This ain't what I fucking mean by "Cracker"!

"Proud, I'm proud of what I am..."--Trugoy (De La Soul), "Me Myself and I"

"I'm a redneck woman/I ain't no high-class broad/I'm just a product of my raisin'/I say 'hey y'all' and 'yee-haw'..."--Gretchen Wilson, "Redneck Woman"

Once again, I think I'm going to cry.

Many of you already know that I feel extremely proud and protective of my Southern heritage.

Well, a couple months back, a conservative black economist named Thomas Sowell came out with a book called Black Rednecks and White Liberals. He did not mean "black redneck" in the Cowboy Troy sense. He meant to denigrate Southern and redneck culture.

That launched this rant.

So today, I read this stupid-ass article, based on Sowell's ideas, by another black conservative:

Ghetto Cracker: The Hip-Hop Sellout.

Excerpt:

When blacks migrated into major northern cities, beginning in the early twentieth century, Sowell argues that they brought redneck culture with them.

The dominant social, moral, and cultural values among Southern rednecks that Sowell highlights, and that have been explained in works such as Grady McWhiney’s Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South, include aversion to work, proclivity for violence, contentment with little to no education, sexual promiscuity, short-term thinking, drunkenness, an anti-entrepreneurial spirit, reckless pursuit of excitement, and wild music and dance. Rednecks had touchy pride, what you might call today a “bling-bling” vanity, a boastfully dramatized sense of self, and little self-control.

Of course I don't think any of this is even remotely equal to what blacks have been getting ever since the first dark foot touched the East Coast shoreline--it is an ant compared to a herd of elephants. (But I really hate ants, and am allergic to antbites.) I am completely for everyone getting what they can through hard work and good sense, with a minimum of roadblocks being thrown in their path (and I think of racism and other prejudices as totally stupid and unnecessary roadblocks.) And I think that all of us need to look at ourselves and ask ourselves whether some of our obstacles may be of our own making. But I don't see how it furthers the cause of ending racism to promote ethnic stereotyping and to attack an entire ethnic group.

I remember when I spoke of a virulently homophobic black minister/football player, Reggie White, being "used" by the Christian Wrong. L'Ailee, who grew up in Russia and thought of "black" as a hair rather than skin color, said the most perfect thing in response. "You say black people are just as good as white," she said. "So can they not also be just as *bad*?" Wow. You mean minorities who act like asshats aren't always being used or victimized by the majority--they sometimes just plain act like asshats? I needed the reminder that equality sometimes does mean just as bad and just as responsible for one's thoughts and actions, as well as just as good.

For now, I remain proud of my true Florida Cracker heritage, and am grateful for everyone who can take all of me as I am.

I SAID HELL YEAH!!!!