It’s paper season for me, so updating is clearly not at the top of my list--mostly right now my top priority is survival. But I’ve been thinking about something for the past couple of days and I want to let it out here. A few days ago, one of my professors said that he didn’t think Democrats (and others) were being honest with themselves with respect to what bothers them so much about Sarah Palin. He argued that they weren’t really discomforted by her supposed lack of intelligence or experience, but instead by the idea of someone who didn’t fit the mold of the elite (Ivy League educated, comes from money or power and/or intellectual) attempting to break into that position. I gave that a lot of thought. I didn’t want to be dishonest with myself. I was thinking about it while watching the news, and everything was quickly clarified for me. A Sarah Palin rally was on, and opening for her were some musicians singing about being a “redneck woman.” All became clear.

This didn’t bother me because I don’t like rednecks. In fact, I come from that sort of stock (though my relatives prefer to be called white trash). I grew up the rural south, next to a cow farm. For most of my life my address had the word Route in front of it. As a child, I sold corn out of the back of a pick-up truck at a gas station over the summer. What Palin’s use of that song made me think of was exactly that--the town I grew up in, my family, my childhood, the rural South.

My parents are some of those real Americans we keep hearing about. They live in the rural South, they don’t make much money, and they sometimes do things involving church. Occasionally cows escape and just stand around in my parents’ front yard. My father is even one of those independent voters beloved by all political campaigns. Probably the most non-real American thing they have ever done is produce me. If the McCain/Palin ticket were to meet my parents, they would be horrified to find that two nice, real Americans produced a feminist, Atheist, vegetarian reproductive rights activist/political theorist/academic who occasionally uses Shulamith Firestone as a write-in candidate. They would go home and hug their own children extra close that night.

Back to my original point. What is the meaning of redneck? In the South it’s a culture, an overflow from the past. It is based on the South’s history of poverty. We are the only part of the United States that has a history closely resembling the feudal system, with our wealthy plantation owners at the top of the hierarchy, poor whites far behind, and slaves at the bottom. That poverty, including that white poverty, is still apparent in the rural south. To hear Palin’s campaign using the term redneck as a political gimmick made me think about how little she and McCain and their predessesors have done for the rural South. Sure, they’re just like us they tell us, and they share our “small town values” and they love rednecks. But what have they done about the economic situation down there, about the lack of healthcare and the crumbling Southern public education system? I hear them talk about lowering taxes and avoiding Socialism, but I don’t hear many real solutions to the problem of poverty. Mostly they show up and give nice little stump speeches and then they get the hell out. To be fair, the Democratic candidates have spent little time in the rural South, which is as much a function of their own unpopularity there as it is the inevitable result of the electoral college system.

What really bothers me about Palin’s image as a candidate is her glorification of the idea of the redneck with no consideration of the actual situation in the rural South. I attended those public schools, where 51% of high school students drop out and most of the rest don’t go to college. It sure was authentic and folksy when my mother bought my clothes at Wal-mart when I was a child and we struggled to get by! And to think, what really got me where I am now was that redistributive policy of South Carolina’s--you know, the one where state taxes make it possible for in-state students to attend college at a reduced tuition rate?