by:
Goad, Jim

Publisher:
Simon and Schuster
Published:May 14, 1997
ISBN:0684831139
Format:Hardcover
Pages:272

Description: From Booklist
Angry white male or astute social critic? Whichever, Goad (he's not using a pseudonym, is he?) bellows a primal scream in defense of white working-class wage serfs. There is not a meek, mealy-mouthed word in this tract, so readers had better strap themselves in if they recoil from cussing, epithets for every blankety-blank group under the sun, or chapter titles such as "Several Compelling Arguments for the Enslavement of All White Liberals." This tract is so hyperbolic, so vitriolic, so viciously funny, so unrestrained, that its sheer outlandishness might indicate that Goad is just venting a sustained satire. But his harangue is in earnest, a high-decibel diatribe agin' big gummint, high taxes, big business, and the media reiteration of (white) racism as the metaexplainer of what's wrong with America. Moreover, Goad's book will not go quietly, as it is a politically unclassifiable polemic sure to humor, or offend, or enrage library patrons, in equal measure. Gilbert Taylor

Product Description:
In a book that is destined to be praised, reviled, cited, denounced, loved, and hated -- perhaps by the same reader -- culture maverick Jim Goad presents a thoroughly reasoned, darkly funny, and rampagingly angry defense of America's most maligned social group -- the cultural clan variously referred to as rednecks, hillbillies, white trash, crackers, and trailer trash (provided they're white trailer trash, of course).

As The Redneck Manifesto boldly points out and brilliantly demonstrates, America's dirty little secret isn't racism, but classism. While pouncing incessantly on racial themes, most major media are silent about America's widening class rifts, a problem which negatively affects more people of all colors than does racism. In a nation obsessed with race, this book switches the focus firmly back toward class, and it warns in a voice loud and clear that America will never learn the true meaning of tolerance until it learns to embrace the redneck.

Until this book, no one has so fully explained why white trash exists in America. Tracing the unique historical diaspora of America's white poor, The Redneck Manifesto offers evidence that mass forceful deportations of white slaves and convict laborers from the British Isles formed the bulk of America's white underclass. Tracing the history of these people, the book probes the hidden cultural meanings behind jokes about inbreeding and bestiality. It gets its hands dirty with blue-collar frustration, recreational desperation, and religious salvation. It discusses the value of Elvis, Bigfoot, and space aliens as objects of spiritual veneration. It offers solid logical defenses of tax protest, gun ownership, and antigovernment "hate speech." And it lists surprising reasons for why rednecks and blacks have more in common with each other than either group does with white liberals.

With an unmatched ability for rubbing salt in cultural wounds, Jim Goad deftly dismantles most popular American notions about race and culture and takes a sledgehammer to our delicate glass-blown popular conceptions of government, religion, media, and history. His own socioeconomic background leads him to prefer crackers over slackers, hillbillies over hipsters, and white trash over white cash. He is certain that the trailer park holds more honest people than the House of Representatives, and he knows from personal experience that truck drivers are more trustworthy than lawyers.

You've not read another book like The Redneck Manifesto because there are no other books like it. It's the sort of book that comes along once in a lifetime, which will be too often for some people. It's a rude awakening for a spazzed-out nation. A fire under the ass of a culturally confused country. A literary laxative for a constipated public. It's destined to prick the conscience of a nation which enjoys feeling guilty, but which doesn't like to do anything about it. You'll laugh, and then you'll hate yourself for laughing. Your mind will be pried open but it'll only hurt a little while.