May 21st 2009
You don’t have rednecks???
This was the incredulous response during a conversation I had with one of my staff members last week when she asked me if had gone to school with any rednecks. And it quite sent my mind to work on exactly what the question meant.
To most of us, especially those over here in the United States, a redneck is a clearly defined part of the population. And if you go by the clichéd descriptions widely circulated in the media, then you could easily be forgiven for saying that yes indeed, we don’t have rednecks in the UK. We don’t have people living in trailers or unheated shacks in the middle of the woods, or at least not by the million! We don’t have uneducated, fiercely independent families living off the land through hunting, fishing and some smallholding agriculture. We’ve all seen the 70’s movie, Deliverance. It featured two very frightening brothers who terrorized a group of urban friends in the woods and rivers of Georgia. They were armed, they were prejudiced and they had little respect for contemporary values or the law. (Eat your heart out George W.Bush!!). They were particularly horrifying for a European audience as we weren’t familiar with that tradition or style of living.
So what is a redneck? In addition to all the preconceptions above they are a sizeable minority of rural population in the US. They are poor, often brutally so. But they celebrate their poverty with a gritty resourcefulness. There are numerous websites and postings on the web which show endless examples of their ability to recycle and adapt items for new uses and their surroundings. They often have religion, and this gets more strident the further south one travels. Sometimes they are fundamental evangelists but most often they are just conservative church goers in keeping with many of their fellow citizens. They really have no need for a great education as they are practical people who live on and from the land. So they have big families, live together in groups and clans. Sometimes they involved in long and bitter disputes with rival clans.
For recreation they keep it pretty simple. They love the land, so they hunt (and I mean with guns for birds, deer, bear etc etc), they fish too. They take great interest in their vehicles and other hardware. So they love boats and cars. It is true that they spend Sunday afternoons watching NASCAR (American stock car racing) and drinking beer. I know this because they proudly tell everyone that that is what they do on Sundays. Church and then NASCAR.
I’m often asked have I ever met a redneck. The reason the question is asked is that another common misconception is that rednecks only live in the Southern United States. The answer is that many of my patients are Rednecks and indeed I work with at least one. They are a feature of rural life in the US, and we live and work in a rural area. Our rednecks share many of the same characteristics of their well documented brethren in the South but have a number of unique challenges to overcome. For a start there is winter here. So they have to live in ‘winterized’ homes and have a form of heating. Many heat their homes with only a wood furnace fueled by trees they cut from their own land. I can tell you that living in a wood heated home in our climate is true hardship. And what does a redneck do in the winter? Well they can ice fish and bow hunt for a start. In addition instead of riding dirt bikes and four wheelers the winter redneck rides a snowmobile for their fun.
Given the setting of the Ducker home I can report that we are surrounded by rednecks on our road. And like any neighbourhood, there are good neighbours and bad ones. Those who drive four wheelers and snow mobiles in large cavorting, heavy drinking groups are a pain. But most are quiet and respectful neighbours, just as we are.
I have visited redneck homes in my role as medical officer for the local towns. In general it has been to either to determine if a home is suitable for children to grow up in or whether the home should be condemned. In the first instance, one home I inspected had three kids under the age of five. The stairs into the trailer had no banisters, the kids slept on bare mattresses with blankets and the yard was a toxic waste dump of broken beer bottles, old appliances, day to day trash and animal droppings. But they did have a 40 inch TV to watch NASCAR! In one example of the second instance the lady concerned had no family left and had allowed 40 cats to run wild while she lay in bed all day, too ill to move. That setting was just tragic (and almost as smelly as a latrine in urban Shanghai!).
As I pondered the answer to the opening question I had to define rednecks. They form the rural underclass here. Poor people who are poorly educated who find it next to impossible to escape from their impoverished backgrounds, assuming that is they want to. They are below the radar for many of the social services here, partly because they value their independence and partly because our social services here are underdeveloped by European standards. There is an underclass in the UK too. But like the rest of the population they are urban based and very few live in rural areas. The underclass in Britain, were virtually non existent until the advent of Thatcherism which valued the individual and their goals over those of the whole society. British rednecks share many of the same problems of their American equivalent. Poverty, poor education and no easy way out. The related problems of alcoholism, substance abuse and broken families and relationships. The difference is they live in urban areas where a relatively well developed welfare state attempts to give whatever help they may need to survive. Of course the United States has many similar urban areas too.
So, in England, we do have rednecks after all. They are our, inner city or overspill urban rednecks and over here we have our classic rural rednecks. Americans choose to call their urban rednecks by their location; minority ghettoes.
Until next time,
Gavin
This was the incredulous response during a conversation I had with one of my staff members last week when she asked me if had gone to school with any rednecks. And it quite sent my mind to work on exactly what the question meant.
To most of us, especially those over here in the United States, a redneck is a clearly defined part of the population. And if you go by the clichéd descriptions widely circulated in the media, then you could easily be forgiven for saying that yes indeed, we don’t have rednecks in the UK. We don’t have people living in trailers or unheated shacks in the middle of the woods, or at least not by the million! We don’t have uneducated, fiercely independent families living off the land through hunting, fishing and some smallholding agriculture. We’ve all seen the 70’s movie, Deliverance. It featured two very frightening brothers who terrorized a group of urban friends in the woods and rivers of Georgia. They were armed, they were prejudiced and they had little respect for contemporary values or the law. (Eat your heart out George W.Bush!!). They were particularly horrifying for a European audience as we weren’t familiar with that tradition or style of living.
So what is a redneck? In addition to all the preconceptions above they are a sizeable minority of rural population in the US. They are poor, often brutally so. But they celebrate their poverty with a gritty resourcefulness. There are numerous websites and postings on the web which show endless examples of their ability to recycle and adapt items for new uses and their surroundings. They often have religion, and this gets more strident the further south one travels. Sometimes they are fundamental evangelists but most often they are just conservative church goers in keeping with many of their fellow citizens. They really have no need for a great education as they are practical people who live on and from the land. So they have big families, live together in groups and clans. Sometimes they involved in long and bitter disputes with rival clans.
For recreation they keep it pretty simple. They love the land, so they hunt (and I mean with guns for birds, deer, bear etc etc), they fish too. They take great interest in their vehicles and other hardware. So they love boats and cars. It is true that they spend Sunday afternoons watching NASCAR (American stock car racing) and drinking beer. I know this because they proudly tell everyone that that is what they do on Sundays. Church and then NASCAR.
I’m often asked have I ever met a redneck. The reason the question is asked is that another common misconception is that rednecks only live in the Southern United States. The answer is that many of my patients are Rednecks and indeed I work with at least one. They are a feature of rural life in the US, and we live and work in a rural area. Our rednecks share many of the same characteristics of their well documented brethren in the South but have a number of unique challenges to overcome. For a start there is winter here. So they have to live in ‘winterized’ homes and have a form of heating. Many heat their homes with only a wood furnace fueled by trees they cut from their own land. I can tell you that living in a wood heated home in our climate is true hardship. And what does a redneck do in the winter? Well they can ice fish and bow hunt for a start. In addition instead of riding dirt bikes and four wheelers the winter redneck rides a snowmobile for their fun.
Given the setting of the Ducker home I can report that we are surrounded by rednecks on our road. And like any neighbourhood, there are good neighbours and bad ones. Those who drive four wheelers and snow mobiles in large cavorting, heavy drinking groups are a pain. But most are quiet and respectful neighbours, just as we are.
I have visited redneck homes in my role as medical officer for the local towns. In general it has been to either to determine if a home is suitable for children to grow up in or whether the home should be condemned. In the first instance, one home I inspected had three kids under the age of five. The stairs into the trailer had no banisters, the kids slept on bare mattresses with blankets and the yard was a toxic waste dump of broken beer bottles, old appliances, day to day trash and animal droppings. But they did have a 40 inch TV to watch NASCAR! In one example of the second instance the lady concerned had no family left and had allowed 40 cats to run wild while she lay in bed all day, too ill to move. That setting was just tragic (and almost as smelly as a latrine in urban Shanghai!).
As I pondered the answer to the opening question I had to define rednecks. They form the rural underclass here. Poor people who are poorly educated who find it next to impossible to escape from their impoverished backgrounds, assuming that is they want to. They are below the radar for many of the social services here, partly because they value their independence and partly because our social services here are underdeveloped by European standards. There is an underclass in the UK too. But like the rest of the population they are urban based and very few live in rural areas. The underclass in Britain, were virtually non existent until the advent of Thatcherism which valued the individual and their goals over those of the whole society. British rednecks share many of the same problems of their American equivalent. Poverty, poor education and no easy way out. The related problems of alcoholism, substance abuse and broken families and relationships. The difference is they live in urban areas where a relatively well developed welfare state attempts to give whatever help they may need to survive. Of course the United States has many similar urban areas too.
So, in England, we do have rednecks after all. They are our, inner city or overspill urban rednecks and over here we have our classic rural rednecks. Americans choose to call their urban rednecks by their location; minority ghettoes.
Until next time,
Gavin
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