Backslider wrote:
I disagree. One's socio-economic background doesn't always mean they're racist or not racist.
Didn't mean to imply it did. But the poster I was answering had said the opposite -- that because Stu is (presumably) "white trash" he therefore was
less likely to be racist, because it's a class thing. I was saying that was nonsense, and it is. Lower class people are, in fact, more likely to be prejudiced, and more likely to express their prejudice in violence.
They're less likely to be educated, for one thing, and they do often feel the need to express their hostilities on someone. It was the poor and working class Germans who swelled the ranks of the Nazi party in its early days, for instance. It's not an absolute -- there are poor people who aren't prejudiced and rich people who are -- but it is a trend observable enough to make the sociology literature.
My grandfather was, by most accounts, "poor white trash" (he was a farmer who never saw the high side of the poverty line), yet he instilled in his children and grandchildren a respect for a man (or woman) based on his (or her) accomplishments and strength of character rather than skin color.
I've spoken elsewhere of my own grandfather, who was not only born poor but grew up racist and had to overcome it later in life, so I think I know what you're talking about. He sounds like a good man, and I'm sure you're proud of him. But the existence of our grandfathers doesn't affect the statistical norms.
Stereotypes are easy things to buy into; that's why they're so prevelent. In my travels, I've found that people are often amazed I'm not some right-wing, Bible- thumping reactionary nutjob, much less a racist, simply because of my thick Mississippi drawl and my socio-economic background (my mother's a teacher and my father's a disabled electrician, which put us squarely in the "lower-middle class" designation).
Because class is a much more complex phenomenon than simply "who has more money," I'd say in fact you're much higher on the socioeconomic scale than you realize -- solidly middle-middle, on the basis of your mom's job and your own education. Teachers are middle class, period. They are higher on the scale than, say, plumbers or truck drivers, even though the latter often make twice as much money. They are educated, and their special position of responsibility for the continuity of social tradition more than compensates, classwise, for their lack of money. Teachers, ministers and librarians are all like this. Think of it this way: The local lady who is unofficially in charge of who's in and who's out in the society of a small town is having a social function. Who will she invite? She might well invite a teacher or two, or the town librarian, and almost certainly the minister and his wife, even though they probably make less than anyone else she has invited, and also many that she did not.
I get that backhanded compliment: "Gee, you're pretty smart/liberal/ well-spoken for a redneck." And usually these are the same people tooling around in S.U.V.'s talking on cell phones and whining that black people have it "easy" simply because they're black.
Go figure.
Amen. While sociologically racism is especially prevelant and virulent among the poor and lower-middle-class, the fact is that it exists in all levels of society. And it's also true that many, many people who don't think of themselves as racist exhibit unconscious racist attitudes on a daily basis. I'm not talking about so-called "institutional racism," or even the simple fact that you see a black airline pilot and think "Oh, a black airline pilot," to which some black activist might demand aggressively "Why did you notice he was black?" (The answer, obviously, is that the vast majority of airline pilots are white and it is, in fact, notworthy when one sees a black one).
No, I mean things like you have said. Someone who would never admit to racism and has a black friend at work and likes Eddie Murphy who, talking on his cell phone while yapping on his SUV, mentions that he drove by his old neighborhood the other day and noticed that it's really gone downhill. There are a lot of black people there these days.
This sort of thing happens all the time, and yet these same people will turn around and call someone with a southern accent a "redneck."
I got rid of my accent. Heck, I thought I'd gotten rid of it before I left. People used to make fun of the way I talked in high school because I
didn't have an accent, then I went to college and everybody laughed at how I said certain words.
"Wash," for instance -- I thought my friends all said, "warsh," but I didn't. But my friends at college heard the "r," even though I didn't. It took me another year to get rid of it altogether. I still find myself falling into hillbilly if I talk for an hour or more with someone from home.
And I'm sorry, but if you're from Mississippi, you might be a redneck, and you might be white trash, and you might be a lot of things, but you can't possibly be a hillbilly. There ain't no hills down there!
(Speaking of hillbillies, how come they took "Amos & Andy" off the air, but it was perfectly OK to make fun of "The Beverly Hillbillies? That one has rankled me for years.)
But yeah, Stu seems almost intentionally set up to be mistaken for an irredeemable bad guy, which makes be all but certain that he's not.