We write a lot on this site about Southerners and rednecks and Bubbas, and it has occurred to us that we should clarify those monikers. We Southerners are a diverse bunch. There are geniuses and peckerwoods, smartasses and dumbasses. When we talk about unique Southern characters, we mean all shades of redneck.
We don't use the word redneck in a negative sense (okay, maybe now and then, but not always). And rednecks are a lot more intelligent and varied than the stereotypes portrayed in the movies and on TV.
Too often people associate rednecks with ignorant, backwoods white people, and that is not accurate by even a long, crooked stretch of road. There are African American rednecks, Hispanic rednecks, and more than a few European +**rednecks; there are even Yankee rednecks. I know a Russian redneck who loves Willie Nelson and Hee Haw reruns. I know rednecks in Brooklyn and Los Angeles and Canada. There are rich and poor rednecks, educated and illiterate rednecks, good-looking and ugly rednecks. Rednecks are measured in every demographic.
Then there's Cecil. He lives in a Deep South state bordered by Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi and Georgia; I won't divulge exactly where as Cecil (not his real name) isn't too fond of publicity. He played a lot of football in the 1970s, lives in a modular home on a rural route, drives a Ford F-150 pickup, and hunts and fishes more than he works his real job. He would fit in with any group of Bubbas, rednecks, goat ropers, sh*#kickers, truckhumpers or any other derogatory descriptor that many Southerners actually look on as a compliment.
Except Cecil is black.
"If you look real hard at my neck," he jokes, "you can see the red." He dislodges a big glop of Redman into the St. Augustine grass with a giggle like the kind Burt Reynolds used to uncork when he drove Firebirds, ran from Smokies and CB'd with Jerry Reed.
Cecil claims his favorite movie is Deliverance - until he thinks of Gator - and swears he's seen every single episode of Andy Griffith and Sanford & Son. He likes Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock and Larry The Cable Guy and sometimes seems like a combination of all three. He can quote Richard Pryor and Richard Petty with equal fervor. And he likes NASCAR. Guys like Cecil just may be the future of NASCAR.
"Black Bubba," he says with an easy grin. "That's what they call me over at Wal-Mart," where he spends at least an hour a day. Cecil loves Wal-Mart.
He says his white friends don't really see color and treat him just like anybody else; same with his black friends. His wife hangs out with the girls at work and they go to Tupperware and Avon parties and eat at Cracker Barrel on special occasions.
"You gotta understand real live, honest to God-fearing rednecks," he says.
"We're kinda past that whole color thing. Used to be some hard feelings back in the day. I saw it. We all did. Used to be that people just saw the outside. A lot still do. But we're all the same on the inside. We all bleed. We all hurt. We all like cheap beer and football and go to church and respect our mamas. We could all be brothers. Color isn't who we are, it's just what we are stuck with."
Cecil points to his dogs in the pen out behind his work shed. "Look out yonder, see my dogs? There's a brown one and a black one and a white-and-brown one and a black-and-white one and there's a black, brown, white and tan one. They're all colors, and they're all dogs. They don't know the difference."
He rolls up his sleeve and holds his arm out next to mine. "If color don't matter to them, why should it matter to us?"
Good question, Cecil. I'm thinkin' it don't matter much at all.
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