Wojtek Writes
> I do not think it is the case. A mindset (redneck or otherwise) is a
> product of social relations. People are not born as clean slates, they
> have
> affective dispositions that make them more likely to accept "left" or
> "right" ideologies of the land. Of course it does not predetermine that
> acceptance, but it increases or decreases probabilities. A person who
> naturally feels uncomfortable about variety, diversity, uncertainty, or
> ambivalence will more likely accept a right-wing, militaristic or
> strict-religious ideologies that offer him (or her) an illusion of
> certitude.
>
> What is more, mindsets are products of social conditions from the day
> individuals are born. Mindset shaped by living conditions of a trailer
> park
> or a ghetto are very much different from mindsets shaped by affluent
> communities and private schools. So when a person grows up to a point
> that
> he/she is in a position to leave the trailer park -I ti s already too
> late.
> He/she may leave the trailer park, if he/she is lucky, but the trailer
> park
> will not leave him/her, at least not easily. It is like learning a
> language
> - you need to master it before you are 12 to be a native speaker. After
> that it will always be your second language, spoken with an "accent", no
> matter how well you know its vocabulary and grammar.
>
> Therefore, the "trailer trash" is where it is not because it was "left
> behind" but because it was simply born and shaped there, and there was no
> compelling force to move them somewhere else. A big part of it is the
> lack
> of opportunities that would allow them to be something else - to be sure.
> But those opportunities might have made a difference only if those folks
> were born to different parents and lived in a different world, that is, if
> they were different people. When they reach adulthood, they are pretty
> much
> set in their ways - and these ways are unlikely to change by liberal
> agitation err. "organizing." Just like it is unreasonable to expect that
> people who grew up in, say, China or Eastern Europe, will think, feel, and
> speak like Americans. They may learn English, but only as a second
> language.
The problem with your line of reasoning is that it flies in the face of historical evidence. Unions have organized among what were perhaps more diversified groups with greater language barriers than that which characterizes working class communities today in North America.
I might add that right wing populism with its fundamentalist edge has also been a force in NA politics for at least the last 100 years. The difference seems to be a lack of left wing populism today. In that regard I believe there has been a retreat of the left away from the blue collar working class.
Social relations may be relatively fixed but how one understands those relations need not be. This is why organization and education among the working class is a class necessity. There is no way around the hard, and at times impossible, work of organization and education.
What this article points to is the fact that organization and education of the working class is a long term project where any intellectual who wants to be invovled must throw their lot in with the working class. And this kind of work cannot be done from Ph.D. cubicle, a tenured office, or by contributing to or creating a left wing web page or list serve. These may be valuable activities, and provide resources for those doing working class education and organization but it is not the same thing nor a substitute. On can stay in the city an enjoy their global vegetables and do valuable work by bringing around reform liberals to their radical cause but this should not be mistaken for the other.
I struggle almost daily with the question of what I will do when I finish my Ph.D. Will I try for a job in a major urban center with tenure or will I return to my small town and rejoin my working class friends knowing that I am now a suspect text unless I throw my lot in with theirs. And they know that even if I do throw in with them my education always leaves me an out that they do not have.
Travis