The Redneck Manifesto - Revisited

By Jim Goad

I don't often go back and take another look at a book I've already reviewed for this paper. 

But the boiling over of politics, and in particular, social relations in the United States today got me thinking about this book, and deciding to re-read it. I had found it enlightening and interesting the first time (2017) and just as valuable a read this time around. It had been written in 1997. 

Goad isn't a redneck, exactly, by birth. In fact, if anything, his bio reads more like a semi-privileged middle class kid: "Goad grew up in Philadelphia, describing himself as a loner, misanthrope and weirdo. He attended a Catholic school run by nuns." So far, nothing unusual for a kid born in 1960. "He experienced violent treatment from his parents and bullies at the school, eventually learning to fight back. Goad moved to New York city to study acting and was accepted to study at New York University under Stella Adler." 

At this point, any actor would say: "Stella Adler? That doesn't sound very redneck to me."

"Goad graduated in 1985 with a B.A. in Journalism from Temple University while living in New Jersey. In the early 1980s, Goad met Debbie Rosalie, who was eight years older, in New York. They relocated to Los Angeles and were married in 1987. Goad worked at the Los Angeles Reader, covering local news, but wished to cover more fringe subjects, so the couple began publishing their own magazine, Answer Me." (Wikipedia)

At this point, Goad goes off the proverbial rails somewhat, entering into an affair with a stripper, reportedly beating her, goes to prison, and starts working in publishing for the sex trade, and becomes what I can only deem a professional provocateur and angry guy. In fact, his life story reads like an old country western song with the bad woman, jail, bar fights and 3 chords (oh, he also DJ'd at a country music station). Ok, so perhaps now we can say, "redneck by choice?"

In 1997, Goad published The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks and Poor White Trash Became America's Scapegoat." And that's where I found him - and while his writing style is certainly angry, sometimes boorish, though never illiterate, he has a case to make that struck me three years ago, and I had to go back and examine again, given the growing cultural tension in the United States.

Goad's thesis is relatively simple, though it was the first time I'd really heard it as I read the book in 2017: color isn't what divides the United States, it's class. And this class-based division goes all the way back to pre-colonial days, and even further when he makes his case for the invention of "poor white trash." He quotes Roman writer Ammianus Marcellinus describing the Huns (northern European tribes at the height of the Roman Empire) thus: "They are savage beyond all parallel...They are certainly in the shape of men, however uncouth...(They) utter all kinds of terrific yells...Like brute beasts, they are utterly ignorant of the distinction between right and wrong."

He describes the common practice of enslaving the poor and the conquered, noting that an Irish slave woman was worth three milk cows, and that the word "slave" derived from "Slav," whom Venetian traders sold to harems and plantations in Syria and Egypt until well into the 1400s.

In the era of "White Fragility," Goad makes the case that the voyages of the slave ships in the 1600s and 1700s containing European slaves (many were children lured from their homes or captured - literally "spirited" away by "crimps") were as horrible and fatal as the "Middle Passage" of the African slave trade, noting how many passengers died en route, often of starvation, and when they arrived in North America, they were also sold. "'Just arrived at Leedstown,'"ran the Virginia Gazette ad, 'the ship Justitia, with about one hundred Healthy Servants, Men Women & Boys...The Sale will commence on Tusday the 2nd of April.'"

By now, this information isn't news, but it's hotly disputed. White slavery, goes the argument, wasn't chattel slavery. Goad doesn't attempt to argue that, instead emphasizing that whatever you called it, if you could beat the "servant" to death for an infraction without punishment, if you could use him (or her) as a stake in a poker game or sell him (or her) at will to another owner - parting them from any family they might have - then perhaps we're arguing semantics, not truth. 

But the majority of Goad's book isn't spent on the question of slavery as such, but on the idea that it's more acceptable in the world today to look down upon, and hurl epithets at, the "redneck" than to demean other races or ethnic groups. The hillbilly, he suggests, is the bottom rung of the social ladder with nobody to take up his cause. He notes that while terms like "spic, spook, kike and spearchucker" would certainly be deemed "hate speech" by most - and get you fired or "cancelled" in a hurry, "redneck, hayseed, bumpkin, cracker, peckerwoods, Bubbas, yokels, and poor white trash" can still be tossed off with perhaps a "tsk, tsk," but you'd not lose your job - though your mom might be highly incensed. 

"People seem to need an 'other,'" he writes. "It appears impossible for societies to conceive of an 'us' without an antagonistic and constantly threatened 'them.'"  The "them" is quickly recognized in his description: "biologically (inbred, degenerated, momma-impregnating, vermin and scum); geographically (xenophobic, backwoods, rustic, heath-dwelling, trailer-sheathed yahoos); economically (poor, barefoot, toothless, no-account, earth-scratching trash); culturally (gullible, superstitious, bumpkinesque rubes and throwbacks); and morally (cross-burning, baby-molesting swamp creatures and their slatternly wives)." 

And the "humor" of depicting these "others" dates back to about the same time as the caricature of "Step'n Fetchit," to the early minstrel shows, and when the Carolina "Lubbers" were clearly divided in the early 1700s from their elite Virginia cousins by William Byrd II, who wanted to make it clear there was little relationship between his people and theirs. You have only to think of Jed Clampett, Abner Yokum, or Ma and Pa Kettle to get a quick mental picture of the modern idea of "them."

So what's Goad's point? Simply this: "othering" those who, like most of us, have limited power and resources is a distraction, a card trick, a technique. Black and white aren't natural enemies. Asian and Hispanic aren't destined to hate one another. By focusing our rage and frustration on our superficial differences we're missing the one that more definitively sets us apart: power. In our world today, power is usually derived from wealth, but power is the coveted goal. 

Watching this election season heat up as it barrels towards us, I wonder if a book by a no-holds-barred angry writer could be a good read for all of us. Yes, Goad will... goad you. He'll make you angry, send you to the encyclopedia convinced he's wrong, and have you gritting your teeth - no matter where you're from or what your belief system. But perhaps he'll also convince you that your neighbor down the street who is as unlike you as possible on the surface is more like you than you thought: he or she just wants what you want. 

He writes: "Hate Speech is the most Orwellian concept to emerge from the twentieth-century twilight....Most people want to be on the side of love, right? Like all dangerous ideas, the notion of hate speech sounds good until dismantled piece by piece. The first problem is with the term's vagueness. Hate speech, apparently, has become anything they hate... otherwise intelligent people have been brainwashed to believe that 'hate' is a satisfactory explanation for any human action."

He continues, one by one dismissing the usual suspects: the Klan, the Mau-Mau, conspiracy theorists, race-baiters and racists, urban gangs and the militia. And he concludes: "I'm yammering about the historically demonstrable habit of those in power to spend more time trying to STAY in power than in actually helping anyone... That's not militia, it's Machiavelli."

This might be a good time to pull out The Prince and give it another read. I think Goad may be onto something.