Can we stop stereotyping people for goodness sake?

[txaslftist]

Everytime I see the word "redneck" or "red-stater" or "hillbilly" or "White trash" or "southerner" or half a million other pejorative terms tossed around on this board, I cringe.

We are democrats. That means that we don't put people in boxes based on whether they wear a John Deere cap or drive a camaro or live in a mobile home or in a red state. There were a lot of farm folks and rural people who voted democratic in the last election, and a lot of them have been voting democratic since before LBJ ran. Many of them do not have college degrees, most of them are either poor or scraping by.

Was "Joe Six Pack" duped by the right wing noise machine? Some were, Hell, lots were. Some weren't. Some Nascar dads voted straight democratic ticket and opposed the war. They just dig Nascar.

A lot of the people routinely denigrated on these boards used to be the democratic base. It's not hard to go from blue collar to voting blue. It's not even hard to go from a red neck to voting blue.

Every time you write a thread bashing people or saying things like "all southerners are poorly educated" you give FAUX news and our other detractors a chance to say, "Look, we told you so. That DU is a hotbed of lefties on the fringe."

Just take a minute to think before you post such nonsense.

[franksumatra]

1. nonsense

I still get called a hippy by some folks I know and I am not a hippy, although I once thought I was. Some folks call ALL liberals hippy tree hugging flower children, etc., and look down their noses at pot smokers and those who might like a new age religion or two.

Don't be so thin skinned. Redneck and Hippy are just cartoon characters, no one is insulting Texans here.

Jeez

[Squatch]

6. So, 2 wrongs DO make a right?

Ah...I guess I had that little tenet wrong all these years.

[franksumatra]

9. I never impugned southerners, don't know how that came up

many of my friends are rednecks and they are the salt of the earth and they are in Missouri. I know rednecks and hippie types from all over America, I never said ANYTHING about the south or southerners.

[txaslftist]

11. It's not about Texans.

It's not about being thin skinned, either. I don't cringe because I feel personally insulted. I cringe because I think "that poster is saying or expressing an attitude that plays completely into Sean Hannity's hands". Hatred and stereotypes are not democratic values.

And by the way, I think hippies are completely cool. I wish people could see the hippy inside of me.

[franksumatra]

14. I know you're not Clyde the slack jawed yokel

cause he doesn't post here. I respect you, and certainly never meant to insult you personally in any way, believe it or not.

[txaslftist]

19. If you must know, I wasn't even talking about you when I posted.

I was actually responding to one of those let's refight the civil war threads.

[franksumatra]

20. it's cool man

i can dig it

[The Backlash Cometh]

33. You're certainly entitled to your opinion.

However, it's a non-starter believing that if you stop using names, so will they. It's not that easy. Taking the high road hasn't been working for the Liberals lately.

Categorizing people is just what they do. So, if you're a minority in America, what do you do? You make sure that they don't define you in negative terms. Do the best you can to make something good of yourself to show them that their stereo-types don't work.

Now, I like to point something out. You are a criminal defense attorney AND a self-proclaimed hippie. That tells me two things. First, as a criminal defense attorney, I'm surprised you don't have a more tolerant view to name-calling. I'm sure you've seen much worse. And two, how do you know that they don't resent you for being a criminal defense attorey rather than a hippie?

I categorize/stereotype those who pigeon hole others in the hopes that they will see themselves. It might not work. It may foment the hate. Or maybe they'll realize for themselves that detente is the best policy

[txaslftist]

39. Understand that my post wasn't about ME...

... I'm not personally insulted by anything I read on these boards. I'm not living in a trailer and I don't have bad teeth and I'm well off and well educated (If degrees mean anything).

I'm talking about US, and the impression we make as a party. Suppose some Nascar Dad is bopping around on the internet thinking "Well, Rush said that democratic underground is a fringe group. I wonder if they really are. My dad is a democrat and I'm not totally comfortable with Bush these days..."

He bops on over and reads a thread saying "we ought to just nuke mississippi and all the ignorant fucks who live there..."

He's going to say, "Uh huh...Rush was right."

Score a point for Rash Windbagh and a loss for us.

That's the point of this thread. You can bash me for being what I am all dam day, I guarantee you I've been called worse, by people who are much more creative at slinging insults than you are. I'm fairly thick skinned. Hell, it might even be funny. What I don't like to see is people put in boxes because of their economic status, education or geography.

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. We'll stop, when they stop.

Here's me, running with scissors.

[txaslftist]

8. Who is "they"?

Is "they" the nazi party, the KKK, the republicans, the reichwing noise machine, the BFEE? We'll stop spewing vitriol and hatred when "they" do? Hell, "they" will never stop.

Thats just a license to spew.

[Boosterman]

18. I think he was being sarcastic

Hence the running with scissors comment. I hope so anyway I found it terribly amusing.

[txaslftist]

21. Well, if he was being sarcastic, my response was asinine!

therefore he must have been being quite literal and serious.

[Boosterman]

22. LOL

well then he can be serious. I got a chuckle out of your post so i am even. This way you dont have to be asinine.

[The Backlash Cometh]

30. Only the british understand me.

whiiiiiiiinge

[Dora]

3. I'm with you.

I am so tired of generalizations and this "fuck the South" attitude that's running rampant. It makes the poster of such garbage look thoughtless and reactionary, and it's our responsibility to be different from that.

Democrats are not provincial and elitist, and it's time that we act like it.

[jobycom]

4. As a redneck southerner who watches NASCAR from time to time, I agree

It isn't the name calling, it's the attitude. When someone in the SOuth does something racist or violent, the threads on the subject read like a Republican hate-fest. EVERYONE in the South is violent, racist, stupid, evil, etc. Since I grew up in the South, I'm quite good at recognizing bigotry, and believe me, the attitudes on a lot of DU threads towards southerners are no different than the attitudes I used to hear from my KKK neighbor about everybody who wasn't white.

One poster a few days ago called for the extermination of everyone in Alabama. I know it was just angry rhetoric, but bigotry starts somewhere. It starts with responses like that. And it spreads. It could also stop when people avoid responses like that. Democrats should be about stopping bigotry, not starting it, no matter who the target group is.

It's bad enough to hate individuals. To hate an entire group because a few individuals have some connection with them--whether it be rednecks, southerners, gays, lesbians, or Muslims, is despicable. Stand up for groups, you might find you have more of a chance to change the world than when you hate them.

[LizW]

7. Thanks

I appreciate your post.

[Justyce]

5. Thank you. I agree.

All states have poor & uneducated people, people who live in mobile homes, etc. And all states had plenty of repub voters, some just more than others.

[Dora]

29. Or there's Ohio...

Where there aren't necessarily more repubs, just more repubs who were allowed to vote.

[DainBramaged]

10. Would you be offended for being called a moron?

You are dealing with human beings, proud LIBERALS and PROGRESSIVES who have been degraded and insulted by the white trash, trailer living, toothless, mouthbreathing, sister loving rednecks who think that * is the second coming since Gingrich decided that we were dog shit in 1994. Should we throw flowers at them when they degrade and insult us?

By the way, I am STILL a long haired hippie and proud of it.

And * is not my pResident. Is he yours?

[franksumatra]

12. so the word hippy doesn't offend you?

it shouldn't, and redneck shouldn't offend folks who are from the south. rednecks come from all states, north south east and west, as do hippys.

whatever happened to 'sticks and stones will break my bones', etc.?

[Boosterman]

16. Sticks and stones?

Why dont you ask Lioness and Dainbramaged. They are the ones who seem the most upset.

[txaslftist]

17. Hell no, hippy doesn't offend me...

...I dig that term. Redneck doesn't particularly offend me, either. The problem is in the attitude, as expressed very adroitly in an earlier post (by someone else, of course). It is EXCLUSIVE. It is DIVISIVE. As in "those sister loving rednecks that voted for Bush".

You may think you are being specific to Bush voters, but I guarantee you that people who think of themselves as rednecks aren't going to get far past the 'sister loving' part of it.

[txaslftist]

15. Thank you for that fine example of exactly what I meant.

As a proud liberal and progressive, it is good that you can neatly categorize your neocon opponents using pejorative terms that insult the poor, inadequately housed, inadequate health and dental care recipients, and socially challenged and put them firmly in the other side's camp. You can be assured that they will continue to think of you as canine excrement.

[DainBramaged]

31. Did you vote for *

It matters not what you think may or may not be derogatory when marginalizing the opposition. They turned Liberal into a dirty word, and they will control the People's House until 2008. Continuing to bow to them will never gain us an inch in the political arena, and we will never learn how to fight the war which they so adroitly won yet again in November. And those who think beer is a food group helped win * the election. Moral values, how quaint. We have them, they don't, but they won.

Keep throwing flowers at them. They will continue to win elections until we learn that being nice never got us anywhere.

[Justyce]

27. Bush's/repub's biggest supporters have

and always will be the wealthy who stand to profit from the republican agenda. The poor trailer-trash rednecks as you call them don't turn out to vote nearly as much as the wealthy do anyway -- the rich have much more at stake. I'm in Texas, and speaking for the area I live, I can tell you our middle-class hard-working people around here mostly voted Democrat, and the majority of signs in the trailer parks & low-income areas were Kerry/Edwards. The rich neighborhoods where the CEOs and doctors live were where all the bush signs filled the yards & SUV bumpers. You will always have the idiots who are easily brainwashed or vote on a single issue rather than the big picture -- this is one reason I wish the Democrats would make more of a point of keeping the focus on the fact that Repub vs Dem boils down to Rich vs Everyone Else rather than letting the repubs sidetrack the less informed population with their bullshit issues that they really don't intend to change anyway. (Just my outspoken hormonally-enhanced opinion -- LOL -- still pissed off from last night when the owner of a company my husband works for proceeded to try to lecture me on the *wonderful* things the bush administration has been doing & will do in the years to come... won't even go there since you have all been through this too I'm sure...)

[QC]

38. Exactly--Kerry got the majority of voters under $50k.

I'll repeat that so that maybe the people who need to see it will: Kerry got the majority of voters under $50k.

Every other income group went to Bush.

In other words, if we want to blame someone for putting BushCorp back in power, we should be looking at affluent white people, the same demographic that comprises most of DU.

But that might be a bit uncomfortable, so instead we scapegoat the poor, contrary to the clear facts of the election.

Thanks to the attitudes we see displayed in this thread--the mindless, reactionary hate, the playground insults, the knuckledragger logic--DU is turning into little more than a mirror image of Free Republic. This used to be one of the smartest places on the Internet, but those who see DU as nothing more than a place where they can whine and bitch and put their hatred on public display are wrecking it.

[txaslftist]

40. THANK YOU SO MUCH

For posting that. It is important to recognize that the poor and middle class working people are the democratic base.

Every thread bashing the poor is a smack in our own face.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

13. white trash is a racist term anyway.

it implies that all normal trash is non-white...and whiteness is an a general exception to trashiness.

[wildeyed]

24. Hmmmm, good point. n/t

[arcane1]

34. exactly

a term used by whites to separate themselves from oppressed races when they find themselves living in the same conditions

[Boosterman]

35. Actually its a derogatory term used on whites

generally by other whites but I have heard blacks use it too.

[arcane1]

36. yes, it is used towards whites

but the racism behind the term applies to blacks.

whites who are poor and uneducated are given an exception that other colors are not. I've certainly seen enough of that in my days

[Boosterman]

37. I can see how it could be taken

that way. And I guess it probably is. But I have heard blacks use it about whites. And actually it shouldnt apply to poor and uneducated (or at least its not supposed to be)rather it supposed to apply to the type of guy who has a rotting 64 something in his front yard. Beer cans all over the place etc. That was the definition I grew up with.

[rachelbirds]

23. It's so

second grade, isn't it???

[Ezlivin]

25. I've moved past stereo to surround sound

There's just too many types of people now.

[wildeyed]

26. I do not call people red neck, white trash or hillbilly.

Those seem derogatory to me. Southerner and red-stater are just descriptive and you can call me either.

[Texasgal]

28. AMEN!

It get's old and serves no useful purpose to slam "southerners" or "red-staters" !

We need HELP, not judgement!

[Trailrider1951]

32. Here, here! I'm a Texan who lives in a trailer park

And I'm soooo far left I make Hillary Clinton look like Barry Goldwater!:evilgrin: