nonsense. there is a ton of literature out there that does just this: admire the professional classes while also denigrating them.
>The mass of rural people is less forward-looking, intelligent and open than
>the mass of urban people, both through self-selection (members of the rural
>working class remain in the countryside either because they can't or don't
>want to work in industries other than agriculture) and through the way in
>which rural life (smaller and more homogeneous communities) shapes people.
you need data to back this assertion. fork it over.
>The comparison with black people is misplaced; black people are black
>because they are black, but hicks can become urban within a week of moving
>house, and cosmopolitan only a few months later.
you are misunderstanding the comparison. it is not that being rural=black, but that blaming rural people for their conditions by claiming that it is because of inbreeding is a process of racialization. it marks their bodies with the stamp: icky, retarded, etc. all the thigs that come to mind when someone says inbred.
for the record, inbreeding and congential disorders have an incredibly weak association. it's a myth, largely. so, on top of it all, it's a form of ableism, as well.
>Prejudice against people because of their accent or background is always
>horrible (quite apart from anything else, it's rude; I hope I can be
>forgiven some of the stronger language I'm using here in the interests of
>plain speaking, and if nothing else, I plead my own background, which
>should contain enough animal excrement to satisfy all but the sternest
>critic), but the shudder of revulsion which causes urban leftists to use
>the "inbreds" slur is based in a reality about rural life. Do you not
>notice that all the people who have used the "hicks and inbreds" turn of
>phrase on lbo-talk, have used it in reference to their own past?
no. wojtek and joanna both use these phrases. futhermore, there are frequent references to rural whites as harboring more racist and sexist beliefs than other groups. this is not accurate.
> I
>disagree with the contention that there is any process of racialisation
>going on here; the process which makes their cultural practices backward
>and nasty is historical, not congenital.
fine for you. but, as far as i know, you haven't called them inbred and blamed it on their sexual and breeding habits. furthermore, any sane person knows that incest does not occur more frequently in rural areas or among the poor and working class.
worse, plattsburgh is hardly "rural". it has both a military base and a state university which means that it gets lots of outsiders into the community.
ditto the town i'm from.
joanna is comparing it to sanfran and other urban centers. however, compare plattsburgh to deruyter, ny or some place far from even a city of 20k people and plattsburgh is urban in many respects.
> Again, contempt is a nasty
>emotion, but so is patronage, and to pretend that there is nothing backward
>and degenerate about rural life is just untrue. I don't think that the
>appropriate attitude to rural life can be summed up any better than it was
>in "Iago Prytherch". You may have a point that urban contempt for rurals,
>like the contempt of anybody for anyone (try checking out attitudes toward
>gays and blacks next time you're out in the countryside), is an obstacle to
>forming a left movement in the USA, but there is a decent Marxist pedigree
>to the contention that the peasants are lost to the revolution anyway.
i'm talking about lefties, daniel. lefties who ought to know that their stereotypes of poor whites are wrong, just as wrong as their stereotypes of other groups. there is always a kernel of truth, but these stereotypes are just outlandishly wrong.
inbreeding comments are just plain wrong.
kelley
>None of this is of course to say that there are not wonderful, intelligent
>and sensitive rural people; the towns are full of them.
>
>dd
>
>
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