Black Rednecks and White Liberals: Whos a Redneck?
In this era, when indignation has replaced thought for many people, it should not be surprising that the very title of my book “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” should have provoked angry reactions and bitter denunciations, even from people who never read it. Some whites in the South have reacted with resentment at the thought that they are being stereotyped as rednecks while some blacks resent anything that suggests anything negative about themselves. However, it would require reading no further than the preface to learn that neither most Southern whites today, nor most blacks, are considered to be part of the redneck culture that once dominated the South. I came out of that Southern culture and could have been considered one of the black rednecks. More important, vast amounts of historical research by dedicated scholars have shown sharp differences between the white population of the antebellum South and the white population of the North. While those differences have eroded over th
