--Adele Givens
When I was 17, I scooted off to college at Howard University, "the capstone of Negro education." But it just as well could have been "the capstone of Negro wealth." Howard may be the most diverse collection of black people on the planet. I met black people from Montreal, Belize and Iowa. I met black people who spoke Russian and majored in math. I met black Jews. I met black biracials. I met black legacies who could stretch their ties to Howard back through generations. But what really marked me about Howard was that it was the first place I came into contact with black people of incredible means.
While this had practical implications, it's cultural ones are what I carry with me today. I had never heard of Jack and Jill, before I got to Howard, and I thought all black girls dyed their hair red/blue/blond and threw in finger-waves and extensions. It was at Howard that I learned that Tamika was a ghetto name--not an American one. Indeed, Howard was the first place where people didn't make fun of my name, but would stand back, nod and say, "Wow, brother that's deep. What's that mean? How'd you get that name?" You must understand that it was the tradition among a certain sect of students to give themselves African or Arabic names in their first year. I always took pride in telling them that I got my name from my Dad. They were old money--but I was Afrocentric before the word was even invented.
Howard was the first place where I got snapped on for pronouncing "carried" as "curried," for calling "Baltimore," "Baldimore," for calling a "pocket-book," a"pockiebook." The point isn't that Howard was a bastion of upper-class condescension--it most assuredly was not. When you black, everyone gets snapped on, for everything, and I've always found great democracy in that. But my point is that I learned what it meant to be "ghetto" at Howard. But what I've never learned, what I've never quite gotten is the white equivalent.
I've been thinking about this all through this Sarah Palin fiasco. I think within days, people were debating over whether she was, essentially, ghetto.
Here's Reihan for instance:
Attention all those who want to defeat McCain-Palin: please ridicule Sarah Palin. Five kids with silly white trash names! She was the mayor of a small town! Ha! I mean, look at her -- she mustserious? What a joke. Her mere existence is an insult to women. She eats moose, she rides a snowmobile, and she supports drilling. Look at her--she must be dumb! And where did she go to school? I mean, come on! I mean, is McCainAnd then:
Yes, ridiculing Palin as a hick and a rube, and devaluing her experience, comes naturally to the kind of people who take Barack Obama seriously as a presidential candidate.Really? I guess for a certain portion of Obama's base this is true, but I think a lot of black people (a nice-sized portion of Obama's base, no?) have no idea what that means. No disrespect to Reihan, because I don't doubt that some of this is going on. Indeed that's the point--I have no idea what the markers of "ghetto" are for white people. In fact, when I tried to point one out--eating moose--Matt, latte-sipping, Ivy-League elitist that he is, instantly rapped me and noted that eating moose, is in fact, a Northeastern elite delicacy.
I think a lot of black folks probably think Palin has a wierd accent, and that the story for naming her kid "Track" is stupid. But it's not like we have room to talk--I mean, some of us name our kids after alcoholic drinks (Alize, anyone?). Dumb names, if there are such a thing, are a truly multicutural--and multiclass--phenomena. Still, I had no idea that "Willow" was a "blue-collar white" name. I didn't know that having five kids was a marker of being lower-class--especially when all the kids are from the same pairing, and their being well cared for. Now, you can take that for what it's worth, given that I have six brothers and sisters by four mother (all, except me, college grads though!) so maybe I'm a bad judge. But in general, I feel like one of two things is happening. Either this idea of class-criticism is just strawmanship, or I'm blind to the intricate folkways of white people. I, frankly, suspect that it's both. If only I had a white spokesperson to defer to...
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
For starters, imagine the snaps at Howard working in reverse.
Great post. Love how you write. And you're making me all nostalgic for my salad days at Fisk. First time in my life I met people with money generations old...wealthy, not rich. I would ask though, that you advise that Howard was ONE of the capstones of Negro education. The Yard would ask no less.
Willow is the only choice for which I respect Gov. Palin, as any Buffy geek would.
Not sure if this is off topic or not, but one could probably fill volumes on why black people are "ghetto" and white people are "white trash". That always seems deeply problematic to me. When you want to indicate that white people are in a lower social class you have to point out their whiteness (Look! An exception!) but with black people you don't.
Speaking as a white midwesterner (family's been here since the 1750's but not amounted to much in that time)I can remember being astonished back in 91 or early 92 to learn that the Clintons' daughter was named Chelsea. I had no concept of that as anything but a trashy name and know I was in conversations along the lines of "If, in Arkansas, people who've been to Yale name their daughters Chelsea--what on earth do people in trailer park there call theirs?"
Not bragging, just trying to offer some data.
If only I had a white spokesperson to defer to...
Galactus would tell you that she is more of a yokel than a rube and clearly not a gomer, and then he would destroy your planet. Bonus points: the destruction of the earth would necessarily include the destruction of the library books Palin wanted to ban, and all those awful polar bears.
Your post reminds me of a trip I took in the early 90's. I was a freshman at large southern public university and my friends and I visited NC A&T for a football game. When we got out of the car, one of my friends, knowing that even though I am black I grew up in an almost all white neighborhood took me aside and said "Hey man, where at a black school, so don't do or say anything stupid." Memories...
I think you are right -- there is a lot of "diversity" amongst white people. My wife who is white and raised upper middle class last night said "What kind of name is Bristol!? That just sounds trashy. Of course she got pregnant at 17 with a name like that." The big joke amongst my friends is that if you name your daughter Brittney, she's going to be a stripper.
One thing here is to distinguish between Planet Gooper criticism of Palin, and Planet Earth criticism of Palin.
On Planet Gooper, the criticism of Palin is about her accent, her personal life, and her kids.
On Planet Earth, the criticism of Palin is about her record as mayor and Governor of lying, abuse of power, cooperation with corrupt forces she claims to oppose, and wingnuttery.
As to your main question: aren't "white trash" and "ghetto" pretty much functionally equivalent? I guess the difference is that "white trash" is connected with "country" or "hillbilly" white culture, while "ghetto" is about urban black culture.
The white equivalent of "ghetto," if there is such a thing, is more in line with stereotypical Southern white trash. People with ridiculous names that usually come in threes, usually some combination of "Billy," "Bob," "Ray," and "John." High school dropouts. Teenage pregnancy. Horrible grammar and unintelligible slang. Not so unlike the stereotypical "ghetto" African Americans. Palin doesn't fall into this category, because, though she is arguably a redneck, she hearkens to a more Western redneck ethos and lifestyle, with a strong libertarian streak. Western rednecks are a whole different breed than Southern rednecks. And I speak from experience. On my mom's side of the family, with roots in Bristol, TN/VA, and Winston-Salem, NC, I have three cousins who dropped out of high school, one who, but for her use of cocaine, would have given birth to twins at the age of 19, but instead only gave birth to one baby, and one who, after an abortion, got pregnant again and carried this to term, and is now at Appalachian State with her unwed boyfriend and father of her baby. All my cousins on that side are also children of now-divorced parents. That is Southern redneck. That is white "ghetto."
Indeed that's the point--I have no idea what the markers of "ghetto" are for white people.
Well, we spell it "redneck", for one thing, and Jeff Foxworthy has an entire dissertation on its signifiers. There's also a substantial documentary on the subject: "Larry the Cable Guy in Witless Protection".
What's galling is seeing the excellence and general achievement that Obama represents being turned into a liability. How does doing this inspire the population and help us in the future exactly? One would think that taking a blunt, divisive, simple view of the world is something to be celebrated. This coming from a group of multimillionaires and right wing intellectuals.
Great writing ... thank you! Sarah P = ghetto minus even the barest whiff of soul. Where I come from, we call that common.
And, hild, this Chelsea of which you speak, all I can say is ... I hear you.
Good post. I remember reading Salam's piece and thinking along the same lines that I just didn't know what sort of ridicule he was referencing. Similarly, I have been reading comments from conservatives for days now that say something like "all you elitist liberals are underestimating her and you're gonna pay the price for that." Whenever I see that I try to get some specifics about what exactly liberals are doing that would constitute an underestimation of Palin and on every single occasion, I get no serious response at all. A lot of conservatives seem to be operating along the lines of a meta-narrative that has almost nothing to do with what liberals are actually saying. I am not sure yet whether that is a deliberate strategy or simple delusion.
Palin's kids don't have white trash names, just stupid names. The boy's names especially.
White trash names are names that don't have a formal version. As in the parents simply name their child the nickname. Apologies in advance.
-Billy
-Bobby
-Ray
-Jenny
-Johnny
Just kidding. Kind of.
The best sign of Palin's ghettoness is the sprawling nature of her family's dysfunctions. Sure, she personally has it under control, but the ripples of their problems extend far. It's hard to tell where her family problems begin and end. Proper white people certainly are dysfunctional (DUI's, petty crimes, domestic violence) but expend a lot of energy and shame keeping it close to home.
The number of kids is a marker, but not an absolute. For most middle-class whites, more than three exceeds the bounds of propriety, unless one's circle is nutty evangelical or serious Catholics. So it's contextual for sure. More liberal middle-class whites who aren't procreatin' for Jesus do tend to look down on the really big families. Again, it's the sprawl vs. control that matters most. A white family that has a lot kids because it can't get its stuff together, figure out how to use birth control, and stick with just a few mates is a problem. A white family that refuses birth control sometimes looks the same numerically, but can get respect in certain quarters.
BTW, are you going to tell us what Ta-Nehisi means?
About the five kids stuff:
Having five kids is a lot of work, which detracts from a comfortable lifestyle that middle-class whites are taking for granted since the fifties.
Also, in the more affluent half of the country, kids are unbearably expensive to raise between the ages of zero to six, and then you have to send them to college. This hurts to the point that one more kid can be the difference between middle-class lifestyle and sheer economic fear, and a significant percentage of middle class families are having one kid less than they'd want to (I guess this is a wealth & income thing that cuts across ethnic groups).
About the kids' names: Love 'em. Seems to be one of the few ways of asserting your individuality that Evangelicals are allowed.
I'd keep the private thingies off limits.
The entire drilling thingie is so stupid: we ruin our shores, and we delay the national day of reckoning regarding energy security by what, 18 months? (Take the expected number of barrels to be obtained, divide by national oil consumption in barrels/day, and you know how many days you'll be buying. The results are not pretty.)
Also: opposes abortion for victims of rape.
Also: has opposed funding for essential social programs
Also: is involved in an ethics scandal, and has been reported as trying to obstruct the course of the inquiry
Also... I could go for hours
Bring it on.
Eating moose is like drinking PBR; you can do it cause you & yours always have or for the ironic/hipster identification points it brings. Or, I guess, just cause you like the taste, but where's the fun in that?
"Ghetto" already signifies blackness, so it's not necessary to attach a racial modifier (though I realize this was not the case historically); and "white trash" used to be just "trash," because you could pretty safely assume that anyone that needed specific putting down was white.
"A lot of conservatives seem to be operating along the lines of a meta-narrative that has almost nothing to do with what liberals are actually saying. I am not sure yet whether that is a deliberate strategy or simple delusion"
It's both.
There was a lot of that white classism directed at "Bubba" Clinton when he was President from the Republicans. I've heard the Clintons called white trash before. His Southern (trashy) accent and his being from Arkansas were picked at, and his cheap affairs. This from Repubs who loved the handsome classy Hollywood Ronnie Reagan.
An interesting point about Palin, Ta-N. I'd say there is some contempt for her coming from Dems as being from an "insignificant" rural state like Alaska, her touting her "hockey mom" creds, the mooseburger meme, etc.
It's clear to me the Republicans picked her to stir up the culture wars again.
Obama isn't falling for it, he's keeping on John McCain and on issues. But rank-and-file liberals shouldn't fall for it either.
why don't you ask our spokesper -- oh wait.
I am white, and I was raised upper-middle class. I am now, however, solidly working-class, and am a single mother to three children. I often feel like trash when we are all out together in a setting that could be called "elite-like". My kids are all black, but that does not effect this feeling....it is NOT about race, it is about class for us.
When the kids were littler (3,4 and 6) we went to Provincetown on a vacation. I felt like "trailer trash" the whole time. The looks we got were not about our transracialness (sic), they were about our NUMBERS.......I came from a family of 5 kids, and we were on the small side for our Irish-Catholic neighborhood, so I was shocked when we became trashy. WTF is that woman doing with all those kids, they are too loud, too wild, too MUCH........interesting post, thanks.
To me ghetto has a city connotation. (I was going to say "per its Jewish roots" but I have no idea if that's true.) And while poor areas of modern US cities have large black populations, you could use it for Spanish Harlem or Little Saigon or "the Warsaw ghetto." For Europe I would now envision a "ghetto" as housing a lot of not-terribly-integrated Muslim immigrants.
So it seems there should be a rural equivalent of "ghetto" for black culture that I can't think of. For whites, "poor white trash" and "hick" have very rural connotations--they would aspire to be ghetto and thus cool and poor. Poor white city dwellers don't seem to have a better term than the urban underclass.
This is a very complicated issue that I wish I had more time to answer. I'll do my best in brief.
The equivalent of ghetto for whites is certainly white trash. But what constitutes white trash is always relative. I grew up in a very blue collar, probably lower middle class place, and we talked alot of ish about the white trash in other places that were just slightly poorer than us, where the guys were missing a few more teeth, still listened to heavy metal (shitty 80's style metal that is) and still wore stone-washed jeans. I'm sure the people in these neighborhoods considered another class of people even white trashier still, and if they didn't, well, to be entirely honest, they could always talk smack about blacks, PR's and mexicans.
But of course, I wasn't anyone's white trash, that is, until I went to law school. It was only then that I realized how different I was from most of my fellow students. First, not to many of them had a father who was a truck driver, or worked odd construction jobs part time, and almost no one spoke with my old style NY/Jersey/LI accent. Suddenly (gasp) it appears I was the white trash!
This became very apparent on interview days, where because of my size and general appearance, some fellow students told me I looked like a mobster in my suit. This point was driven home further when a classmate told me that he was going to be Paulie Walnuts for Halloween and he wanted me to teach him "how to talk like that." This sort of thing was not flattering, although I know they certainly didn't mean any insult (J if your reading this I still love you).
I hope I shed some light on the matter. I have to get back to work.
Love this post. Very insightful. You're my new favorite pundit!
If you're looking for a lower-class marker in the (extended) Palin tribe you probably aren't going to do better than this, spotted last night on babydaddy's finger:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/03/levi-johnstons-tattoo-bri_n_123748.html
The kids' names don't do it, at least not in the lower forty-eight. (Apple Paltrow, anyone?)
Same customs, different names. Trig is just as informal a name as Mercedes, the difference is who is really in position to decide which is good and which is bad. You put either in the wrong situation and their names are the least relevent aspects of their situation.
If Trig finds himself on foot in "Baldimore" late at night between the liquer store and the gas station, he better be hood!!
But if on the other hand, Mercedes finds her self in the prep school elite, she better break out that Sarah Palin accent and know the proper way to say, "Oh My Guhy."
HU!
howard alum here ('93/'00)... growing up in atlanta, i always heard "it ain't what you're called, it's what you answer to!" i'm sure early on, "condoleeza" was ridiculed for here non-traditional name - now...not so much.
I think you are missing the intricate folkways of white people. She's got a hick accent and doesn't try to hide it. I don't know if ridiculing her as a hick and a rube comes naturally, necessarily, but I do think that it detracts from her position as a woman of state. Think of it this way: would you want someone who spoke in the tones of West Baltimore to potentially be the next vice-president, a position where you're speaking to the world?
Ultimately, this makes me consider a debate that I've had with black friends who complain that they have to talk "white" in order to be taken seriously. While there may be a certain kernel of truth to this, there's no doubting that Sarah Palin talks "white", but she sounds like she's from the hills. I think much of the criticism surrounding her reaffirms my stance that it's not a matter of black or white but one of the educated elite and everybody else. Sarah Palin clearly isn't part of that educated elite, and her manner of speech shouts this fact from the rooftops.
Agreed. You can't get any more upper crust than Romney and Mitt and Tagg are just as stupid sounding as Bristol or Track.
Yeah, Democrats here in Iowa are always cracking on the hicks and rubes out in flyover country.
Well, I do consider her to be a hick and a rube. Stupid is as stupid does and, let's face it, she's stupid. She believes in creationism and wants it taught in schools. Hey, evolution may be just a theory but creationism isn't even a theory. And, besides, all real knowledge is theoretical as anyone with a passing acquaintance with Hume's critique of induction can appreciate.
She wanted to censor the content of the local library and then tried to fire the librarian who resisted. If that doesn't make one a hick and a rube I don't know what would.
What we have here is a mullah in the making and I want no part of it. She may call herself a pit bull with lipstick but I personally think that insults a fine breed of dog.
She's stupid. How do I know. Because she's pretty upfront about what she believes and what she believes can only be belived by a stupid person.
About the five kids thing -- there is definitely an attitude held by coastal WASPs (and other, mostly protestant, rich folk), that having a lot of kids, particularly if you are less than very well off, is a reflection of messiness, religiosity, and imprudence. I think the attitude probably stems, at least in part, from the reaction to Catholic immigrants, who often had big sprawling families. WASPs seem to think this was unseemly, like having a lot of kids shows that you can't control yourself. It's also an easy way to blame someone for being poor, as in "If you didn't have all those mouths to feed maybe you could make something of yourself." The same way a lot of people will look at the teen pregnancy rate among poor and minority communities and argue that you can't help people who create those kinds of obstacles for themselves (rarely noting that teen pregnancy in poor communities is often a reaction to the multitude of obstacles standing between young women and college, or stable marriages, or homes of their own).
The white version of ghetto... well, it varies depending on the location. Not every redneck qualifies. There's rednecks, and then there's rednecks, you know? Southern (or Appalachian, if you're in the Northeast) accent is a part of it. So is a particularly large (anything more than 4 or so) family. But mostly it's an attitude that manifests itself in a lot of ways. Us against the world, city folks (and foreigners and businessmen and liberals and Freemasons and maybe even Catholics...) are out to get us and take our money. Disordered home life, lawn and home in poor repair, lack of self-respect, general selfishness and disrespect for others. Wearing T-shirts that celebrate the trailer trash lifestyle.
Basically, the same sort of stuff that (outwardly) marks somebody as ghetto.
The buttons Sarah presses aren't quite white trash, but closely related to include...
--the self-satisfaction combined with no great intellectual curiosity
--the easy reduction of the world into Manichean black/white. What many find uncomfortable in Obama is his penchant for pointing out the shades of gray.
--knee-jerk patriotism conflated with militarism. BTW, what's Todd military service record?
--part of what makes the kids names so WalMart, is that the parents are convinced the names are interesting and unique.
--and the evangelical thing. It's not unheard of for a somewhat disagreeable personality to embrace a new faith and become an even bigger pain in the ass to her un-saved family and friends.
Hope she enjoys the PR honeymoon--my guess is that it will be short-lived
Yeah, Palin and her family strike me (grew up in the South, but New England WASP family) as a particular variety of upper-middle class redneck. They have money, but they're still not the sort of people my parents (as especially grandparents) would think of as being "classy".
Signifiers: her church (Assembly of God is where you go if the Baptists aren't nutty enough for you); her 5 kids (with weird names... more than 3 is probably too many); sporting activities (e.g., a woman who hunts and snowmobiles); a pregnant teen who is having the baby, rather than a hush-hush abortion. I see lots of similarities between her family and people I went to high school with, kids whose dads ran successful construction businesses and the like. Blue-collar mentality to the core, but with money.
I suspect her family and their way of life were a non-trivial part of why she was chosen. They're going to appeal like crazy to a big chunk of the Republican base - aspirational figures, if you will. Her blue-collarness also allows the use of the elitism charge to deflect all sorts of criticism (legit and not). It's her POW.
Ta-Nehisi...dude. The class (as well the as the culture thing) is more STRAW MAN than the freakin Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz.
What doesn't matter:
- The knocked up daughter (this shouldn't matter to liberals, anyways, since we know this kind of sh-t happens)
- Who's taking care of the kids
- Who is or is not an elitist
- Who is or is not either "ghetto" or "white trash"
I was listening to a local conservative radio show this morning. The argument was that more "ordinary people" should go into politics and that, in actuality, the people with decades of experience in governance know no better than the average Joe or Jane sixpack about how to run the country. They literally said "someone who runs a hardware store could be a Senator". This is a blatant escalation of the attack on intellect and reason that the right wing has been conducting for some time now to pander to the insecurities of tens of millions of Americans. In this world, a former journalism student from the University of Idaho is the intellectual equal of someone who was the editor of the Harvard Law Review. The PTA is the equal of a law degree. Being mayor of a town of 7,000 equals being a state senator in Illinois (I come from a town of 10,000...believe me...it doesn't equate). Being governor of a state of 600,000 equals being on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Joe or Jane Sixpack can step right in and play games with an ex-KGB agent like Vlad Putin. We play this game at the expense of competency and achievement to our own peril.
I would say that the white "ghetto" is identifiable by some of the following:
* Ridiculous names for children
* Non-quirky accents (you can be forgiven for a Fargo-type accent in the upper Midwest, but not elsewhere; you will not be forgiven a strong southern accent pretty much anywhere)
* Trashy clothing
* Teen pregnancy
* More than two kids
* Drop-outs
* Too much interest in religion, to the exclusion of actual knowledge
* Uncomfortable interest in hunting/shootin' stuff/killing Muslims
There are a lot more. But basically it is about where our normative center is. For better or for worse, the white middle class norm is a heterosexual couple with one or two kids in the suburbs. It might help if you think about it that way - if someone would be irritated by it happening next door to them, then it is more likely to be a sign of the white "ghetto."
For instance - one might be fine with their neighbors going hunting. But if their neighbors put up a manequin with the head of Osama bin Laden and started using it for target practice, that would not be cool. If your neighbor started telling your kids about how they were going to go to hell for x, y, and z, that would not be cool. If your neighbor's kids started getting pregnant and dropped out of school, that would not be cool. There are a lot of rural areas where these things are pretty common, but they definitely defy the suburban norm.
Now, you and I might see this as people having sticks up their butt and nosing into other people's business and private lives, but it's the norm we're stuck with for the time being...
I'd call the names of Palin's children are a type of "white trash nouveau", names that people others consider as white trash would consider trendy. I think they think these names are neat because Hollywood people use these kinds of names.
The funniest thing about the whole "Celebrity" angle is that, who do you think reads Us Weekly? I'm betting more conservative folk read that stuff than "liberal elites". So if you worship at the alter of Us Weekly, wouldn't you be more apt to vote for the "celebrity" candidate?
You can sit around and watch old episodes of "Rosanne" too. It's pretty accurate without being mocking or hyperbolic. The animated "King of the Hill" isn't too far off either.
How can you be a redneck in a state where you don't see the sun six months out of the year?
White "Ghetto" is very relative. I went to Provincetown with just one child and felt like "trailer trash." It's not a breeder friendly place.
But Palin is a varsity athlete, a college grad and was at one point a TV personality - for most Americans that already marks her as "elite". It's ridiculous for her to pretend that most East Coasters would look down on her. But of course the GOP is immune to logic.
There's a rural thing too. Good jobs are scarce in the middle of nowhere...but this only matters to people interested in finding a good job. Rent is cheap. In Alaska, the government even gives you money. None of this means that there aren't lots of hardworking and responsible people living in rural areas, but it does tend to skew the demographics somewhat towards the meth addicts and the generally out-to-lunch. Which is I think why so many people make the leap from hunting caribou to "wow, classy."
What's interesting is the extent to which living in the middle of nowhere seems to only be an option for white people living marginal lifestyles. Racism maybe? Or just cultural preference?
white trash...ghetto...
they're pretty much synonymous.
one describes - in a very rough and general sense - a certain segment of the white population and the other describes a certain segment of the black population.
the two cultures are very, very similar in some respects, but certainly different in others.
in fact, the similarities and the real affinity between the two cultures are what really scare the racists and hatemongers.
those folks knows full well, that given the chance, when ghetto males and redneck gals get in close proximity, the similarities become very clear and all kinds of mischief can occur, as a result.
(that dynamic is certainly possible and happens when a certain type of redneck male gets within close proximity to certain types of ghetto females, though it's not as common, primarily because of historical imperatives. bill clinton and his alleged affinity for and success with sisters is a good example of this phenomenon.)
the dirty little secret of american life is that we all - black, white, brown and yellow - have much more in common than most like to admit and that the differences that exist are most often superficial and not very important.
I went to Provincetown with just one child and felt like "trailer trash."
And I went to Provincetown and thought it was a sad, sad tourist trap with lousy food: like a more pretentious Asbury Park. But then again I've become a typical NYer over the years...
Great comments thread. I think one signifier for whitetrash is naming all one's children with same initial letter: e.g., my siblings are Kevin and Kathy (and there's ONLY accidental significance to our being KKK).
But I think we want to distinguish between yuppie trash and white trash. I do think it's trashy to name children after TV characters, but I think it's especially yuppie trash to name children after obsolete professions or cheeses : Mason, Porter, Brie, Carter, Parker, Colby, Hunter, Cooper, Fletcher, &c. Naming children after states or presidents falls somewhere in between lowclass and middleclass trash.
As a white southern urban elitist, I feel particularly qualified to speak on this subject. Some markers of white "ghettoness": Jean shorts, teenage pregnancies, meth addiction, unkept long hair (men & women), excessive gold jewelry, bad tattoos, bad teeth, dipping (or smoking 100s), aquasox, confederate flags, men in tanktops, obesity (often combined with too little clothing), NASCAR...
As others have mentioned, having a multitude of young children and trashy names (Brittney, Colt, Ty, Brandy, etc.) remain strong markers of white ghettoness.
Allow me to explain the source of your confusion. Sarah Palin is posing as trailer park trash/redneck/hick/hockey mom as a deliberate strategy to start this fight. George Bush did the same thing. The Republicans decided back with Nixon to 'own' the anti-intellectual brand that has been an important component of American politics at least since we had a party that proudly called itself the Know-Nothings.
Here are the real defining characteristics of white trash:
1. Rural poverty
2. Rejection of middle class morals and mores (the morals thing cuts both ways, there is often a stricter Baptist/Pentecostal/Church of Christ morality side by side with a more typically 'lax' morality associated with poverty)
3. The defeatism bred of grinding poverty.
The rest are just expressions of those three things. With that in mind, let's evaluate Sarah Palin. She's not poor, and I have heard the equivalent of 'son of mill worker' from her. She has the morals part down (Assembly of God member and daughter who got pregnant before finishing high school), but not the mores. She clearly accepts the mores of conventional society. Most of all, real white trash are folks who have given up trying to better themselves and that's not Sarah Palin's attitude.
If anything, Sarah 'Barracuda' is a better fit for the archetypal social climber, the woman determined to escape her white trash roots by become hard-edged, driven, and glamorous. The campaign will play off the obverse of that stereotype to paint her opponents as snobs and bigots. The reality, of course, is that she's an egocentric, driven person, just like almost every other political type on the national stage.
Here's the thing - for the most part, white people who live in cities are rich, or upper middle class at least. So, there's no real equivalent of 'ghetto.' I believe the black equivalent of what people are saying about Sarah Palin would be 'country.'
I do have a close friend who made a taxonomy of all the different types of white trash in her hometown, if that's helpful for insight. You could also consult Jeff Foxworthy and his collection of 'you might be a redneck if...' jokes for further insight. Here are some related to Palin: 5 kids, pregnant teenager, big hair, eats things she killed herself, snowmobiles, didn't go to a fancy school, religious (especially evangelical!).
I'd like to get more info on the urban/rural and black/white split.
Can 'white trash' refer to poor urban whites? Or is it a rural identifier? If so, what is the term used?
Also, it may just be me, but I think the term 'ghetto' has been appropriated as a reference to poor urban black folk. I mean, you wouldn't refer to a poor black family from backwoods Mississippi as 'ghetto', would you?
Welcome to America, Y'all!
Dissimilar groups understand each others more than it may appears. Ghetto Perfect is a favorite; disfavor trailer trash(trailer are good things); disfavor white trash but po white trash is an okay oldie; some continue to use you people; never did like D. Hathaway's "The Ghetto" but the song has a hell of a beat; and yes, folks of all ilks use names creatively. Finally, rural and small town folks do have a limited attraction short of being Amish(closed communities, etc) and so on, but these areas are acquired taste, easier if you like moose burgers eaten by a campfire under the stars with sub-zero temperatures while watching the northern lights.
You should look up ghetto in Wikipedia. Most older people with a Jewish past (including me) remember ghettos as places Jews lived in European cities ... original use apparently in Venice, then infamous during the Nazi era. Ghettos, generically, mean places where people more or less have to live because of ethnic pressures to do so. In the US, the Irish, the Italians and Jews lived in ghettos at various times. And obviously Blacks did. So a white equivalent of a ghetto would be a 19th century Irish ghetto in NYC, for instance. Trailer trash, rednecks, etc, they don't have to live in ghettos for ethnic reasons. I do think increasingly that poor whites in many places are pretty much ghettoized as neighborhoods and suburbs become increasingly gated and exclusive.
Emily, social disapproval of large catholic families far predates the late 19th century immigration boom in the US. One of the most interesting things to me about, for example, the Harry Potter series, is the way JKR semi-self-consciously reused British social stigma even in the Wizarding world (why exactly do you think a red-haired boy with freckles and a lot of siblings was such a frequent target by the upper-class blond single child boy?).
re Kerry:
"What's interesting is the extent to which living in the middle of nowhere seems to only be an option for white people living marginal lifestyles. Racism maybe? Or just cultural preference?"
See James Loewen's "Sundown Towns"
http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/sundowntowns.php
from Wikipedia, the short definition:
"A sundown town is a neologism invented in 2005 by James Loewen to refer to a community in the United States where non-whites — especially African Americans — were systematically excluded from living in or passing through after the sun went down. This allowed maids and workmen to provide unskilled labor during the day. They came into existence in the late 19th century during what sociologists have described as the nadir of American race relations. Sundown towns existed throughout the nation, but more often were located in the northern states that were not pre-Civil War slave states. There have not been any de jure sundown towns in the country since the legislation in the 1960s inspired by the American Civil Rights Movement, though de facto sundown towns existed at least into the 1970s. Their continued existence is the subject of some debate."
I think you are right -- there is a lot of "diversity" amongst white people.
Blue Moon, you are right. I have a Gaelic name that is pretty common among us white folks, but can be pronounced either of two ways. I use the less common one. People have a 50/50 shot of getting it right the first time; if they choose the wrong one - no big deal, I just correct them.
This is the thing: once corrected, I've never had a problem with anyone of color screwing it up again. White men? All the freaking time, all with the same excuse: oh, I can never remember; my niece/neighbor's kid/wife's BF pronounces it the other way. Finally a senior colleague - white male - who worked with me for five years was the last straw. I told him, "My name is pronounced X. Saying it correctly is a diversity issue." (My firm is nuts about diversity).
He said (looking at my white-ass Celtic face): "Diversity??!! What do you mean, diversity?"
Me: "If I was a colleague of color, who had a Mandarin/Swahili/Quechua weirdly-pronounced name, you'd make DAMN SURE you got it right, because you'd consider it a diversity issue. But it's not. It's an issue of respect, for the person with the Mandarin name, the Swahili name, OR MY NAME. Doesn't matter; get it right."
That shut him up. Man, the British already tried to take away our language, don't you start with me.
I would say that the white "ghetto" is identifiable by some of the following:
* Ridiculous names for children
* Non-quirky accents (you can be forgiven for a Fargo-type accent in the upper Midwest, but not elsewhere; you will not be forgiven a strong southern accent pretty much anywhere)
* Trashy clothing
* Teen pregnancy
* More than two kids
* Drop-outs
* Too much interest in religion, to the exclusion of actual knowledge
* Uncomfortable interest in hunting/shootin' stuff/killing Muslims
There are a lot more. But basically it is about where our normative center is. For better or for worse, the white middle class norm is a heterosexual couple with one or two kids in the suburbs. It might help if you think about it that way - if someone would be irritated by it happening next door to them, then it is more likely to be a sign of the white "ghetto."
For instance - one might be fine with their neighbors going hunting. But if their neighbors put up a manequin with the head of Osama bin Laden and started using it for target practice, that would not be cool. If your neighbor started telling your kids about how they were going to go to hell for x, y, and z, that would not be cool. If your neighbor's kids started getting pregnant and dropped out of school, that would not be cool. There are a lot of rural areas where these things are pretty common, but they definitely defy the suburban norm.
Now, you and I might see this as people having sticks up their butt and nosing into other people's business and private lives, but it's the norm we're stuck with for the time being...
Most of the posters above have really nailed it, so I only have a couple of things to add. The analog to ghetto has to be trailer. I'm "to the double-wide born" as we said in S. Texas, and the house your family lived in was a clear marker. Also, the animated "King of the Hill" is a documentary. Parts of my family had their trailers around Humble (pronounced "UM bul"), and the first time I saw the program, it was just eerie.
Cheers,
Bethany
Sorry for the double post - I hit refresh to see the new comments, but apparently it refreshed the send comment instruction.
If you want to see the epitome of white trash, though, I would recommend checking out the movie Ghost World. There's a character in it that screams white trash more than anyone on My Name is Earl.
Naming kids after booze is not an exclusively black phenomenon. I know a skinny white girl from Vermont named Genessee.
I'm black and was raised upper middle class in New England, mostly around WASPs. I'm not white so I can't speak for white people, but my observation was like this. The sense that I always got was that WASPs regarded just about any black person who wasn't raised around whites and spoke full on and fluent Caucasian (if you spoke proper English and didn't let your pants sag you weren't "Really black") as being "ghetto". "Ghetto" to them just meant black, urban or suburban. Poor white people, who didn't speak proper English or had laughable regional accents (New Jersey, or Southern or Boston were all the same), were especially religious (Evangelical or Catholic), had lots of kids, dated or married "ghetto" black people, and used drugs other than marijuana or coke were white trash. I always figured that urban white people ("working class" people)/unassimilated ethnic white people fit in that category all the same (especially Italians with artificial tans and spiked hair cuts). Oh, and rich white people who talked about their money or spent it as if it were fungible got a wag of the finger and a raised eyebrow. "New money" without manners.
I do think there's been a real air of condescension from people who can't seem to point out Sarah's inexperience without taking cheap shots at Wasilla. The news yesterday quoted some anonymous pundit saying our city hall looks like "a Louisiana bait shop," which strikes me as an attempt to link her with the white trash southern redneck stereotype.
The real strawman is the GOP conflating what liberal bloggers and clueless newscasters say with what Obama himself says. (C'mon, Rudy - when, exactly, did Obama say Sarah wasn't "cosmopolitan" enough?) I've come out of this whole thing even *more* impressed with Obama, because he's a classy guy who can make a point about policy without being snide about personality. The GOP won't ever give him credit for it, or extend him the same courtesy, but I really appreciate not feeling like *my* background is being attacked when he talks about his substantive disagreements with Sarah (which I mostly share).
For the record, our town hall looks like a fairly inoffensive small office building from the 80's.
Agreed. You can't get any more upper crust than Romney and Mitt and Tagg are just as stupid sounding as Bristol or Track.
I heard someone who had a theory that those who are very rich and those who are poor have fewer reasons to conform to society, so their behavior is sometimes similar. If you are rich, they call it eccentric, if you are poor, you are insane, ghetto, white trash, etc. Not to say the the Palins are poor, but I am working in stereotypes here.
As far as the big family, some liberals (especially "the personal is political" types) think having more than one or two kids is socially irrespondsible. Every new kid has a large carbon footprint, the neo fascists are creating a world not worth living in, there isn't enough food or space and so on. This kind of liberal is far too PC to talk about large Hispanic families or large African American families, so their spite is directed at poor white people with large families.
Since I am not the spokesman for all things white, I will defer to the Simpsons. Cletus the slack jawed yokel is a strong representation of this. And he has lots of kids with weird and or trendy names. From wikipedia
Children: Brandine, Gummy Sue, Tiffany, Andie, Gordon, Lizzie, Jackson, Heather, Cody, Dylan, Dermot, Jordan, Taylor, Brittany, Wesley, Rumer, Scout, Cassidy, Zoe, Chloe, Max, Hunter, Rubella Scabies, Kendall, Caitlin, Noah, Sasha, Morgan, Kyra, Ian, Lauren, Q-bert, Condoleezza Marie, Phil, Birthday, Crystal Meth, Dubya, Incest, International Harvester, Jitney, Witney, Mary, Stabbed in Jail
There are clearly parallels between a kind of redneck culture and black culture. The Blue Collar Comedy tour (centered around Foxworthy's redneck jokes) was clearly a copy of the Kings of Comedy tour. Most white people were unaware of the Kings of Comedy tour despite its massive popularity with its intended audience. And the same was true of the Blue Collar tour.
In each case there is the sense of a community being left out of what Hollywood and New York are about.
But in the case of Palin, most of the case that she is a redneck is being made by Conservatives not Liberals. What we are seeing is more that the right wants the criticism of Palin to be based on the fact that she has 5 children (hardly a shocking amount, McCain, I believe, has more but is not getting similar commentary) than that anyone actually holds that against her.
Unfortunately there are a few liberals who think it is smart to copy conservatives and make such stupid arguments, and many more conservatives who recognize the stupudity ready to pretend that that is what most liberals are doing. That is why the press finds it so much easier to find the conservatives criticizing the criticism of Palin, than to find the people actually calling her a hick.
I think some commenters are over-stating or over-generalizing the accent thing.
First of all, there are good Southern white accents and bad Southern white accents. Probably subtle variations of each. The good is modeled on the dead or dying old white Southern aristocracy (most of its speakers now probably had parents or grandparents who spoke the bad one). The good one: Jimmy Carter totally, Bill Clinton mostly, sometimes echoes of it from Morgan Freeman. It's soft and genteel. May be affected from childhood viewings of Gone with the Wind as much as anything. The bad one: Billy Bob Thornton most of the time (though he regulates it at times), at least 2/3 of all country music singers.
There's also the rural Western accent, which is similar but with not quite the positives of the good Southern or the negatives of the bad Southern. And of course there are variations of this one, too. The readiest extreme example (especially of the variant from the northern parts of the West) is Heath Ledger's perfect talking-through-the-teeth in Brokeback Mountain. You can even find something similar to this within a few hours driving from San Francisco, believe it or not.
Palin's is none of the above. Whether they instinctively judge it kindly or harshly, most Americans have probably never heard an accent quite like hers (most of us don't know Alaskans, and even if we do, they probably aren't from there originally, or they just lived in Anchorage and sound the same as most other middle-class city dwellers). It sounds more Canadian than anything else, and I bet that most of us have a generally positive view of that (at least that it's quaint and friendly).
As for the white-trashiness: absolutely! But all white people have a little of that in them. (Would you say that all black people have a little ghetto in them?) The more worldly whites tend to cloak it pretty well, and use their trashier brethren as convenient scapegoats for things like racism and homophobia and anti-intellectualism and nationalistic fervor and motorsports and corny or offensive country music. But, for sure, there's more white trash in the heart of the white yuppie than there is white yuppie in the heart of the white trash.
You ever see old yellowed photographs of cowboys and gunslingers from the 1800s? Like Billy the Kid, for example? WHOA, WHITE TRASH! It's kinda amazing. And maybe it's a Southwestern thing that whites from others regions would disagree with, but a lot of rural Hispanics, especially in Mexico and Central America, are surprisingly white trash-seeming, even if they're a bit darker-skinned. (Though come to think of it, a lot of the white-trashiest white trash are actually more reddish-tan, and not always just on the neck).
I'm sure there are some cultural prejudices at work in this impression (if "ghetto" and "white trash" are defined for people who are unfamiliar with one or the other mostly from television and movies), but I would think the common stereotypes of ghetto and white trash are pretty similar, but with a tinge of gangsta thuggish criminality to the ghetto and a tinge of sheer dipshittery to the white trash. I'm sure that's unfair to both.
I think I remember some (conservative?) black commentator remarking that much of the "disfunction" that is impugned to black culture is a borrowing from disfunctional Southern white culture. Whether or not there's truth to that, or whether it's fair to either side, or even a fair way of framing something, maybe it suggests a white-trash/ghetto link that is not just coincidental but historical.
I'm from rural NW Washington. When my grandfather got my grandmother pregnant, he married her and made an honest woman of her, and their firstborn, my uncle, was five months "premature".
My family, growing up, were sort of rural gentry. They'd been there a long time, owned property, had steady jobs and stable marriages. Not trailer, not at all. Well, except for Grandpa. He was a musician and a ne-er-do-well. But he stayed married to Grandma, who kept the family together, and had the idea for the most successful family business.
That's a powerful narrative. It's an up-from-the-trailer narrative. And that's the note that Sarah Palin sounds. It's a trap, as others have noted.
Hunting isn't ghetto where I come from. Shooting bears from helicopters is, though. Mooseburgers aren't ghetto, those things are hard to get your hands on. Pentecostalism is, though. With the strong influence of Native Americans in Alaska, the name Willow is not really ghetto, Piper doesn't seem like it. Bristol is getting there. Track and Trig are more of a "what?" to me.
Teen pregnancy is definitely ghetto. But then if the father makes an honest woman of her, it becomes upwardly mobile. See what I mean?
The "baitshop" comment came from James Carville, who is from Louisiana, so ixnay on the false read of that comment. I grew up in a town of 10,000 people. No offense to my fellow small-town America folks, but I don't want my mayor running the country two years removed from his time running our little community.
Honestly, to me hunting is ghetto. And she hunts. But I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, so I'm just glad we have a ghetto hunter on the ticket to appeal to all the ghetto hunters out there. And I think that only people in really affluent suburbs find hunting ghetto, so it shouldn't hurt her too much.
It's ridiculous for her to pretend that most East Coasters would look down on her.
Read the rest of this thread and get back to us.
The problem here is that people keep bringing up that a taxonomy exists, but no one actually spells it out. Let me take a crack at it from my own experience. And before anyone gets started, I grew up in West Virginia and now live in Cleveland, so I am familiar with this topic.
1. Hillbillies. The people I grew up with. Generally speaking, Appalachians, mountain folks as indicated by the name. These are probably the purest of the white trash categories as often geographical alienation can lead to very strong subcultural identification. One tends to think of straw hats, buck teeth, overalls, names like Trace and Cooter. Moonshine. Goin' muddin'. while other categories have some fluidity, hillbillies are always and forever hillbillies. For a very good example, begin watching this series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M35r1Q4c88I
2. Hicks. Generally speaking, small town folks from any geographical region in the nation, but predominantly toward the southern end of the spectrum, though not solely. There are hicks in northern Ohio, just as there are hicks in South Dakota. Essentially small town, small minded shitkickers. People who sneer at any beer of better quality than Cuervo. Same clothes as non-hicks, but smarter dressed than hillbillies generally, with a fondness for boots. Name types tend to fall along the Billy-Bob axis, though usually they inherit the less silly names from upper crust coasties.
3. Rednecks. Virtually identical with hicks, Rednecks are hicks with more money who have moved on to a less pejorative terminology. While hicks are the guys working on the line, rednecks are the foremen. Probably the least interesting category. Hicks who made good and mostly want you to forget their hicks, but whip it out to win an argument or after too many jack and cokes. Tom, Ray, Jeff.
4. Crackers. Southern peckerwood assholes across the board. Jim Crow style racist, thick neck bastards who celebrate southerness with an aggravating "we're better than you because X" attitude. Specifically geographically located in the south, crackers can migrate out of Alabama, but a new residence in Philadelphia only makes them more annoying. Will constantly make reference to southern qualities like politeness, charm, or cooking as a way of drawing a negative comparison with northerners who make up every single other person almost in a "goy-ish" sense. Will frequently invoke phrases such as "Well, I'm from the south, so I know black people, and let me tell you...." Cletus, Jimbo, Forrest. Imagine Carville. He's totally a cracker, but an odd liberal N'awlins subtype.
That about covers it for major types.
Yokels are poorer hicks; rubes aren't really a category; bumpkin, clodhopper, country cousin and other terms are merely time and place euphemisms.
I went to a "Redneck Olympics" over Labor Day weekend and I made the observation that if the people at the party were black instead of white it could have just as easily been the "Ghetto Olympics." Seemed like all the themes were pretty easily translatable--choices of beverage, fried chicken from the gas station, guns, etc.
(FYI, I'm half black--and was the only black person at the party--so I'm allowed to make these observations)
So, here's a theory for the white trash name thing:
Imagine if you had actually named your kid the thing that you thought was an awesome name when you were 16.
So really, maybe it just goes along with the high school drop out, teenage mother thing. Once you have one kid named Brittney, are you going to name the second one Margaret?
Critic --
You forgot "Townies". Northeastern hicks, often of 19th to early 20th century immigrant background. For example, you'll find a lot of townies in Less-tah and Woos-tah (in Massachusetts).
"What we are seeing is more that the right wants the criticism of Palin to be based on the fact that she has 5 children (hardly a shocking amount, McCain, I believe, has more but is not getting similar commentary) than that anyone actually holds that against her."
That's actually an interesting little wrinkle - McCain is old enough that it doesn't matter so much. Having 5 or 6 kids is something your grandparents or great-grandparents were supposed to have done. But then everybody's heard the stories about how their great-grandparents didn't have any money, were out on the farm, etc. McCain's in the age group where you'd expect that.
Four points:
1. As you move the lens closer, sameness becomes diversity. As a few commenters point out, everyone has someone they can look down on.
2. GOP wants to drum up class resentment. It's what they do. They will be citing fictitious elitists who put down Palin from now until November without cease.
3. Ghetto is originally Italian for foundry one of which was a prominent feature of the Venetian area where Jews were required to live.
4. Redneck is someone who farms his own plot. Hence the neck and the kids.
This ones easy--white trash or trailer trash is the caucasian ghetto. People from Palins hometown proudly refer to themselves as "Valley Trash". You really can't make this stuff up.
If you watched any cable news during the Democratic Primary, it was interesting to see pundits discussing Hillary's base versus Barack's without using the phrase "white trash"...it seemed like the elephant in the room, the thing they wanted to say instead of "hard working white people" "working class whites with no college education" etc...
For those not from the DC/Bmore corridor, the locals pronounce it "Balmer." As in "I'm from Balmer. It's in Murlan. This is my sister Shurn (Sharon) and my daughter Kurn (Karen)." And those pronunciations are sometimes racial non-specific. All them crabcake eaters up there talk like that. ;-)
Of course, down here in the DC area, we have a hard time explaining to folks precisely what the hell IS mambo sauce (pronounced and sometimes spelled mumbo sauce.) You can get it from a bulletproof Chinese restaurant but not from a real Chinese restaurant with white tablecloths and a waiter.
I went to UVa, and the easiest way to spot a fellow DC dweller was to have them ask you where you were from: "Where you stay at?" People from the NYC tended to start sentences with "Yo, B....." I once dated a lady from Atlanta. Her father was loaded with ducats. Most of her sentences started with "Daddy said that...." or "My Daddy went to....." I preferred when she would say "DADDY, I'm comin'!! Oh, Daddy!!!" ;-)
The dialect stuff from my college days was early to mid 1990's. Like Steve Harvey said, if there's an ebonics dictionary it better be written in pencil.
At the risk of stating the obvious, "white trash" is short for "poor white trash". These were white Southerners who didn't own land. They might sharecrop or they might work for a wealthy white planatation owner. During the Civil War they fought enthusiastically for the Confederacy, since the status quo unambiguously provided a social class they could look down on. Following Emancipation the similarities of white sharecroppers and black sharecroppers became an awkwardness. Jim Crow and the KKK helped with that, though.
Some commenters have noted the similarities between ghetto and white trash. That is because they really were similar in many respects. Soul food is in many respects simply Southern poor farmer food, and African American Vernacular English shares some features with southern white dialects.
The difference is that as southern blacks migrated north to work in factories they were socially and geographically segregated, which preserved aspects of their culture. When southern whites moved north they were far more likely to be assimilated, and even if they weren't their children probably were.
"I didn't know that having five kids was a marker of being lower-class--especially when all the kids are from the same pairing, and their being well cared for."
Hence any crticism of Palin for this - having more than 2.2 children - has the potential to raise the ire of many Catholic families who think that 4 or 5 is pefectly fine.
As a middle class Catholic (with 2 children), we frequently find ourseleves on the low end of the spectrum at church functions when it comes to family size.
As for the names, with a boring name like John - not even Juan as my grandmothers called me, who am I to comment on name selection?
And the hockey mom stuff is definitely not an appeal to lower class white "ghetto". It's expensive to play that sport with all the equipment, ice time rental, and travel. Again, attack hockey moms at your own risk.
You guys are getting into some really flippant stereotypes here. Dumb names, guns, bad clothes, missing teeth, number of kids? This defines "white trash?"
Gimme a break. I grew up lower-middle class, one-step-ahead-of-the-landlord single waitress mom in the Detroit suburbs. I was the first one to make it to college after a close call with teenage pregnancy. It could have gone either way for me, easily. But my mom taught me to have manners, to try to "walk in the other's guy's shoes" and be responsible for my actions. Her favorite phrase when we kids were being stupid was: "I didn't raise you to be a heathen!"
"White trash" has nothing to do with money, possessions or even education. It is about behavior. Your chosen behavior. It's about how you conduct yourself in the world, how well you play the cards you're dealt and how you treat others. "White trash" is about lack of class and class, folks, as Jackie Kennedy once pointed out has nothing to do with money.
Cindy and John McCain have millions but they are "white trash" in my book. Ditto for the Palin clan. I just don't like the way they seem to treat others.
The trick the Republicans are pulling here involves taking comments from obscure liberal blogs, from tabloids who trash celebrities for a living, and from obnoxious elitist media figures who aren't particularly liberal (Dowd, Cohen)... and conflating this shit with criticism from the Obama campaign, which has been remarkably polite toward her. Basically, they're inventing criticisms against themselves as a pretext for escalating the culture war. Weak stuff.
Yes, Palin is catching some flak from certain quarters (not from Democratic officials) because she pushes some white trash buttons. As others have pointed out -- too many kids, rural accent, evangelical, teen baby-daddy with a mullet, etc.
But all of this stuff is just window-dressing. The real, honest-to-God redneck ghetto side of Sarah Palin shows up in the same sort of bogus "keeping it real" cultural mindset that you find in hip-hop culture among people from poor backgrounds with newly-minted wealth and a chip on their shoulder: reverse snobbery, anti-intellectualism, name-checking their hometown or chanting U-S-A for no particular reason, taking pride in their own small-mindedness and provincialism, conspicuous consumerism, hobbies that are simultaneously crude and expensive... The modern American conservative ethos, in short.
Ever since monied Republicans chucked the country club for cultural populism and Nixon's Southern Strategy, this is the result. The first generation of the conservative movement consisted of Yalie snobs who penned disingenous odes to simple working folk, while gadding about in yachts and keeping government jobs in the hands of the educated elite. GWB represents the second generation of the conservative movement, which was weaned on faux-populism and propaganda and ended up believing their own bullshit -- handing out key government positions to pony-show judges and honestly thinking that any old hockey mom could do a better job managing state affairs than the dastardly Washington elite.
Agree that the taxonomy helpfully presented by Critic needs to include Townies of the Southie/ Wooster variety. This is an ethnic white trash category of real salience in the Northeast.
When I first moved to the East Coast from Colorado for college I was also exposed to the term "guido" as another pejorative for a particular type of lower class white and/or particular attributes (e.g., big hair on girls-- which is a huge signifier for trashiness). Not enough white ethnics in the west for such fine distinctions to matter there, but in Boston-- this does count for something. See the earlier comment on "you look like a mobster" etc. on this.
Zacksback:
OK, I'll bite on the gaelic name. What is it?
I was born in Nova Scotia, where some of my friends didn't speak English at home. Almost all went to University, because education was like the air, you breathed it to stay alive, even though they returned to run the family orchard.
You have to sit in a university lecture hall, passing the babies around so everyone can take notes, to accept the idea that babies are not in and of themselves, what holds the parents back.
Listen to Beyond the Fringe on "You Were Lucky". Double Wides? We raised a family of five in the tire that fell of the double-wide of the rich ones up the hill!
I'll go with attitude. I can be rich spiritually and emotionally and not materially and I am not trash. I can live in the mansion on the hill and be no better. Or be worse.
Hmmm. That's a noble thought, Kris.
I guess it would be wrong to continue to think that it all boils down to whether or not your tire cover has Tweety Bird on it.
Can 'white trash' refer to poor urban whites? Or is it a rural identifier? If so, what is the term used?
"Wigger"? I mean I guess it depends on the extent to which the individual under discussion has adopted "urban" culture.
Personally I think it's kind of an ugly word. (And as I white person, I'm very nervous about words that even rhyme with the N-word, which I understand that I cannot say under any circumstances. I don't think I would even call a small biting insect a "chigger" in mixed-race company.) With any luck, we'll import the word "chav" to refer to these individuals (see Vince Vaugn's character in "Be Cool".)
I believe the white equivalent for "ghetto" is "podunk". The words may be antithetical in terms of proximity to population centers, but they both represent cultural identities that when used by outsiders become insults, but when used by the in-group indicates a comaraderie.
Just to keep the lexicon going (and to bring things back to Bawlmer)...
City goats - the "white trash" from West Virginia or Kentucky that migrated to Baltimore (listen to Gram Parson's excellent "Streets of Baltimore" for one biography)
@ExCharmCityCub:
Yea, Ypsilanti (the poorer, blacker neighbor of Ann Arbor, MI) is often referred to as "Ypsitucky" due to the migration of poor whites from Kentucky and Tennessee during World War II. They came for jobs in the Willow Run Bomber factory and stayed on when Ford changed back to making cars. Black folks came from down South two for the same reason. To this day, there's still a recognizable pattern of segregation: the south side of the city is predominantly black, and the northeast side is predominantly white. The whole damn city is poor, except for the northwest side, which is basically Eastern Michigan University and housing for students. I'm not sure quite what the poor white culture is like broadly, but, in my years of observation, the poor white kids and the poor black kids kinda share a culture.
I was kind of talking about this in a comment at my own blog earlier. It isn't just bullshit--though yes, there are a lot of people deliberately reading criticisms of her lack of experience as "elitist," which is standard Republican boilerplate. But that said, yes, she is pretty good at channeling a particular tone of white working- or lower-middle-class resentment, with that "well, some people say that blah blah" thing combined with the "but here in real America, we" etc. etc. stuff.
And yes, generally, having more than (say) three ids, max, is a class marker. Especially if you have them relatively young.
Just to reinforce the point that Matt made about moose (and the relativity of some of this stuff): I grew up in a upper midle class home in New England. My (doctor) father loved to hunt, and every couple years would take a big trip up North to go moose hunting with his (upper middle class) buddies. My family (and friends who came over to eat) would then suffer through months of mooseburgers, moose tacos, moose sloppy joes.
I always associated hunting with rich outdoorsy people and aristocrats (fox-hunting in England?) until more recently.
I also remember as a kid being embaressed by my parents dropping me off in a Volvo at soccer practice because everyone else in my middle class town drove Fords and Toyotas. I thought Volvos were trashy, and I used to beg them to drive me in something else.
All this stuff (particularly as a kid) depends on your peer group and your frame of reference.
There actually are people who study these cultural identifiers, academics who examine them the way Camille Paglia studies pop culture.
You just require more distinction. In the black community you can be "ghetto" or "country." They are two different terms, but both are generally derisive.
The white equivalent of "country" is the same: the rednecks. Read James Webb's Born Fighting if you wonder how their culture arose.
The white equivalent of "ghetto" requires a combination of ignorance, intractable dysfunction, and urbanness - like the Southies from Boston. Though they have mostly assimilated now, there are still pockets of lower class urban ethnics in the northeast.
PTR
"What the white man means when he says "Ghetto"
He means, "shops at Wal-Mart".
Jamie wrote:
I do think there's been a real air of condescension from people who can't seem to point out Sarah's inexperience without taking cheap shots at Wasilla. The news yesterday quoted some anonymous pundit [actually, professional Cajun James Carville] saying our city hall looks like "a Louisiana bait shop," which strikes me as an attempt to link her with the white trash southern redneck stereotype.
Well, here's a photo of said City Hall, and I'd say James called it just about right.
Oops, bad link.
The City Hall bait shop is at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/04/when-palin-thought-wasill_n_124068.html
Re: For instance - one might be fine with their neighbors going hunting.
Hunting is no longer quite the working class pastime it used to be. For one thing it's getting awfully expensive, plus a lot of redneck types no longer have unionized jobs where they get paid vacations (or enough paid vacation time for a fall hunting trip on top of other days off that they may need or want to take). There's also a problem with rural land being bought up and fenced off with "No Hunting/No Trespasing" signs posted. This may not have affected Alaska much, but it's definitely curtailing the hunting traditions in the lower 48.
Re: The animated "King of the Hill" isn't too far off either.
Hank and Peggy Hill were kinda vaguely liberal if I recall. She was a teacher and he got to meet Ann Richards, and also, in one epsiode, he went on a one-man crusade to save Halloween from the local Fundamentlists.
Re: What's interesting is the extent to which living in the middle of nowhere seems to only be an option for white people living marginal lifestyles.
Family connections, at least in the North and West. Few Blacks have relatives or grew up in rural areas outside the South, but a lot of white people do. Those who want to drop out of the urban (and suburban) rat race usually have an Aunt Sue and Uncle Gus out in the back-of-beyond they can move in with and who then smooth the way for them to be accepted by the neighbors.
Re: George Bush did the same thing.
George Bush posing as trailer trash is about as silly as if Britney Spears tried to pose as a nun.
Re: The Republicans decided back with Nixon to 'own' the anti-intellectual brand that has been an important component of American politics at least since we had a party that proudly called itself the Know-Nothings.
Except that the Reagans at least rather gloried in a certain posh old-money pose: Nancy with her fabulous china and Halston dresses, Ron in his ever so-correct tuxes and dyed black hair. They made a purposeful counterpoint to the casualness of the Carters who had a faint air of Southern White Trash about them (dumb, beer-guzzling brother; outspoken matriarch mother; evangelizing sister...).
Re: Yea, Ypsilanti (the poorer, blacker neighbor of Ann Arbor, MI) is often referred to as "Ypsitucky" due to the migration of poor whites from Kentucky and Tennessee during World War II.
LOL! My home town! But technically it was only the east side that was "Ypsitucky". The south side was soldily Black, and the west side was simply Ann Arbor Lite complete with its own university (Eastern Mihcigan) and more reasonable housing costs. Yes, most of Ypsi is low income now (except the west side), but back when the factories were humming and the unions were strong it was pretty solidly middle class, including most of the Black neighborhood.
The brilliance of the Republicans' campaign themes is that their own elite (remember that Barbara Bush sneering at folks in Houston shelters after Katrina) has utter contempt for their own base, their base feels that contempt, and their elite convinces the base that the contempt that they are feeling comes from the Democrats, not from the country club and management Republicans.
White trash names are names that don't have a formal version. As in the parents simply name their child the nickname. Apologies in advance.
My mom's name is Cathie. Not Catharine, Cathie. Even the redneck spelling of the short form. She wound up as a Contract Administer and VP of Quality for a major aerospace firm and was always mortified when for some sort of business reason she had to write her first name.
Nice point, SeanH.
Obama remains a particularly dangerous candidate because his background (and his political appeal) is strong (perhaps strongest) in the 'flyover districts.' I'd venture that he's far better poised and positioned to deal with Palin's attacks than Clinton, and it may be that Palin was chosen in part because the Republicans felt their grip on these districts slipping.
Part of it is that the 'elites' tend to misunderestimate sharp differences between white working class urban, and white rural. In the North, one unnoticed phenomenon of the primaries was the fact that Obama tended to struggle with the white urban 'working class' but do fine with 'working class' whites in the rural Midwest, Northern Plains, and Northern New England. Interestingly, Obama's coalition bears a passing resemblance to Lincoln's.
A county by county breakdown of New Hampshire's voting on Jan 8 is suggestive.
Dunkin Donuts may have been inhospitable, but Dairy Queen was no problem.
While they might be somewhat similar, there are huge differences between "ghetto" and "redneck", "white/trailer trash" or anything else along those lines.
I guess I have to tread carefully in articulating this, but I think my point basically boils down to this: class mobility has been dropping drastically in the past two decades, but, regardless, in general poor white people have many, many more opportunities presented to them than poor black people (or at least fewer obstacles), even putting aside the effects of overt racism. The environments are incomparable in terms of violence, gangs or drugs. Rural public education might not always be the best, but the class sizes are small and the students get a lot of individual attention. And a large percentage of the rural population has access to a reasonably affordable community college after high school.
I don't want to overstate the case - it's true that it is extremely difficult to find a decent job in small town America. But there's still the perception that "rednecks" are rednecks by choice. They had the opportunity to do well in school and get a degree, but just did not choose to take advantage of it. In a lot of ways, that is an unfair statement, because each community and each individual within those communities has a separate set of circumstances hanging over his/her head - but I think there's also a certain amount of truth to it.
And yes, generally, having more than (say) three ids, max, is a class marker. Especially if you have them relatively young.
I nominate this for Freudian Slip of the Year. ;)
To complicate matters just a bit more, in New England those who would be "rednecks" elsewhere are referred to as "Swamp Yankees." The word "Yankee," of course, means very different things depending upon who is using it and where they are. Some non-New Englanders use it to mean "elitist." Within New England, it can be (but by no means is always) an insult.
I cannot express how excited I would be at the opportunity to be your white spokesperson. Resume available upon request. Email me!
Either this idea of class-criticism is just strawmanship, or I'm blind to the intricate folkways of white people. I, frankly, suspect that it's both.
And, in my opinion, your suspicions are entirely correct. There is quite a bit of strawmanship going on, as your original citation evidences. (No one actually ridicules anyone for being a "rube", except maybe carnies. Otherwise, "rube" is only used in accusations -- "he thinks you're a rube!")
This purposely confuses _everyone's_ understanding of the intricate folkways. Matt was right to point out that eating moose isn't white ghetto-equivalent ("whetto?"), but it's being purposely confused with shooting and eating squirrel or possum, which is. (Although this indicator is a stereotype that rarely occurs in the wild.) Snowmobiling is whetto when it's competing with cross-country skiing, but in the wider context (competitive snowmobile racing?) it's comparable with Ski-doos and ATVs, which are on the expensive side to really indicate whetto (we're getting into nouveau riche tacky territory -- if you're snooty about ATVs, you're snootifying against how those rich people are spending their money indulging their whetto tastes, which introduces new social dynamic twists -- but more on this in a moment.)
"She supports drilling!" and "...where did she go to school?" are what the author imagines cartoons of ecofascists and bluebloods would exclaim, and nothing more.
A point worth pointing out, vaguely related to this post by Matt, is that what actual lower class whites do is only peripherally related to the classist notion of whetto. Predominantly, the class tension is between white people who spend their disposable income within some cultural norm structure, and white people who spend their disposable income in some other cultural norm structure that the first group thinks is how dumb poor people would spend their money if they had any.
I'm serious about that spokesperson gig. And I can be more concise than this -- more words, fewer words, using "trailer trash" instead of "whetto", whatever you want. I aim to please.
Anyone who identifies self as "Christian", has big hair, was a small market TV news bimbo, does motorized anything for 'sport', fires a librarian, carves up moose in a garage, has state police in the family, suffers the plague of the day- wanting fame and fortune without merit, is common. Is trash.Is lower than Dan Quayle.
You have to get close to any culture to pick out the class differences. A British accent sounds high-class and arrogant to most Americans. Get across to that sceptr'd isle, and you find that there's at least eleventy-five hundred different accents in the U.K., and enough class distinctions to keep sociologists employed full-time.
Summing up the previous 97 comments: money is one thing, class is another.
Perhaps we can chalk this up to differing preceptions of what constitutes "white trash", but I really can't understand the comments here identifying Palin as such. Perhaps most poster are coming from an "urban elite" perspective, because as a guy who grew up in suburban/small town NE hailing from a middle/upper middle class background, I can without a doubt say that Sarah Palin screams, no SHRIEKS middle class yuppie.
(With the notable exception of the small town/moose hunter thing, which seems mcuh more Alaskan to me than "redneck")
I know yuppie original meant "young urban professional", but it is most strongly associated with a certain brand of well-to-do suburbanites. Those urban professionals eventually grew up, got married and had kids, and bought a nice house in a small, pseudo-rural location. The hockey mom shtick, snowmobile racing and ESPECIALLY the childrens names are a dread give-away.
Quote:
"But I think we want to distinguish between yuppie trash and white trash. I do think it's trashy to name children after TV characters, but I think it's especially yuppie trash to name children after obsolete professions or cheeses : Mason, Porter, Brie, Carter, Parker, Colby, Hunter, Cooper, Fletcher, &c. Naming children after states or presidents falls somewhere in between lowclass and middleclass trash."
This. This. THIS.
"Track" and "Trig" are not remotely "white trash" names. They are, instead, yuppie to the core. They are a manifestation of the yuppie need to give their children semi-unique names of a somewhat obscure/antiquated variety, often somewhat dissued or antiquated names (outside of the yuppie group), or appropriations of words that are not normally used as names.
I would also like to say that their has not been nearly enough discussion of Townies here; they occupy an important social rung somehere above white trash and rednecks.
Actually, I always thought "Willow" was more of a hippy name, all the WIllows I knew were the children of hippies of middle-class or upper-middle-class means....just to throw another twist in there... ;)
Forgot to add:
The "more than 2 kids" thing is very "urban elite". Yes, lots of kids is a potential indicator of "white trash", but a lot of well-to-do suburban families have 3. 4 or 5 is fairly rare, but not inconcievable.
Oh, and the "Statie in the family" is much more "townie" than "redneck", no?
Read the book "Class" by Paul Fussell. Twenty years old, but still a classic.
Even minor class differences run deep. I've got two Ivy League degrees, but still bear the memories and petty resentments of someone whose family didn't have enough money to send their kids to camp, didn't take foreign vacations--or indeed, much of any vactions--had children share rooms, had clothes pass down from one child to the next, had macaroni and cheese for dinner, and all the rest. My wife, from money, and I literally don't see eye to eye on a range of daily issues t see eye to eye on a range of issues--and this after 25 years.
Personally I think it's kind of an ugly word. (And as I white person, I'm very nervous about words that even rhyme with the N-word, which I understand that I cannot say under any circumstances. I don't think I would even call a small biting insect a "chigger" in mixed-race company.) With any luck, we'll import the word "chav" to refer to these individuals (see Vince Vaugn's character in "Be Cool".)
You must be from Bawlamer because that's the only place where I've encountered "Whiggers."
I'm black and I'm not particularly offended by the word, just puzzled by the species. These are P.W.T. kids who style themselves as hot ghetto messes, but are completely antagonistic toward black people. It makes a trip to the Super Fresh in Hampden an adventure.
I used to live in South Carolina, which has a high redneck quotient. But, there are rednecks and then there are rednecks. We sort of divided them up into Trailer Trash and Bubbas.
- Trailer Trash: lived on the outskirts of town, usually in trailers (often decrepit). Women had large hair and many children with various deadbeat fathers. Men had mullets, scraggly facial hair and wore trucker caps in non-ironic ways. Other markers: large belt-buckles, t-shirt rolled up to expose beer gut, Confederate flags, country music, Rottweiler or pit bull, poor grammar, strong "country" accent, missing teeth. Frequently unemployed, either due to lack of skills or poor work ethic. Fondness for crystal meth. Pastimes often include huntin', fishin', drinkin' and fightin'. Examples: Cletus The Slack-Jawed Yokel on The Simpsons.
- Bubba (aka Good Ol' Boy): Superficially similar to redneck but more prosperous and better behaved. Better teeth, stable marriages, gainfully employed. Still fond of mullets, country music, and Confederate flag. Labrador retriever, hunting hound or Boykin spaniel. Lives in a house or in well-kept trailer. Enjoys huntin', fishin', but usually refrains from excessive drinkin' and fightin'. Can be quite well-to-do, usually from skilled blue-collar type work like plumber, electrician, general contractor, etc. Hank Hill is a Bubba. So was Rosanne's family.
A local saying was "Rednecks toss their beer cans out the truck window; Bubbas throw them in the back of the truck."
Mind you, it's a continuum rather than a clear demarcation. Some rednecks aspire to Bubba-dom; some Bubbas have redneck tendencies while others form a sort of yuppie-Bubba class.
Now, the Palins would definitely be Bubbas, not trailer trash.
I didn't realize that Alaska had its own accent; hers sounds very similar to an upper Midwest or central Canadian one. I would not consider it a liability; it does not evoke sophistication but generally people perceive Midwesterners as hardworking, decent, if somewhat unfashionable people (vs. popular stereotypes of uneducated Southerners, pushy New Yorkers, Mafia thugs from New Jersey, and annoying meddlesome liberals from Massachusetts).
As far as the names, well, stupid names seem to have infiltrated every social class these days. Rednecks and Bubbas used to give their kids names like Billy Bob or Wylene; now they tend to give the same faux-trendy weird names that yuppies and movie stars do, although usually a couple of years after the trend has peaked.
A local saying was "Rednecks toss their beer cans out the truck window; Bubbas throw them in the back of the truck."
Someone told me years ago that if you're going fast enough, when you toss them out the window, they automatically land in the back of the truck by some magical aerodynamic effect. Truth or fiction?
I think that one form of speach that always indicates a white lower class background is dropping the g on words ending with "ing". For example, talkin' instead of talking, singin' instead of singing, etc.
I have always thought that the Bush family purposefully adopted this manner of speach in an effort to appeal to the lower-middle and working classes. Sometimes you can hear George W slip up and pronounce the g.
... a lot of black folks probably think Palin has a wierd accent ...
That would be weird.
(I don't normally pick spelling nits, but since you asked us nicely....)
Shorter white trash signifiers:
Any guest on the Jerry Springer Show.
Anyone videotaped on Cops.
Anyone on American Funniest Videos.
Anyone who watches Springer or Cops or AFV without self-aware irony.
Palin's white-trashiness is obviously a marketing consideration, since her starting salary as a mayor was $75,000 and her husband works a solid, union administrative level job for British Petroleum. We're talking a family that's had an income well into six figures (at least) for many, many years. This type of income puts them more in line with a certain type of new-money southern gentry, folks whose families have gotten fabulously wealthy in the oil industry generations ago but still hold close the signifiers of the yeoman class; beer, barbecue, and country music. As a musician I've had the misfortune to spend a fair bit of time around these assholes, and the way they talk among themselves can be real bad for your blood pressure. Their attitude towards actual working class whites (and blacks) is one of sentimentality mixed with contempt. When the chips are down, they know who to stand with on the yard, and it ain't with the trailer trash. They are either genuine Brahmins, or aspire to be.
All this nuance sure stands apart from what's afforded African-Americans, doesn't it? The white vote has so many sub-catagories; blue collar, soccer mom, security soccer mom, yuppies, 'green' voters. The only catagory for black voters is...black.
Gee, it's almost as if they think black people are just one big amorphous, featureless mass, isn't it?
Good topic. I can relate to the Baltimore link.
During my few years there some time ago, City Papers made the hopefully hyperbolic statement that there are "70,000 illiterate white people" around the docks who never left their neighborhood once in their lives. Took a city bus to the fort and it was a trip. Pregnant 15-year-old white girls stoop sitting the townhouse steps. The whole issue of "townies" is important and every African-American should view Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" with serious intent as the "Roots" of that urban, white demographic.
But we're hunting redneck here. My periodic lunch partner in Baltimore was a public school counselor and a black woman. With a couple years of Northeastern Minnesota in my recent experience, I made the argument that it qualified as a white ghetto and had another person with some experience backing me up but it was a hard sell to my Baltimore friend. However, like any "ghetto" the people up there are often multi-generation unemployed, alcoholic (probably lots of meth today), depressed, suicidal, wife beating, and desperate. Renting a place (yes, a trailer) out in the country, I was paranoid as I have been living anywhere in my life. They broke down some old guy's door for his penny jar at shotgun point while we were there. Year after we left I read some of her classmates gang raped and killed a cheerleader.
So, much the same behavior as an urban ghetto. But when there are about two people per square mile amid the trees, the scenery resembles "Lumberton" of David Lynch's Blue Velvet more than a old, brick urban street scene, and the people are all pallid white it can be hard to correlate those same social dynamics. Much the loss for all groups concerned.
The number of kids and the social stereotypes with that is probably a statement about education. These days, many view a college degree the same way a high school diploma was viewed 50 years ago. It is assumed one will graduate college. Anything less is viewed as wildly uneducated. And, on top of that, it should be a GOOD college. One ranked decently in US News & World reports or what have you. With the cost of higher education these days, that means college will cost you at least $200,000 per child. If you have more than 3 kids and you're not super rich, this is basically a signifier to other parents that you have no intention of sending your children to good schools, which makes you a bad parent and irresponsible.
Of course, if you a are extremely rich, you can have as many kids as you want (like the Kennedy clans) and its not a problem.
So when you show up at the restaurant with 6 kids piled into an old Pontiac (or some other sign that you aren't loaded), you're telling the world, "I am planning on adding a bunch more uneducated people to this country and there is nothing you can do to stop me."
Us West Texas White Trash are surprised to learn that we no longer need to hide our bortion and pregnant children and or wives with someonelses childen
Ghetto is not in a name. If so, the concept of ghetto would be a 1970s phenom, and it's not. For some reason, the name Alexis has becoming a running joke among blacks for meaning "A Lexus," when for some it may be a cute name, and others may see the historical reference to Alexis de Tocquivelle.
The first thing I learned is that ghetto is not in a name. As a matter of fact, if you attended an all white school, there would never be a mention or reference to a my name in the form of black or ghetto. Different, yes. Unique, yes.
I enjoyed this read, but embracing the wrong definition of ghetto is a problem, IMO. I'm surrounded by more Tameka laywers, than ghetto fabulous ones, what does that mean?
You know everyone wants to complain about how we have dumbed down as a nation. The truth is the elitist liberals did it, those in Hollywood pushed the Springer, and reality shows, they have made jokes out of the entire nation finding only the least educated to parade around on TV even Eddie Murphy saw it way back in 83 with his first stand up album. How the media manages to find the most crazy and stupid mfer to put on tv to tell what they saw in an accident or a newsworthy disaster of some sort. Did the news show those in Nola helping one another after Katrina? No, they showed the people looting and wading through the muck to steal a damned tv or some beer. TV celebrates the ignorant and damns those with any intelligence. Now the same liberals that pushed this down everyones throat are complaining about the end result? Too bad deal with it, you made this bed now lie in it.
And i find it funny that a poster wanted to claim a southern accent was bad no matter where you are. Thats funny, i couldve sworn Mark Twain was from the south and purported to have a souther accent, i guess he was just some dumb rube that got lucky.
This is a blatant escalation of the attack on intellect and reason that the right wing has been conducting for some time now to pander to the insecurities of tens of millions of Americans.
Chris~ you are 100% correct.
I would argue that it is a response to the changing racial (and class) demographics of America. Whites can't play the numbers/merit/majority rules game like they used to so now they change the rules of the game.
You have to wonder sometimes, if they had to make a choice, would white Americans keep their race or nationality?