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Title: The REDNECK MANIFESTO: HOW HILLBILLIES HICKS AND WHITE TRASH BECAME AMERICAS SCAPEGOATS by Jim Goad ISBN: 0-684-83864-8 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 May, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.26 (76 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: He's right, and wrong, but mostly right.
Comment: Goad makes some very good points in his diatribe against classism. Points that I've been making for decades, in fact. I grew up in the southern West Virginia coal fields, and I've been the brunt of jokes due to my heritage for years (although I'm damn proud to be a West Virginian). Goad is correct that the upper classes have always divided the poor against themselves (witness strike breakers and the hourly-wage earners who crack the WV jokes). However, his point that people have no choice in life due to the class they are born into doesn't ring true to me. I've escaped the cycle of dependency (to hourly wage labor, not welfare) through hard work--my own and my parents' (who were determined that I would never enter a coal mine). You can get out, but it's not easy. As for one reader's assertions that poor whites can easily assimilate into a higher class culture (due to the color of their skin): I may look the same, but as soon as I open my mouth to speak and someone hears my mountain accent, I'm branded a redneck. That's bigotry, pure and simple.
Rating: 3
Summary: Intesting book. But Rich Republicans get a free pass
Comment: This is strong stuff. I give it three stars. Very worth reading. People of all colors sometimes don't know or don't want to know that there are and have been throught history very poor abused whites. Mr Goad tells their story in a powerful personal way. O.K. That's the good part...
But like I said the Republicans get a free pass. The bad part of this book is the constant Liberal bashing.Yeah some is justified but to Mr. Goad the entire privilaged class is made up of bleeding heart Liberals. He absoulutley hates 'em. The book is a venomous screed against the college educated white liberal while very little negative is said about oppression by rich conservatives. Mr Goad really realy hates middle class white liberals. Questions I have though is why nothing on the very Rich Repulicans? Sure Mr Goad, hippness may be a luxury but so is a county club membership and you don't bash country clubs. And what about those liberals who are themselves from the working class or one generation away? Paul Wellstone, working class scholarship kid. Same goes for Gloria Steinem. Is Bill Clinton an elitist while George Bush (who didn't have the balls to go to Viet Nam just like a lot of other fat cat republican frat boys) a regular guy? What do you think about John Hightower, or James Carville? These two are my kind of Rednecks . Proud of the backrounds but totally progressive and dedicated to fighting for a better future for working people. Where is your anger toward the real overclass? You bash the old Volvo driving latte Liberals but not the porsche driving country club Conservatives.
Rating: 4
Summary: No conservative
Comment: A couple of reviewers have called this book (and Goad) "conservative." It's anything but. For one thing, current conservatives in this country cater to the Religious Right. Goad is an atheist, or at least, irreligious-witness his chapter "Prayin' Hard." In addition, he is certainly no fan of big business; in fact, it becomes perhaps his major target in the book, even outpacing "limousine liberals" for the honor.
Goad is both anti-government (which may have led some to call him conservative) and anti-business. And for the same reason: he is anti-oppression, and pro-little guy. If he holds with any political philosophy, it would be anarchy. His history chapters list the continuing oppression of poor whites and blacks alike by the combined forces of government and business.
The difference between blacks and poor whites is that blacks organized and got most of their rights from the government. Poor whites have never done so. But maybe organization is not their strong suit. Blacks have made us conscious of the manifest injustices done them by both slavery and segregation. Poor whites have never made us conscious of the injustices done them.
Even before reading this book, I recoiled at the phrase "trailer trash." For one thing, I've seen double-wides I wouldn't mind living in. And I've know several good people who live in trailers (mobile homes).
I agree with one reviewer here that Goad should have dealt with Steinbeck's GRAPES OF WRATH, with its sympathetic treatment of Okie tenant farmers and sharecroppers. And then there's the sympathetic treatment of backwoods prophets and evangelists in Flannery O'Connor's works like THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY-all the more remarkable because O'Connor is a Catholic. And also the works of Ellen Glasgow, And a novel THE TIME OF MAN (whose author I forget).
One point Goad makes is "The working class doesn't write a lot of history books. The working class doesn't produce many movies or radio shows. The working class doesn't tend to hire media consultants or theatrical agents. The working class has played an itty-bitty role in fashioning its popular image." Maybe this is the real silent majority.
Another point he makes is that the combined force of black poor and white poor would constitute a powerful bloc in national politics (but it probably won't happen).
Basically, Goad deals with people whom others say are lacking in ambition. That is, they don't feel compelled to get ahead at any cost. But if they just want to work and live a decent life, isn't that enough?
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Title: Shit Magnet: One Man's Miraculous Ability to Absorb the World's Guilt by Jim Goad ISBN: 0922915776 Publisher: Feral House Pub. Date: 01 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America by Michael A. II Hoffman ISBN: 0929903056 Publisher: Wiswell Ruffin House Pub. Date: 01 June, 1993 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: White Trash: Race and Class in America by Matt Wray, Annalee Newitz ISBN: 0415916925 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 01 December, 1996 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Apocalypse Culture by Adam Parfrey ISBN: 0922915059 Publisher: Amok Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Off White: Readings on Race, Power, and Society by Michelle Fine, Linda Powell, Lois Weis, L. Mun Wong ISBN: 0415913020 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 01 December, 1996 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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