Okay, White 'Murrica....

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes but not all racism is equally harmful. Curiously, there are not many jokes about whites that portray negative stereotypes, such as higher than average criminal activity -

of course there are......

-they're holdovers from when certain groups of caucasians weren't considered "white" or even particularly human: the hillbilly, for example
-or current groups widely considered to be fair game for racist humor: the cracker, the redneck, for example

You have to remember that where you're from, and where we're from..aint the same place. I think the jokes are hilarious...but as you said..they are what they are. The hillbilly stereotype was intentionally created to do real and palpable harm, btw. "Fuck those hillbillys out there dying in the mines, half human maybe but mostly animals, lost on rotgut, diddling their sisters.": Let me translate that for you; "We need their resources, their labor, and their products, but don't want to extend any of this life they're losing their own to create for us -to them-".

-Sound familiar yet? Guess what, papers loved to print bigoted little cartoons depicting the stereotype and run news stories that were plainly fabricated and sensationalist to prop it up. Them boys, then, to them..weren't "white". We consider them white now...the whitest of the white even, but we still tell the jokes.....

The rednecks were striking miners FFS! Not that most people have the slightest inkling of how the term came to mean something derogatory by way of a dedicated media campaign against a group that was being bombed, by US Forces..on US soil...from the air - at the behest of Business. Of course, they were also shooting and beating them on the ground, but that was only incidental. They wouldn't stop causing a ruckus in their little company containment camps...were they were paid with company scrip.......

(As far as criminal activity goes......I think you'll find that rednecks, crackers, and "the hillbilly" are perceived rather poorly on that count as well. Drug dealers and growers, gunrunners, moonshiners, generally clanish motherfuckers that might shoot you if you wander too deep into the woods...but especially dangerous, if you got a purdy mouff)

Give you a little insight into my experience...when I do spend time in the NE US...whenever I hear someone use the word "redneck" is sounds suspsiciously like another descriptor almost synonymous with the south and meant, essentially, in entirely the same manner. No harm no foul I guess...we use those words as derogatory remarks about each other as well. LOL, doesn't this all sound so very familiar?

For transparency...I'm a hillbilly by birth - a cracker by upbringing, and a redneck by default.
(the cracker one really pisses me off, btw......how else are you supposed to herd cattle in a fucking swamp!)