Against my better judgement, I am compelled to reiterate my feelings about the Gummo threads. Evidently, I did not make myself clear when I brought up this movie. This is the way I see it:
Kelly made some comments about how some elites sterotype certain people, and assign the negative label "white trash" to them. She said these elites can describe what "white trash" people eat, how they look, what they drive, ect. Ba Bing! What comes first to my mind is this movie I just saw. If someone says the word "white trash", the folks in that movie would describe my preconcieved notions of what the defintion of "white trash" is. This confirms Kelly's point that the sterotype exists. With regard to the people I knew, I was disturbed by their aggressive, destructive behavior, as I was disturbed by the behavior of the teens in Gummo. Now, I do not find it politically incorrect to make observations about people that I come across. What is unacceptalble is making generalizations about groups of people and labeling them accordingly. Finally, the persistant joke about "Kentuckians" that folks in Indiana perpetuate, was just another example of a sterotype that is common where I live, and that I personally find offensive. One more comment. The comedian Jeff Foxworthy and his "then you might be a redneck" jokes are very popular with the country folk around here. It is perfectly acceptable for him to make jokes about trailer parks and doughy white butt cracks showing, and nobody I know of anyway, calls him a classist, because he his a white country style fellow. The same phenomenon exists when some of the very talented black comedians make fun of their own people. Why is this tolerated?