Blaming Rednecks

The usually thoughtful Thomas Sowell, at

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006608,

opines that problems in the black community today are attributable to the influence of redneck "culture". Southern blacks spent a lot of time around rednecks and picked up their problematic "culture". Rednecks are relatively more violent, lazier, and stupider than other white people, or so goes the implication of the essay.

This is a rather creative rehashing of the old "Culture of Poverty" argument with the added twist of blaming rednecks, the remaining ethnic category which it is socially acceptable to denigrate. Black culture is to blame, only it is really redneck culture that diffused to blacks.

I do not reject out of hand every aspect of the Culture of Poverty school. Certainly, particular values learned in a cultural milieu can lead to problematic behaviors and coping mechanisms, problematic for social engineers if not for the people themselves. To a large extent, however, the so called Culture of Poverty is a manifestation of more or less reasonable responses to circumstances, including poverty. And the most problematic behaviors and attitudes are not normal in either black or redneck communities, however impoverished.

I am proud to confess my redneck heritage. I am one of James Webb's Celtic-Americans, a descendant of border folk, Lowland Scots, Ulstermen, and the odd German, Dutch, French and Cherokee. My ancestors arrived in North America in the 17th and 18th Centuries, mostly with nothing more than their labor power. They were forced to the edges of settlement in order to secure land. They worked hard to make a living out of the wilderness and to raise families, and any laziness was punished by failure and destitution. Even the hardest workers could not protect themselves from every misfortune, however, including the devastation of the United States conquest of the Southern States and punitive Reconstruction policies.

My people farmed, sometimes as tenant farmers and worked in the timber industry, the coal and copper mines, and other industries as opportunities presented themselves. They raised families, ultimately bought their own farms, and were productive and socially responsible members of their communities. They were "poor but proud", and some even were relatively rich. They were not well educated for the most part, and they were among the first to answer their country's calls to arms, poor dupes.

When the textile industry was developing in the mid 20th Century in something of a recapitulation of the industrial revolution, it was redneck women who did piece work and who were the first mill workers, all while working their farms and raising their children. My people went into the mills and factories, and some of us (sadly not my family) became home grown textile barons. Most of my kinsmen are working class, god-fearing and as worthy as respect as any other man or woman, including Thomas Sowell. Any black family with the values of my family and community would be respectable and well endowed culturally.

There are, and probably always will be, rednecks who are lazy and/or stupid and/or anti-social, and some of them are my kinsmen. There will always be a supply of guests for Jerry Springer and a steady supply of shirtless drunken wife beaters to display on COPS. We called them "white trash" in my village. White trash was descriptive of the underclass, but there was no white trash "culture" in any meaningful sense. Similarities among white trash families were existential, i.e. being poor and shiftless in one town is pretty much the same as in any other, especially since one's actions and options are highly circumscribed.

Thomas Sowell, please don't ascribe white trashiness and black social problems to redneck culture. Laziness, stupidy and anti-social behavior are not cultural norms among rednecks or black folks. Calling them culture, even the despised redneck culture, legitimizes them and allows people to celebrate as culture what is just plain sin.