Be careful that your anti-racism doesn’t turn into classism behind your back.
Making jokes about how “hicks” from Appalachia or “hillbillies” from the plains are all racist and uneducated and inbred is deeply classist and plays into yet another narrative run by those in power to keep us divided. Remember how many of those “rednecks” died in the coal mines and then died for workers’ rights, and how horrifyingly monopolies are destroying rural towns. Remember that these communities often have nearly as many people of color as the cities do, by ratio.
These people are poor and have limited opportunities, just like so many other minorities. Don’t throw them under the bus because it’s an easy way to shift blame from “all white people” to “just the white people I already look down on.”
When I lived in New England the people who loved there were very racist but in a subtler way then in other places, but also super racist. And they would shift blame to the south or poor individuals. Like white people would be racist to my face and then say they weren’t racist, only the south was. I have lived in a lot of different places, but I never experienced more racism and classism then when I lived in New England. They would just say they couldn’t be racist because they were rich and lived in a blue state.
