Are "Hillbilly" & "Redneck" Nation's Last Acceptable Stereotypes?

[theHandpuppet]

http://rcnky.com/articles/2014/05/23/are-hillbilly-redneck-nations-last-acceptable-stereotypes
River City News
Are "Hillbilly" & "Redneck" Nation's Last Acceptable Stereotypes?
Friday, 05/23/2014

An online discussion among Appalachian academics sparked a debate about “whether bias in academe (and society) is too accepted when it is about the people of the region they study,” Scott Jaschik writes for Inside Higher Ed.

The discussion began with a report that a student had been walking around barefoot and a faculty member had called him a hillbilly. Others said that they’d heard similar comments, and that instructors who cautiously think about whether “their comments might offend members of many groups do not feel the same need to be sensitive to those from poor, largely white, rural communities in Appalachia,” Jaschik reports.

When the Academe Blog published the debate, it didn’t name the institution where the incident occurred, but Rosann Kent, director of Appalachian studies at the University of North Georgia, said she posted the question asking her colleagues what they would do about the other professor’s remark.

“Kent said what bothered her about the colleague’s comment was the quick assumption that this student must be from Appalachia and not just any student who was celebrating the end of the year and the arrival of warm weather by being slightly less dressed than normal,” Jaschik writes... MORE at link posted above.

Also see: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/05/13/online-faculty-discussion-raises-concern-about-bias-against-appalachians-and-poor?utm_source=slate&utm_medium=referral&utm_term=partner#sthash.YIbcS7Wf.3BFaz0hs.dpbs

[Hestia]

1. Well, at least the only people that TV can make fun of w/o screams of PC

[xocet]

2. One could equally well be labeled as being from Hawaii - being barefoot there was

common in my experience, and it was fun.

[theHandpuppet]

3. "Hawaiian" isn't used as a common pejorative

Last edited Sun Jun 1, 2014, 02:59 PM - Edit history (1)

The issue is one of stereotyping. "Hawaiian" isn't used as a catch-all to label persons as backward and ignorant.

[xocet]

4. That was not my point. It seemed odd to me to choose one's being barefoot as an indicator of

intelligence, background, etc.

What all fits in the "constellation" of traits that define the stereotype of "hillbilly"? What are the so-called characteristics of a "redneck"? Do the two sets overlap? Are these traits seen to be quite acceptable in other groups - i.e., being barefoot in Hawaii, etc - but have negative connotations in relation to the region and/or group discussed in the article to which you linked?

If you want to invalidate a stereotype, why not define it and simply show that all the traits that make up its definition are accepted in the context of other groups? If these traits are acceptable in the case of the other groups, then why are they also not acceptable in the case of the groups that are ostensibly being unfairly labeled and demeaned?

Would that not illustrate that the labeling of said group is merely a latent form of prejudice, and thus would that not provide an answer to your OP's opening question?

[theHandpuppet]

5. Ah, okay, I see what you were getting at

Of course, you realize it would probably require a dissertation to address all your points in any adequate fashion. There are folks who have made a career from the subject -- I'm just an observant amateur.

Over the next few days I'll try to organize some thoughts on those questions and pen a response although I doubt I can do the subject justice. In the meanwhile, here are a few links of interest:

http://www.appalachianhistory.net/2012/03/the-word-hillbilly-linguistic-mystery-and-popular-culture-fixture.html
http://www.appalachianhistory.net/2009/03/hillbilly-stereotypes-picking-up-pine.html
http://kasamaproject.org/race-liberation/3395-27the-hillbilly-stereotype-razing-history-leveling-appalachia

[xocet]

6. It definitely would require quite an effort to properly analyze the two stereotypes that were

mentioned, and that would be way too much work for a casual conversation on the internet much less a serious one. So, please don't knock yourself out on my account, but if you enjoy the idea of a deeper analysis of those terms, I would be interested in reading what you have to say.

Originally, I was just surprised by the mention and association of being barefoot with being a "hillbilly". I had never thought of that in those terms - especially with my experiences in Hawaii. It was just fine to go running around without shoes. (Only one has to watch out for badly maintained docks - splinters are not enjoyable.) Nevertheless, it was nice to think back on those days!

It does seem like the article that you linked to in the OP has a valid point to make and that people should consider it. Thank you for bringing it up and for the additional linked information. I will take a look at it.

[theHandpuppet]

7. It's the barefoot thing that pricks a particular nerve

Many of my friends used to kid me mercilessly about my "barefoot hang up". Now, I can only speak for the idiosyncrasies of my particular area but back in the day, going around barefoot was tantamount to a scandal. Folks were very sensitive about being considered hillbillies and to go out in public with bare feet was considered especially low -- it made you a "white trash" hillbilly, the kind mocked in the funny papers and cartoons. So no matter how raggedy folks' clothes might have been, they all wore decent shoes because it at least identified you as a better class of hillbilly. Didn't matter if it was 95 degrees outside, socks and shoes. And no sandals. Any exposure of the bare feet was considered a no-no. Hell, if you were going to run around barefoot, why not completely shame yourself and go all out by stripping down buck naked!

About 20 years ago a group of my friends from NYC and DC came down to visit with me in my hometown and the subject of the barefoot taboo came up. They laughingly dared me to prove that the locals, even on this blistering summer day, would all being wearing socks and shoes when they should be found in flip flops, sandals, or (horrors!) barefoot. I took that dare and offered 20 bucks to any one of them who could find a single person, man woman or child, who had broken the rule. I even sweetened the pot by including sandals of any kind in my bet. We hopped in the car and drove to town -- they, joking and confident that within seconds they'd dispel that barefoot taboo and me, confident that I'd never have to pay that 20 dollars. I had to be pretty darn confident because I didn't have 20 dollars, anyway!

So we drove. And we drove. Up and down the streets of the town, down 'round the park and playground then to the municipal pool, where even kids dressed in nothing but ill-fitting trunks and hand-me-down swimsuits wore their socks and shoes until the very last moment when they made a dash for the water. At that I got a collective "Uncle!" from my gaggle of friends and they never again teased me about the veracity of the barefoot taboo.

Even in Appalachia things have changed so much over the years that the rules by which we once lived might as well be remembered as mere fables. Flip flops and sandals are everywhere, though to this day I wouldn't be caught dead exposing my feet like that. The old taboos die hard.

I can look back on that barefoot adventure now and chuckle, though it bespeaks a sad truth about class. Even when folks know -- or perhaps because they do -- that they're part of negative cultural stereotype, an "ignorant hillbilly", they will determine ways to separate themselves as a higher class of the commonly ridiculed and despised. In most of our society folks display their means by living in McMansions or driving expensive cars. In my little corner of Appalachia and in my time, it required only one thing. A pair of shoes.

Now this is certainly not the dissertation on or analysis of the cultural stereotypes you might be looking for, just a personal anecdote. Take it as you will. There are just some things that are hard to explain unless you've lived it.

[theHandpuppet]

8. A matter of shoes

Odd timing, that. Right after I posted about the barefoot taboo I had responded to the thread about "A Connecticut Yankee in Appalachia" with a link to an old Life Magazine article that featured an impoverished family from Portsmouth. It had been years since I read that article but perusing it afresh, I was reminded once again how the issue of shoes became one of such importance and identification with class.

"I like winters more than summers, because you can shovel snow in the winter," says Mike Copas. "And I'm the best snow shoveler in town." Mike hides his money under his mattress so little Jamie won't find it. "But I don't like to," he says. "Mice get under it. I hate them things. They get in your food. Poop in it. I 'bout puke when that happens. They got in one of my old shoes once and had babies in it." Chuck makes $8.64 a week on his newspaper route, but quickly points out that "thirty cents of that is for insurance. In case I break a leg or die. It'll pay half my funeral costs." Last year Chuck won a $100 gift certificate from the Daily Times for signing up the most new subscriptions. He shared his prize with his sister Jenifer. They used all the money to buy clothes. On a recent can-collecting mission, Carrie earned enough to buy a pair of purple jellies at the Dollar Store. "Guess how much they cost?" she asks Jake. "Three ninety-nine."

"Jellies" were rather hideous, colorful and cheap shoes with the consistency of... um... what folks jokingly call "booger glue". At the time they were particularly popular among little girls.

During recess, although she is athletic and loves to skip rope and ride the swings, Carrie stands by herself against the schoolhouse wall while her classmates play. "The rich children won't let Carrie play with them because she's poor," says her mother, Dorothy, who dropped out of school after eighth grade. "Not real dirt-poor, but poor. They just make fun of her. I don't know why. Jeff and Mike, they're having problems too. The other kids have better shoes on and all this. And they make fun of 'em."

Shoes... no shoes... better shoes... it's certainly not a subject foreign to anyone but to the poor (and especially to any hillbilly poor) it holds a special significance. The irony is that Portsmouth used to be a center for American shoe manufacturing, an industry that went the way of the steel mills, the railroad, the industries that made bricks and furniture and scores of other goods. When my beloved grandmother, who was herself quite poor, passed away, there was little in the way of worldly goods by which to remember her. The old leather-bound bible with its handwritten record of births and deaths and yellowed newspaper clippings tucked into the margins, is now mine. An old composition doll in a homemade wedding dress, carried by the little girl who was my grandmother when she came over on the boat from Germany, found a home with my elder sister, who didn't mind that a missing hand had been replaced with one cut from cardboard. But the last treasure that symbolizes more than any other our funny and sad ways is now in the loving possession of my eldest sister: a pair of shoes. The tiny, buttoned, high-top shoes of nearly a century ago, the leather still supple from her ceaseless care. The shoes that told everyone that she, too, was a person of dignity and worth. Such a small thing, isn't it.

[xocet]

10. That is very interesting.

Shoes really do mean something quite significant in that context.

[xocet]

9. Thank you for sharing that anecdote.

It is interesting how the taboo against going barefoot can be local to particular regions and to particular times.

In the 60's in Hawaii, being shoeless was how my brother and I played outside and ran around. Of course, we had shoes for really rough terrain - hot pavement, lava rock, etc., but as far as I could tell, no one cared at all if someone was running around without shoes. People might have recognized us as being haole, but there never was a word said about not wearing shoes.

This shoeless behavior stopped in the Iowa, though, since bare feet and gravel roads are - in my recollection - not compatible. No one in my part of western Iowa used the term hillbilly as a derogatory term as far as I ever remember hearing, but redneck was prevalent as a putdown. I have never associated the term 'redneck' with being barefoot though. The term 'redneck' seemed to float around without any attachment to a particular set of characteristics. (Without looking up the term's origin, I cannot say to what group the term 'redneck' is supposed to refer.) It seemed to be synonymous with simply being ignorant.

I have heard the term 'farm boy' used against Iowans. However, since an awful lot of Iowans are from rural areas, this construct has no effect - it seems redundant and thus meaningless. Maybe this term is the closest in spirit to the term 'hillbilly', but 'farm boy' has never gained currency as a putdown.

[theHandpuppet]

11. From Hawai'i to western Iowa

Talk about a culture shock! That must be a story unto itself.

About eight years ago I posted a thread about the origins of the term "redneck" and tucked it away in my journal:
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/theHandpuppet/54

There are others who contend that the term "redneck" came about as an identifier of the rural working classes, whose necks were burned from working out in the sun. I think both definitions are plausible and could have arisen independently of one another but either way, it was a derogatory term to define a person of coarse ways, backward, ignorant, of the working classes.

Now where the two pejoratives "hillbilly" and "redneck" differ in usage depends on who you ask; these days folks seem to use them interchangeably (which they are not) though to me there are recognizable applications. For instance, a farm boy from western Iowa might be taunted with calls of "redneck" but he's no hillbilly, which is yet another rung down on the ladder of insults. Redneck is of class origins, whereas hillbilly found its origins in both region and class. It's the American version of a caste system. Am I making any sense here?

It's my hope that by discussing the topic of class-based language on DU we can rethink just how freely we sprinkle our posts with insults that denigrate by class. The irony is that the easy use of these terms as insults seems in direct contradiction to how we as progressives and Democrats define ourselves. I don't understand how folks can claim to be a champion of the poor, the working class, the union worker with one breath and insult someone as a hillbilly or redneck with the next. Is Sarah Palin really "the Wasilla Hillbilly"? Are the wealthy, Connecticut-born Bushes truly the "Texas hillbillies"? Is that really the best we can do?

I'm of a mind that one the best ways to combat this class war is to reclaim those terms in a positive way, thereby stripping those words of the power to hurt the very people we claim to champion. As I wrote in yet another thread those eight years ago, "The poor are not our enemies, the powerless are not our enemies, the hungry or uneducated are not our enemies. The ones pulling the strings in this country can be found among the uber rich and their corporate allies. They can have Ivy-League educations. They live in the best homes. They're still scumbags. I'll proudly take my poor hillbilly neighbors any day over their kind of trash." And until we fully embrace that concept, even mindful of the language we use and why, we'll never truly appreciate how we progressives and Democrats have been manipulated to point an accusing finger at the already disenfranchised. Neat trick, that -- and it seems to have worked.

[xocet]

12. It was quite the change, but being really young allows one to adapt easily.

Hawai'i resides on the fringes of memory, whereas Iowa is clearly recalled. One thing, though, that cannot be replaced or seemingly erased by time is the smell of the salt air - of the ocean. There is nothing quite like it. It is both unique in itself and unique as a personal piece of nostalgia.

You are correct - I believe - about the distinction between "redneck" and "hillbilly". "Redneck" if its true origin is in the labor struggles of miners has totally lost all connection with its history and has been completely subsumed and blurred by popular culture to be merely a descriptor ignorance and unrefined behavior. "Hillbilly" does seem to denote (as you mention - yes, you make perfect sense in this) a rank lower than "redneck". However, it also has a generally cartoonish character attached to it (that "redneck" does not) by way of "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Li'l Abner". In this, the term "hillbilly" seen from the outside has been separated from the original group of people to whom it referred.

As you stated:

It's my hope that by discussing the topic of class-based language on DU we can rethink just how freely we sprinkle our posts with insults that denigrate by class. The irony is that the easy use of these terms as insults seems in direct contradiction to how we as progressives and Democrats define ourselves. I don't understand how folks can claim to be a champion of the poor, the working class, the union worker with one breath and insult someone as a hillbilly or redneck with the next.

There seem to be certain terms that achieve such generality that they seem to be detached from any particular group even though they in reality are not. Xerox, Kleenex and Coke have achieved such generality as to no longer necessarily be specific in themselves. I can think of one racist example from my childhood. Kids at school (in Iowa) would say, "He gypped him." or some other variation of the use of the verb "to gyp". As children, I don't think that anyone knew any better. Only later in teenage years did I figure out that the verb was a racist reference to Gypsies. What a shocking realization that was!

An aside: Western Iowa in the early 80's was white like driven snow - at that time, most of it had absolutely zero diversity - literally, zero. Strangely enough (ok not really), it was and is very, very Republican. At any rate, it is important to point out the harmful, latent stereotypes, because no one can see them if they do not see the terms as more than mere generalized adjectives.

Yes, we can do better, but people need to recognize the problematic language, so you idea of pointing out these terms and trying to reclaim them is a necessary but really difficult task. Knowledge of the history of the terms and the history of the region might help wake people up, but it will take time since the relevant history is (in my experience) not covered in high school history of the USA.

And until we fully embrace that concept, even mindful of the language we use and why, we'll never truly appreciate how we progressives and Democrats have been manipulated to point an accusing finger at the already disenfranchised. Neat trick, that -- and it seems to have worked.

Here is an interesting review of some of the struggles of the labor movement in the US and of the book "Gun Thugs, Rednecks and Radicals: A Documentary History of the West Virginia Mine Wars". The blog entry is interesting and the book looks like it would be a fascinating and important read.

September 3, 2012
Money, Guns and Workers: The True Meaning of Labor Day
By Amy Corron Power

After six days of wine tasting and pairing in Portland and Carlton, Oregon, we headed on a walking tour of the city and landed at Powell’s City of Books. Since Joe and I are secretly book nerds (we used to go on dates in Houston’s West Alabama Bookstore) we spent about three hours there. It clearly was not enough time to see the whole thing — but with only one full day to discover the non-tourista part of Portland, we had to save time for beer.

Gun Thugs Rednecks and Radicals Book coverWandering through the Purple Room, I found “Gun Thugs, Rednecks and Radicals: A Documentary History of the West Virginia Mine Wars” edited by David Alan Corbin. Like me, Corbin grew up in West Virginia and attended Marshall University. He earned both his bachelors and Masters degrees there in history, and went on to earn a doctorate at the University of Maryland. Like me, Corbin failed to learn about West Virginia’s own “civil wars” and the history of West Virginia Coal miners in public school. Not because we were lazy, or didn’t pay attention. But because it was not taught.

Many of you have probably seen the movie, “Matewan” which details the May 19, 1920 Matewan Massacre. Here’s what the West Virginia Department of History and Culture website has to say about it…

“When the United Mine Workers (UMW) stepped up its campaign to organize Logan, Mingo, and McDowell counties, coal operators retaliated by hiring private detectives to quash all union activity. Miners who joined the UMW were fired and thrown out of their company-owned houses. Despite the risks, thousands defied the coal operators and joined the UMW. Tensions between the two sides exploded into violence on May 19, when 13 Baldwin-Felts detectives arrived in Matewan to evict union miners from houses owned by the Stone Mountain Coal Company.”

...

http://www.anotherwineblog.com/archives/14515#.U41bmig1D9s

P.S. I have enjoyed our conversation. You have made some excellent points. Thanks for bringing up the issue regarding the terms "hillbilly" and "redneck".

[xocet]

13. FYI: Here is a current example of exactly the usage that you noted:

The Opinionated Bitch – The Swiftboating of An American Prisoner of War
06/03/14

...

Our dear brothers and sisters in journalism over at Fox News took to the airwaves to suggest Bowe Bergdahl’s father should cut his hair and shave – because he looks like a terrorist. Because they believe they know what terrorists look like. Of course, what a terrorist looks like depends on whom you ask. If you ask people in Isla Vista, California, they’ll tell you a terrorist looks like Elliott Rogers. If you ask anyone who confronts the Open Carry people about their sanity and public safety, they’ll tell you a terrorist looks like a redneck with a long gun strapped to his back in a restaurant. Perhaps Fox News could stop being the self-appointed arbiter of who does or does not look like a terrorist. Mr. Bergdahl immersed himself in the culture and language of his son’s captors, knowing his every word would be picked up over the internet.

...

http://herewomentalk.com/the-opinionated-bitch-the-swiftboating-of-an-american-prisoner-of-war

[Eleanors38]

14. Growing up in Florida, I and most of the neighbor kids went barefoot...

Ours was a middle-class neighborhood, but our parents were collectively part of the "Depression generation." Perhaps more importantly, that generation was more rural. We never saw it as a stigma at the time, nor did the practice have a racial implication since black kids did the same thing.

I remember getting home from school and gleefully pulling off my shoes so I could run in the grass and soft sand. At times, I would walk along side U.S. 441 a half mile to the lake culvert to wade in the mud and fish.