Posted on 04/30/2002 7:12:45 PM PDT by foreverfree
This perception is not mine, but that of critics of the two groups.
There's a legacy of bondage among both groups, one indentured and one enslaved. They're both quite capable of industriousness outside the confines of "normal" society as well. There's honor. There's God. It could be worse. They fight our wars, in large part.
If it weren't for the disparate voting patterns the two couldn't be told apart. It breaks my heart that Blacks have become so alienated from their country of four hundred years as to morph into the angry, alienated intellectuals who currently represent them.
At times, it appears that poor white southerners are all that stands between us and totalitarianism. For that alone, I'm much obliged, and am glad to have them.
Thank you. Though so far as I can tell, I'm strictly Anglo-Saxon rather than Celtic (perhaps an oddity here in the Upper South).
Maternally, it's a different picture. Celtic from Scotland and Ireland, Palatines from the Rhineland, Alsace and Switzerland, native Cherokee and Creek going all the way back to James Cittie, French Huguenot and other fleeing outcasts to wild, nearly ungoverned NC from old Virginny, just your usual southern mutt heritage and all that comes with it, good and not so good.
I do perceive "redneck" as being more Celt. Looking back to even England, the "crackers" were from Celt lands, Cornwall and such.
There are those, especially in Ireland, who view our Civil War as the inevitable, repeated clash between Celts and Anglo-Saxons, that has played out throughout the history of the British Isles... past as prologue.
Ironically, while Celtic Southern nationalists insist on being identified with a particularly "reactionary" form of rightism, Celtic nationalists in the British Isles (and Brittany and Galicia as well) have adopted left wing nationalism as their ideology, leaving English nationalism with the "onus" of being "right wing."
If our Southern nationalists had any sense they'd adopt left wing nationalism as well. I mean, at the very least, they'd tie the Left up in knots. But know, they have to stick with the stereotype (and reinforce it here and there).
You can still hear it around (my parents live on the GA coast).
You might be interested in this.
The Good Nyews Bout Jedus Chris Wa Luke Write
Read it out loud. It's amazing how close it does come.
Another good source for the old Southern black accents is Joel Chandler Harris. Not only the central GA plantation dialect of Uncle Remus himself, but the Gullah of Daddy Jack and various other characters who travel through the stories. I can't remember who said it (Booker T. Washington?) but Harris's work was said by those who knew to be the best expression of the old-time black regional dialects that there was.
My parents know some of the compilers, who live 'right down the road'.
Seems to make more sense is a good way of putting it, as it is not yet crystal clear. I’m strugging with it. Not have it as part of my vernacular, it is hard to appreciate exactly what it means. You gave me a sense, but I would have to live with it a while to get the context. Thanks for trying.
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