Quote:
Originally Posted by *winter*
And...since you've met...ALL OF THEM, I guess you are qualified to make that kind of a statement. 
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He does not need to meet all poor whites/poor white farmers to make that statement. Don't take that statement too seriously and assume that it has to apply 100%. He may be talking about the stereotype of rednecks as aggressive and mean and overall ignorant based on bigotry. I disagree with that stereotype but I also do not care whether people are polite to each other. Politeness is not the crux of racism and discrimination.
Poor white farmers (what the derogatory slang "redneck" is based on because the necks were red from working in the land and in the sun) did not have the same role in slavery as the more well off whites. However, slavery and racism would not have/would not persist without poor whites. Poor whites have white privilege which buffers much of the impact of social class inequalities. Poor whites were also instrumental in social exclusion and job discrimination for generations. When the more well-off whites/capitalists needed someone to maintain the class and race hierarchies, poor whites were and still are a vital tool.
Anti-capitalists/economists/conflict theorists who believed that the working class would unite against the capitalists found that poor whites (in general) always preferred racial alliances over social class alliances. Poor whites believed that they were protecting their jobs from "those people" and protecting their own white privileges. That is how political parties, labor unions, etc. were able to develop on the basis of the extremely high correlation between race and social class.
/I love threads with a whole lot of subtopics that are based in the same dynamics
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