we see compassion in others like my friend and like Billy Ray Sirus and Willie Nelson, we cant let where they came from be a litmus test.
We still utimately are the same species and we can find frienship and common ground outside our own labels. I am proud to have Hillbilly Atheist as my friend. I am proud of Willie Nelson not hiding out of fear of the culture he made money off of. I am proud of Woodie Guthrie even though I wasn't born then.
They understood human suffering and the struggle for equality and fair treatment. Their labels do not matter to me and have no doubt that while bigotry dominated Martin Luther King's time, the black movement in the south could not have happened without the help of whites and I am sure plenty of unknown whites although the minority existed in the south that helped them.
Having been bullied myself as a kid living under two authoritarian parents, even then, at a young age, I never understood bigotry. So I refuse to employ it with "rednecks". You are first a human being to me. If you are an asshole then you are an asshole, but that is a persooal thing not a label thing.
Poverty, lack of diversity and no major populations create that island the south suffers from. Instead of condeming all rednecks even if a majority are bigots, lets use those from within who are not to help us help them free them from their mind shackels.
