Quote:
Originally posted by crzychx
Also being in KY I too see my fair share of rednecks and I don't think its a good thing by any means. Yes, the song is funny, but I use the term redneck to describe many people, but mostly including ignorant, uneducated people who wear clothes that aren't appropriate to see daylight.
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Isn't that a little elitist? Some folks can't help the culture they were born into.
Take my late mother for instance. She made it as far as 4th grade before having to help take care of her younger siblings when her second parent died. In some ways that made her ignorant -- but she was far from dumb. When you were born in "rural" Ohio into a family of eleven in a house with no electricity or indoor plumbing and when your father was a moonshiner (literally), sometimes you just don't get the advantages that others do. Sometimes you don't even know what you're missing.
You certainly can't afford to dress well. Lots of hand-me-downs and home made clothes.
She had some prejudices and she would proudly call herself a "hillbilly," -- I don't know if she would even have heard the term "redneck," but a lot of people might have figured her for one.
All of that aside, she managed to make a reasonable living for herself and led a pretty happy life. She was bright enough to run her own business for a while and then become a department head in a discount store. And she was insistant that I get "at least two years" of college.
My point is that, like people of other backgrounds, stereotypes aren't helpful.
She was a loving, caring woman. Hillbilly/Redneck or not, she was quite a person and I miss her a lot.
Then, there's my late father-in-law who ran the family farm nearly all of his life. He could look like the biggest "hick" in the world out in the field. But he had a degree in Agriculture from Ohio State and sat on local and regional school boards. His father, who attended Cornell, was on the Ohio State School Board. My mother-in-law, a farm wife, had a college degree (as did both of my in-laws' mothers and one grandmother). They made most of their own clothes -- hardly fashionable.
Mother-in-law was even an ADPi at Wittenberg University. I suspect her "sisters" gave her some problems because she didn't dress like them and have their financial backing. She didn't talk about the experience for years, and told Mrs. DeltAlum that if she ever pledged, she would never see another penny from them.
Stereotypes can hurt.