Rednecks?

I’ve written about this before but a recent incident reminded me again how distorted a view of the South and its people exists among so many others. 

We’ve recently moved to Central Florida. For me, it’s kind of like coming home – I went to college in Gainesville, only about an hour and a half from where we now live. I went to college with a lot of kids from Ocala, Kissimmee, St. Cloud, Leesburg, and other small towns in this general area. 

I’d grown up largely in Miami, which at the time was still a pretty much Southern city. Most of my relatives called Miami “Miamah.” That should give you an idea. 

When my family moved North for a few years it took a while to shake my Southern accent. But I had to because other kids made fun of me for pronouncing “pen” as “pin,” “get” as “git,” etc.  Then we moved back to Miami and later I went to a decidedly Southern, yet very good, university.

Years later when I worked at Commodore Business Machines – home of the C64 – I ran its publishing operations. I still remember one of the vice presidents, an arrogant elitist, asking me where I went to college, fully expecting I would name one of the prestigious schools, and being aghast that I had actually graduated from the University of Florida.  Not what he expected. 

I’ve encountered that Northern arrogance at many times in my career.  Also in my personal life. 

Too many people from the Northeast automatically assume that if you grew up in the South, or have even the slightest Southern drawl, you can’t be that smart. Plus, you probably didn’t get much of an education beyond “readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic.” If you are relatively smart, you must be an exception – lucky to escape your backwoods, Bible-thumping, anti-science and bigoted environment. 

Here’s what brought all this up. 

Our newly constructed house had a bad floor. The contractor sent a crew out to grind down our floor, at no cost to us. Five guys showed up – including a crew boss – and spent the day working on our floor to get it ready for self-leveling cement to be poured shortly. They covered everything with plastic sheeting to keep the dust away from our furniture, kitchen and anywhere else in our house.  That included getting up on a ladder and wrapping plastic around a ceiling fan so dust didn’t get in the motor. I took a picture of them doing that and posted the pix on Facebook. 

Shortly after, a business acquaintance – a lifelong Democrat from the Northeast – now living in a fashionable part of Miami Beach with his partner, commented with “how many rednecks does it take to install a ceiling fan.”

For some reason that really set me off.  The hardworking guys on that crew routinely clock into work at 6:10AM.  I saw the same crew working on a job on Labor Day.

They are the nicest people you could ever run into. Some of them have kids in The Villages Charter School – one of the top-rated schools in the state.  One has a daughter getting ready to go to the University of Central Florida to become a veterinarian. But because they live in Central Florida and are workmen, and white, they must automatically be rednecks, from a Northeast perspective.

Let me help my Northern friends understand who is and who isn’t a redneck.  A redneck is essentially ignorant and intolerant; they have no use for education or the educated.  They stick to their own and think the rest of society looks down on them. They like doing things designed to annoy others – especially those of different races – just to piss people off.  In their own stupid way, they are always trying to beat the system by doing the minimum required. They are classic low-life jerkoffs.       

Wait, didn’t that also describe a lot of folks in our inner cities in other parts of the country? 

Why yes it does. You don’t have to be white to be a redneck.  There are a lot of folks – white and black – who meet the redneck criteria – and not all of them are in the South. In fact, I’d hazard that most of them aren’t in the South but instead concentrated in many of our major cities outside the South entirely.

If you want to find ignorance and intolerance, and racial animosity – traits Northeasterners associate with the South in general and rednecks in particular – you don’t have to look that far. Try Philadelphia. Or Baltimore. Or Detroit. Or Newark. Or even Boston, for that matter.  

Wander off into parts of North Central PA, Northwestern NJ, the Pine Barrens, or Western or Upstate NY if you want to continue to focus on white rednecks. Plenty in all those places, too.     

You’ll find the South doesn’t have a lock on rednecks. Yes, there are rednecks in the South, but also everywhere else as well. Just go to the racetrack in the Poconos sometime.

In short, the South is like a lot of other places in the country.  Good parts and not-so-good parts.  There are great universities here. There are world-class orchestras and opera companies.

There is still a distinctly Southern culture nonetheless, no matter how many Northerners and Midwesterners move here to escape the taxes, crime, and bad weather where they lived. It’s interesting for me to watch how quickly they adapt to their new environment.  At first they are stunned how nice and courteous most everyone is.  And how honest.   

Over time, they start to become the same. That’s a good thing.      

It wasn’t that big of an adjustment for me. But let me tell you what my experience has been so far moving into what one of my Northern acquaintances called a place where there’s probably a “combination cultural center and swap meet.”

The first thing I noticed was how nice everybody is.  Whether that’s at the grocery store, Walmart, liquor store, the DMV or the tax collector’s office, everybody was so helpful and friendly.  It’s not a racial thing: we got the exact same courtesy from white, black and Hispanic men and women wherever we’ve gone.  There’s absolutely no attitude; no sense they are doing you a big favor, even though at times they are.  It makes no difference if they are cashiers, landscapers, construction workers, or waiters.

Even civil servants. The woman at the DMV spent almost two hours patiently guiding us on what we needed to do to get our Florida driver’s licenses and get our cars registered.  Two weeks later when we came to transfer the title of my car and get my plates, she was just as friendly and helpful, and carefully walked us through every step.  

Can my Northern friends say the same about where they live? 

Next, people here take pride in working hard and doing a good job. You don’t get the feeling they begrudgingly get up every day and drag themselves to a job they hate. They seem genuinely happy to be working and having a regular job, whatever that is. As one of the guys who did work in our house said – he didn’t mind working on a weekend or holiday because that gave him a bigger paycheck. 

The people who came to see if our floor was finally ready for the flooring installation came here on Labor Day. They didn't think coming out on a holiday was anything special.      

Try that in the Northeast. 

Cultural events? There are many – and none of them has anything to do with NASCAR.  There are always concerts, plays, and theatrical productions at one of the performing arts centers in The Villages, or somewhere nearby. There’s also a lifelong learning center where you can take college-level courses. There are major universities not far away either.  

It’s not paradise, but neither is it a cultural backwater.  Nor is it an isolated island of enlightenment within an overall dumbed-down South, any more than NYC is one in an overall stupid and uncultured country.  Although that’s what New Yorkers tend to think.

One reason the Northern and West Coast media think the South is a cultural and intellectual wasteland is because – unlike them – the South tends to vote Republican. Obviously, again to them, anyone who votes Republican is a low-information voter. 

Stupid and uneducated, in other words.      

Are things perfect here?  Of course not.  But the locals we’ve encountered so far belie the Northern myth. And as a native Southerner, I’ll continue to fight to dispel that myth.