Alllieblog

What’s the difference between a Redneck and White Trash? If a redneck has a couple of dead cars in his yard it’s because he’s fixing on them or using them for parts. If white trash has a couple of dead cars in his yard, it’s because he’s too lazy to have them hauled off.

To the redneck work is what life is about. It’s almost a compulsion with them. The worst thing a person can be, worse than dumb or mean or crazy, is lazy. The worst that can be said of any person is “he doesn’t want to work” even though, when asked, they will admit they don’t want to work either – but they do. Constantly. There’s something ant-like about it. Maybe it’s because before the last couple of generations they were almost always farmers. They might have sharecropped or maybe even owned a little bit of land but they never had a boss standing over them to make them work but if they didn’t work, the crop would fail and they and their families would go hungry. So it’s in them to work. Only the hypnotism of TV and beer can lay them out.

The constant activity of the redneck keeps him stupid and powerless because it keeps him from learning. In the olden days rednecks even looked down on lynching and night-riding, not because they thought it was wrong to ride around scaring and killing black people, but because a man who could spend his nights that way “didn’t have enough work to keep him busy.” Night-riding wasn’t suitable for a working man. It was the lazy white trash idea of fun.

That brings us to the worst thing a redneck can be: Lazy.

Main Entry: la·zy
Pronunciation: ‘lA-zE
Etymology: perhaps from Middle Low German lasich feeble; akin to Middle High German erleswen to become weak
1 a : disinclined to activity or exertion : not energetic or vigorous b : encouraging inactivity or indolence
2 : moving slowly : SLUGGISH
3 : DROOPY, LAX
4 : placed on its side
5 : not rigorous or strict

The etymology of lazy shows the true meaning of the word… “Feeble”, “to become weak”. Lazy is not a voluntary choice in redneck culture. It’s a result of illness and reminds me of a chapter of Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth.

Letter VII deals with some of the illnesses and plagues that afflict humans and cause laziness. Twain describes the kind of chicken-and-the-egg relationship between illness, poverty and laziness. Were the poor tired because their poverty made them susceptible to illnesses that sapped their strength or were they poor because they had no energy because of endemic illnesses and parasitical infections?

The hookworm was discovered two or three years ago by a physician, who had been patiently studying its victims for a long time. The disease induced by the hookworm had been doing its evil work here and there in the earth ever since Shem landed on Ararat, but it was never suspected to be a disease at all. The people who had it were merely supposed to be lazy, and were therefore despised and made fun of, when they should have been pitied. The hookworm is a peculiarly sneaking and underhanded invention, and has done its surreptitious work unmolested for ages; but that physician and his helpers will exterminate it now.
…
The hookworm parasites often so lower the vitality of those who are affected as to retard their physical and mental development, render them more susceptible to other diseases, make labor less efficient, and in the sections where the malady is most prevalent greatly increase the death rate from consumption, pneumonia, typhoid fever and malaria. It has been shown that the lowered vitality of multitudes, long attributed to malaria and climate and seriously affecting economic development, is in fact due in some districts to this parasite. The disease is by no means confined to any one class; it takes its toll of suffering and death from the highly intelligent and well to do as well as from the less fortunate. It is a conservative estimate that two millions of our people are affected by this parasite. The disease is more common and more serious in children of school age than in other persons.

How much of laziness is merely physical affliction rather than character flaw? Hookworms, fibromyalgia, Lyme disease, depression, all produce tiredness, laziness but in redneck culture if you don’t embrace work, you are screwed, regardless of the cause. They never see a justification for laziness. Blacks are maligned using the worst epithet a redneck can conceive which is not “nigger” but “lazy” nigger. It is the supposed laziness of blacks that makes rednecks perceived them as inferior.

When whites came to America if they worked hard they could make their lives better. When blacks were brought to America, if they worked hard they could make someone else’s life better. Today that’s true for most of us, black and white. Our labor enriches someone else, not ourselves. The reason for working hard is gone but the redneck in his stupidity still mindlessly labors to enrich his masters or slips guiltily over into white trash when he loses even the hope that work will allow him to improve his life.

It was Joe Bageant’s Revenge of the Mutt People that got me to thinking about rednecks and white trash (my culture). I don’t call myself a mutt. I consider myself mixed breed and think that is a good thing. Growing up the only dogs we ever had get sick were purebred. The only mean or crazy dogs we had were purebred. All our mutts were great dogs. Now all my dogs and cats are mixed. Mixed breed animals generally have more strength, stamina and disease resistance than purebred. It’s called hybrid vigor or heterosis. The interbreeding of purebred strains blocks the expression of damaging recessive traits and increases disease resistance. So I take mutt over pure strains such as European royalty with their innate diseases and madness (called “Inbreeding Depression.”)

I recognize the people Bageant describes. I recognize their meanness and stupidity. I recognize their serial killer attitude toward animals. I was raised with and by them but the meanness didn’t take on me nor the right wing politics. I think that was because I always loved animals. When you love animals in a culture that considers them disposable, you see the creatures you love suffer and die a lot. You hate it and are saddened by it. Pity stirs in your heart, first for the suffering of animals and then for the suffering of people. Add a fondness for books and by adulthood you are a fair way to producing a commie or at least a liberal. Rednecks and white trash cannot abide that kind of softness. Also books are anathema. At least to rednecks. Life is about work and anyone who spends their time reading is described as crazy. Maybe when life is very difficult, when it is hard to feed yourself and your family, maybe reading is too much of a self-indulgence to be tolerated. So ignorance must be embraced as the price of eating regularly.

But mean or not, stupid or not, mutt or not, the rednecks and white trash are my people and I want them saved. I want them enlightened. I want them educated. I want them lifted up. How this is to be done I don’t know but I know it must be done. If we lefties can’t convert them, convince them, save them, then what good are we?

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© Alllie 2006

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