>In this sense, "inbred" is correctly opposed to "cosmopolitan" and is
>correctly identified as a property of the country rather than the city. It
>also appears in Marx's usage of "the idiocy of rural life"; it's no
>coincidence that /idiotes/ is originally from "private, isolated".
yes, i know this.
You are accusing me of valorizing the poor. I am not. I am simply asking that people like use a leftist anlaysis instead of a kneejerk elitist one. all kinds of gendered behaviors are the result of capitalist class relations--such as women's tendency not to ask for raises. it does not follow that it is right to blame women for the salary differential. nor is it right to say, "buck up babe and start being more aggressive. that's your problem."
furthermore, to come back to an earlier point you made, you tried to "ok" things by pointing out that hicks call themselves hicks. BFD. blacks call themselves n-words. that does not make it okay to call them n-words; not does it make it ok to claim that the things they do and believe that supposedly make the n-words is something peculiar to either their skin color OR their ethnic heritage alone. it does not make it okay to blame blacks for their conditions by babbling about the culture of poverty in absence of any sort of structural analysis. that's exactly what some people here are refusing to do by saying "my grandparents opened a lending library, why can't people in plattsburgh do so?"
there was no historical analysis, daniel. i have no problem with that. in fact, i've published work on exactly that!
> > futhermore, there are
> >frequent references to rural whites as harboring more >racist and sexist
> >beliefs than other groups. this is not accurate.
>
>I don't know whether it's true in the USA; it certainly is in the UK, and
>numerous surveys carried out by the Countryside Alliance showed this. I'd
>also note that homosexuality is much less accepted in rural communities.
as you know, these surveys are crap because of what they call the "social acceptable" response. real research, on people's actual behavior and what they do when they think important people aren't looking, is another matter altogether. see, for instance, a book I recommended your darling Trish _Money, Morals, and Manners_.
that said, I have no doubt that sexist and racist beliefs are slightly more prevalent. but if you're going to hold them accountable, then you have to also hold lefties accountable for their behavior. that is what i'm doing. if i were in a space where working class people were engaging in that kind of thing, i'd call them on it. ask matt cramer and kmart if i call men at dc-stuff on it and risk get flamed considerably for doing so.
oh, wait, you say that dc-stuff probably isn't populated by the working class./...?
well, there ya go.....
kelley