Do Rednecks Integrate, Assimilate into American Society?

"Redneck" implies class more than it does region or politics. To disparage someone as a redneck is to disparage them most of all, for being working class, the redness of their necks as a mark of shame for doing manual labor under the sun.

 

Interesting article. Does The New Yorker consider its eponymous name's state a former slave state?

 

Outside of Ithaca, it sure seems that way.

 

That's the point -- it's an insult from upper class white people to specifically ridicule white people at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder alongside poor minorities. There isn't a similar term for non-white poor people for a reason.

 

The term for non-white poor people is ghetto.

 

Non-white people are "supposed" to be poor. Ghetto is where they live, not the people who live there. And a redneck is someone (in America) who is on the bottom of the economic ladder because they are stupid and/or lazy.

Because class.

 

I get what you're saying but poor uneducated black people are now called ghetto just as poor uneducated white people are called redneck. You wouldn't refer to Oprah or Obama as ghetto. Just like you wouldn't refer to Trump as a redneck.

 

Is Islam infallible because there are other dicks on this planet? Is that your logic?

 

I have a hard time believing that MJ or OJ ever considered or pursued being whiteish. It seems like a stretch to me. While I understand that society felt that way about them, it's difficult for me to believe that someone raised black would want to be whiteish, or live a a so called white lifestyle, and when getting there, think of themselves as white. So I believe OJ when he said. "I am black, I know what it is to be black." Now it got real on him, and I think the second and third verdicts were indeed giving him an unfair black experience, but I have to believe he always though of himself as black.

 

I respect the rights of the uniquely sun burnt.

 

You are talking about race. Not class. Both are entirely invented social constructs, but are very different.

 

"We redlined minorities to deny them from the largest and most equitable creation of wealth in human history, a creation of wealth we staked out for white suburbanites, and if you weren't that, we subsidized your farming technology to the hilt because you're white--and you're still poor? "

I prefer the term "indefensible economic assets" from the National Review. Just like swearing in French, it feels like wiping your ass with silk when you say it. Redneck just feels tawdry.

 

So what part of Alberta are you from?

 

I'm from Quebec, which may as well be the anti-Alberta.

Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver, mon chum

 

Which is stupid because working trades can pay better than a menial office job. Journeyman Electricians alone can make $60/hr. Foremen earn $70+/hr. Master Electricians earn $100+/hr and can start up your own small business hiring other journeyman as well as cheaper labor from apprenticeships. That and tuition for Electrician school like with the IBEW is less than $2,000 per year including cost of books. Overtime is 2x your hourly wage and in Austin and Texas in general, there's no short supply of construction work out there with a lot of OT. And you work a FT apprenticeship for 4-6 years with increased pay as your experience goes up. Trades are amazing if you're willing to work hard and get your hands dirty.

 

I've met plenty of frogs in snowshoes with red necks...Quebec has plenty!

 

probably, doesn't have anything to do with the sun though! (i wish there was more of that in Quebec!).

I'd call them bluenecks.

 

Maybe I should quit my job and be an electrician.