Redneck

When did "Redneck" become an ethnic group? Are they not "white people" anymore?

You can see it in the way radio stations are programmed, magazines are sold, or TV stations are listed. If you have cable or a satellite dish you know you have the "everybody" networks, some would say "white", then you have sports, chick stuff, news, old movies and then you get to the ethnic groups: Black, Hispanic, and Redneck and maybe Asian depending on where you live.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Do we blame the corporate conspiracy or Jeff Foxworthy? Is it a recognition of something that exists, or is it something foisted on us by Madison Avenue? Is this a way of letting the peasants know who they are, and that they shouldn't attempt to advance beyond their class?

Are they going to continue to group us? Get words for the difference between people of color that live in the suburbs and drive Hondas and the ones that... well, don't.

Are we going to develop a ridged class system like Victorian England? Ours of course would be based on money instead of social class. It's the American way.

And while I'm on the subject of the word "Redneck", I'd like to bring up "white trash". I find it amazing that people let this word be used regularly on TV and such in a climate of such incredible PCness. Not that I'm generally a fan of the PC movement, but whoever it is that's in charge of it, missed one. A big one. Perhaps I'm on the wrong track, but what I take from it is that here is a person who is white, and yet, amazingly enough, they're trash. Does this not assume that people who are not white are automatically trash? That's what it sounds like to me. I dunno.

But have fun you rednecks! And maybe if the rest of you try hard enough we can have black-necks and brown-necks too. It's a big country!