REDNECKS

American Hysteria

W!ZARD Studios

Society & Culture

4.4 • 3.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2020

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For this episode we are dissecting the archetype of American rednecks, hillbillies, and those we call white trash, a group often accused of being the “real” racists who make up the deplorable “Trump Country." But we'll be examining who is really to blame, starting with the plantation elites of the 1700s who created categories of race to break up the poor who were revolting against the government, resulting in centuries of brutal slavery and what we now know as white privilege. We’ll look at the region of Appalachia and the construction of the dangerous, deviant, simple minded white hillbilly created by local color writers. I’ll explain how this area’s union battles that united black and white folks in a dramatic fight for their workers’ rights led to the migration of “hillbillies” into cities, eventually aiding in the success of the eugenics movement. By the civil rights era, we’ll see more racial solidarity, with Black Panther Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Party Coalition in the city of Chicago. Soon after, famous “hillbilly horror” movies of the 1970s like Deliverance reinforced and solidified our view of the banjo playing blood-thirsty backwoods idiot who is a direct threat to the white middle class. In the current political climate, those scapegoated as the “real racists” are often the working class rural poor, though history and modern culture tell a very different story. Please consider donating to the Highlander Research and Education Center American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith Produced and edited by Clear Commo Studios Research and cowriting assisted by Riley Smith Co-Produced by Miranda Zickler Show art by Roache Voice Acting by Will Rogers Become a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly! Follow American Hysteria on social media: Twitter: @AmerHysteria Instagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	On this season, we'll explore our most ingrained beliefs, delusions, and archetypes, the ways that cognitive dissonance shapes our culture and how our reality is created by the stories we tell.
0:23.2	I'm your host, Chelsea Weber-Smith, and this is American Hysteria.
0:28.7	You can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of the horrors.
0:33.6	My administration is putting an end to the war on coal.
0:38.4	There's a lot of confusion amongst white people in this country,
0:41.0	amongst white workers in this country about who the enemy is.
0:44.4	Welcome to my world.
0:51.2	For part of my youth, I shot rifles up in the hills near Olympia, Washington, fished for trout from a rickety silver boat, learned to shoot a bow and arrow, camped in the middle of nowhere with my dad, and howled along with the coyotes, caught snakes in the tall grass, learned to play equally rickety country music, tearing the sleeves
1:13.5	off my shirt, and riding in the back of my dad's pickup truck at sometimes questionable speeds.
1:20.0	On the other side of my family, I listened to Johnny Cash with my beloved grandpa,
1:25.7	throwing horseshoes across the lawn and dreaming of the clang of a ringer.
1:31.0	I wanted to be a cowboy. I wanted to be like my grandpa.
1:36.0	I listened with rapt attention to the childhood stories of him, riding his horse to school
1:41.9	through the glowing green of the North Dakota Hills in a tiny town
1:46.4	called Dunceith. He grew up very poor in a little wooden house, the winter's a possible death
1:53.8	sentence, his dad once making moonshine inside the basement, him sneaking drinks of southern
2:00.4	comfort and falling asleep in the field,
2:03.1	or sneaking out to a rowdy barn dance that was forbidden by the priest.
2:08.9	As I covered in our hipsters episode, I've always lived a dual life, one of opportunity and
2:15.6	education, fulfillment of desired Christmas gifts, safety with a good
2:20.9	mom and stepdad that provided me generously with all the things I needed. But I did live in another
2:28.0	kind of world on the weekends, in another kind of world riding in my grandpa's light blue Dotson pickup or his red Ford F-150.
	...

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