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Jim Goad is my favorite writer. Hands down. I’ve only read one book by him, The Redneck Manifesto (Full title - The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America’s Scapegoats, and I’ve read a few posts on his blog, but I love the guy.

There aren’t many books I’d consider reviewing ten years after they came out, and this one tops that very short list. I’ve read The Redneck Manifesto four times, and am reading it a fifth time now. I’ve bought about a dozen copies on Amazon (used, sorry Jim…like most of your readers, I can’t afford retail for luxury items), one at a time, and sent them to friends. I think this book is the most no-nonsense explanation of the history of the western world ever produced. (And it’s heavily annotated, if you wanna check the sources. I did. They checked out.) The Redneck Manifesto should be required reading in college, if not high school and grade school. (Though I’m sure that would lead to lawsuits.)

Many people consider The Redneck Manifesto to be a dangerous book…Racist even. I maintain that it is not racist at all (if anything, it’s anti-racist), but it is indeed dangerous, as are most less-than-popular truths.

There are a few basic premises of the book. First, that poor white people are the ONLY racial/ethnic/social group that it’s still OK to make fun of. That if you were a person in charge of a TV or movie studio, or the editor of a paper, and you treated Jews, blacks, lesbians, Mexicans, Asians or anyone else the way they treat rednecks on TV and in movies, you’d lose your job. Many examples are given, but one of my favorites is that newspapers (including the New York Times) often spell out southern white speech phonetically in interviews and articles to show the accent. If you did that with Ebonics, you’d be fired, and probably sued.

Goad goes on to give a pretty compelling argument of why white guilt for slavery is a crock. At least poor white guilt. Says that the descendants of plantation slave owners are far more likely to drive BMWs than pickup trucks. And maintains that white indentured servants suffered as much, often more, and in greater numbers, than black slaves. (Indentured servants were not owned, and were whipped harder, sort of the way people beat the shit out of rental cars, but not cars they themselves own.)

This is stuff that’s basically true, but makes people want to kill you when you say it out loud. Which is a sort of racism on it’s own. It’s OK for any group to bemoan their past, except poor whites.

He states that white people are blamed for everything, but as a poor white man, as is with a poor man of any color, he has no control over the policies of his government, the media, or his ancestors.

He writes that questioning economic policies he has no control over is often looked at as racist, even when it’s not. He says that the questioning world banking (a concept so fucked and complex that many it takes an advanced degree to even begin to understand it) is not anti-semitic, it’s just anti-getting ripped off. He says that suggesting welfare reform is not racist, it’s just about money. He states: “I don’t want to pay for anyone’s baby, no matter what the color.”

Goad contends that racial prejudice has its current and historical basis in rich whites wanting to keep poor whites and poor blacks divided and fighting…That if poor blacks and poor whites realized that race wars are all bullshit and banded together, they would be a majority, and could take over the world, possibly in a very bloody manner for the rich whites.

Goad points out that rich whites find it easy to be politically correctly racially sensitive because they live in mostly-white gated communities. They don’t have to deal with black rage because it can’t reach them. And that rednecks and white working stiffs have always lived in neighborhoods that are far more racially integrated than the rich whites who poo poo the rednecks for noticing that race exists. Says that while there are no more segregated water fountains, people still are, and always will be, segregated along the color GREEN.

Goad says again and again, in funny and eloquent ways, what I feel is a very important simple truth: It’s not about race, it’s about class.

I love this part:

For all the showboat sympathy that the white middle and upper classes display toward black suffering, they don’t spend much time living or working alongside their downtrodden jungle bruddas. The redneck truck driver and the black gas-pumper share more life experiences than either guy shares with the corduroy-jacketed college professor or perfume-stinking society matron whose tear ducts gush with self-serving weepiness over abstract notions of injustice.

and:

Both Martin Luther King and Malcom X were shot to the ground at a time when they seemed to be transcending narrow white/black divisions and phrasing the battle in class terms.

Goad talks about how there aren’t many great working-class writers because the working class is too damn busy working to write.

I love this, because I lived it. It was harder than eating nails to launch my professional writing career while holding a day job. I had to work hard 60 hours a week in the evenings and weekends while still working 40 hours a week for over a decade. My dad couldn’t just write a check to send me to an expensive journalism school.

(My siblings went to good colleges, but parents took out second and third mortgages to send them, and kids took out loans.

(My parents were farmers until the year I was born. My family looked middle class, but were struggling.)

True to his name, Goad (which is his real name), loves to goad the reader. Some of it has a bit of a “a Modest Proposal” feel, especially the title of chapter ten: “Several Compelling Arguments for the Enslavement of All White Liberals”, which is actually one of my favorite chapters, even though I don’t favor the enslavement of anyone. And don’t think Goad does either.

I love Goad because he’s got a lot to say, but just wants to be left alone. I can dig it. He and I are both widely read people who both probably have a better day when our phones don’t ring. Goad complains about society because he doesn’t comfortably fit in to what it expects of him. One of my favorite lines in the book nails this well:

Interracial dating doesn’t bother me, but the very concept of dating does.

The Redneck Manifesto is all stunningly great. It’s amazing writing about amazing thoughts, and I highly recommend you buy the book today….Especially if you’re rich…buy ten copies, new, and hand them out at the country club.

This entry was posted by Michael W. Dean on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 4:49 pm and is filed under Other people's cool stuff, Stink Fight, The world is a strange and beautiful place. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.