Class distinction as viewed in Red Nation

[SparkyMac]

Like most Americans I have watched in silence as my country was taken over by the political shills of Corporate America. It's only in recent months that I have concluded to try and do my small part in preventing this conquest. I may be wrong but I feel the best way to defeat and enemy is to understand (and hopefully educate) him.

For the past three years I have been reading history and politics in an effort to understand why my own native Southland ended up in the political bed with the party that once destroyed her. But that's another-- and a much longer story :-)

One thing that keeps bothering me is the fact that most Southerners (read Red Nation) have this idea that "there is no class distinctions" in America. I have long wondered how they come by this concept and what we may do to awaken them to the silliness of such a idea.

This week I started reading "What's the Matter with Kansas?" by Thomas Frank. And lo, he has put the idea that I had been struggling into the best words I have read. On page 26 Frank pretty much describes the problem. Now if we could just figure a way to educate these people, we will all be on our way to a better country.

Here is Frank describing Red Nations mistake about class in America --

Page 26 What's the Matter with Kansas?

....David Brooks goes even further, concluding from his fieldwork in Red America that the standard notion of class is flawed. Thinking about class in terms of a hierarchy, where some people occupy more exalted positions than others, he writes, is "Marxist" and presumably illegitimate. The correct model, he suggests, is a high school cafeteria, segmented into self-chosen taste clusters like "nerds, jocks, punks, bikers, techies, druggies, God Squadders," and so on. "The jocks knew there would always be nerds, and the nerds knew there would always be jocks," he writes. "That's just the way life is." We choose where we want to sit and whom we want to mimic and what class we want to belong to the same way we choose hairstyles or TV shows or extracurricular activities. We're all free agents in this noncoercive class system, and Brooks eventually concludes that worrying about the problems faced by workers is yet another deluded affectation of the blue-state rich.

As a description of the way society works, this is preposterous. Even by high school, most of us know that we won't be able to choose our station in life the way we choose a soda pop or even the way we choose our friends. But as a clue into the deepest predilections of the backlash mind, Brooks's scheme is a revelation....

There it is. They have a childish notion that class is as easy for Americans to select as items at a cafeteria. They don't see that class is forced on them. And they really believe this -- but only because they have never given the subject any serious thought. As young children they accept this idiocy -- and never later question it.

How can we educate them when they won't educate themselves ? There must be a way.

[Clark2008]

1. Childish?

You're not going to win friends and influence Southerners by calling us childish.

That's the problem, more-so than the way in which people from this region think about class: that we're childish and need to be guided. We're not.

We need better media, we, as "blue" Southerners need to have two-way conversations with our "red" brethern without looking down our noses at them and we need cold-hard numbers. It can be done - I do it daily.

Do I think some of these folks are "childish?" Not really. Misinformed? Hell yes.

I think the biggest problem that Northerners have in understanding Southerners is this long-held belief that we're uneducated or stupid and we're treated as red-headed step-children by the rest of the country. Cut that out, treat us as equals and you'll go a much longer way toward opening a productive dialogue.

[SparkyMac]

4. You are right ... misinforned is better

Do I think some of these folks are "childish?" Not really. Misinformed? Hell yes.

It was a poor choice of words on my part. I should also have written "we" instead of "them".

I want only what is best for my people. But we in the South -- for the past 150 years -- have consistently voted for things that were not in our best interests. I'm simply trying to find out why that is so. If we can find the "why" -- maybe we can cure the problem.

[watrwefitinfor]

2. As one southerner to another -

Interesting post, SparkyMac.

Can't say I agree with all of it, but thoughtful.

Welcome to DU. :hi:

Wat

[patrice]

3. Share something you actually have in common. Work on it together.

Create friendships.

Stand up for The Constitution.

Explain our differences better, in a non-assaultive way that illustrates how what we are is the result of deeply held values.

Demonstrate that we are trustworthy. NEVER gossip about anyone.