Can we stop with the PC language police nonsense? It's tedious. It's embarrassing. It makes us look ridiculous. It's a self-caricature. It does not advance the cause of social justice one inch to have people on the left reproving each other about not saying things that might conceivably offend someone. I don't mind going hammer and tongs after proven right wingers, reactionaries, and racists who language that is demeaning, but the rural working class, or whatever delicate phrase you want to describe the group of people about whom we must circumloquate here -- they call themselves "rednecks," last I heard; at least they did in Virginia when I growing up, and they do here in Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio -- is not going to feel one whit better about pointy headed left wing intellectuals for your supposed defense of their wounded sensibilities against other but supposedly insensitive PHLWI. Us they call "faggots," and not in a friendly way.
jks
--- kelley at pulpculture.org wrote:
> At 03:47 PM 2/27/2004, you wrote:
> >I don't recall anyone writing that they used to
> live in n-wordtown or some
> >such equally offensive phrase that would have been
> comparable to the below
> >characterization of a rural working class area as
> redneck. Perhaps you
> >could forward it since I missed it? Or perhaps you
> mean that regardless of
> >context the word cannot be used by white people at
> all? Self criticism is
> >all well and good but maybe the rest of rural
> working class NY doesn't
> >wished to be referred to in such a racist and
> classist manner while she's
> >doing it.
>
>
> I AM a redneck. I was calling myself a redneck. But
> the problem with that
> is there have been people on this list, other lists,
> and in graduate school
> who question my right to say name myself that or
> anything supposedly less
> offensive (hick, yokel, backwoodsmen) if I'm not
> _currently_ living life as
> a redneck. Most people want this identity to be
> something I take on and
> offlike a cardigan sweater--and in some respects it
> can feel like that. So,
> with the memory of those conversations in my mind
> (I've had them with
> Wojtek about what some of us thought were his
> stereotypes of
> rednecks/hicks/white trash), I was careful not to
> claim I'm currently a
> redneck so as to avoid the interminable bullshit
> about whether i really am
> or not.
>
>
> You might want to know, too, that in Florida people
> proudly call themselves
> cracker. And they proudly call themselves and the
> areas they are from
> redneck too.
>
> Finally, if you're still worried about my leftist
> soul, please go to the
> list archives and type in "white trash" and my name
> or hick and my name or
> redneck and my name. You will find and the long
> timers on this list will
> tell ya that it's hilarity on ice that anyone here
> lectures me about white
> trash or redneck. LOL. Joanna?! Wojtek?
>
> Kickin' back with a genny scream fo' too long,
>
> RedNeckSnit
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
>
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