Racism: What Is Wrong With Redneck Culture?

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Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

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Listen and enjoy this latest episode as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions. Here's Pastor Tim.

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On this episode of Bible Bash, we'll be answering the question, what is wrong with redneck culture? Now, culture is simply the set of shared attributes, values, goals, and practice which characterizes a particular group of people.

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Not all cultures are neutral. Because of multiculturalism, we're trained to think that all cultures are essentially neutral and that we can't criticize any culture at all, but certainly no one would wish to live in a cannibalistic society or a society where rape was normalized.

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So there are different cultural practices that a society can have that are fundamentally going to be destructive, and this is the case with any culture that you're going to find yourself in.

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But that's not to say that all cultures are inherently neutral or all cultures are equally depraved.

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I mean, there are some cultures that are so evil and so wicked that God has essentially acted in instantaneous judgment over those cultures.

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I'm thinking in particular of the cultures that were associated with Sodom and Gomorrah. And whenever the iniquity of a particular culture reaches its climax,

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God will inevitably act in judgment and conquer that particular society or nation. The Bible describes

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God acting in judgment as vomiting out the inhabitants of the land, and God will do that to whatever nation fails to honor

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Him in its ways and its practices and its habits and its culture. So culture is not neutral.

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We have to look at the Bible and we have to compare what we find in a particular culture with what we see in the

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Bible. And one of the things you're going to find is that there are many destructive elements as we do that to compare a culture to what you're going to find in the

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Bible. There are many destructive elements of what might be described as redneck culture that are going to be the types of things that the

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Bible does criticize in one way or another. Now Thomas Sowell in his book Black Rednecks and White Liberals essentially argued that what has come to be known as black culture or authentic black culture was essentially southern redneck culture that was packaged in a unique way among blacks.

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So there was an intellectual movement in the 60s essentially to go to identify blackness, true blackness or black identity with this southern black redneck culture and all the negative characteristics that came from that.

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And Thomas Sowell believed that that to be uniquely problematic in that before that one of the things that many people thought was in order to help blacks get ahead and to overcome some of the damaging effects of slavery and everything else but one of the things that many people understood and if you just read through his book and you think about some examples from history at this point there was essentially many schools that thought that in order to help black people get ahead in the world you had to essentially change this southern black redneck culture because it was this southern black redneck culture which was essentially standing in the way of black advancement in the world.

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And there were schools at the time that were devoted to doing this and a lot of the early black success stories as far as education was concerned was due to the fact that white educators came along and took blacks and fundamentally went to war against this black redneck culture and tried to change that culture and help them to fit in with society and not only fit in with society but adopt the kind of practices and habits that are necessary in order to be actually successful in the world.

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But then the problem is that when this intellectual movement in the 60s essentially solidified black redneck culture as what it meant to be authentically black then what happened is that what it meant to be authentically black was beyond any kind of critique at that point.

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And so basically this movement normalized black redneck culture didn't consider it to be destructive and didn't consider it something to go to war against and try to fight and then now that has become what's known as authentic and true blackness.

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And so that's why there's many people who essentially reject southern black redneck culture like Ben Carson or Buddy Baucom and that kind of thing.

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They essentially reject that southern black redneck culture or Larry Elder.

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Those kind of individuals. But then they're going to essentially be called Oreos. They're going to be called black on the outside but white on the inside because we are living in a society right now that we have to praise black redneck culture.

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But then the point there that Sal was making the point that is actually true is that black redneck culture or redneck culture in general are fundamentally destructive in many ways.

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In order to talk about the destructive elements of black redneck culture let's talk about destructive elements of redneck culture because both of those things can be true at the same time.

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Now there's a difference between being southern and being a redneck. And there's a difference between being an intellectual or being a formally educated person and being a knowledgeable person.

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And so one of the things that you have to do as you're trying to interact with redneck culture in general is you have to be able to make certain distinctions between being southern having a southern accent and being a redneck in those kind of things.

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And so the things that are typically associated with redneck culture are often and there's some overlap there

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I'm not trying to say that these are categories that have no overlap but typically what's associated with redneck culture is a kind of laziness what's associated with redneck culture is a lack of hard work what's associated with redneck culture is redneck culture is often profoundly anti -intellectual and when you interact with southern rednecks one of the things that you're going to find is that there is this cultural pressure within redneck kind of culture to basically discourage individuals from book smarts and learning and reading and such.

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And so an individual who tries to speak proper English who is surrounded by southern rednecks again there's a difference between being southern and a redneck but that kind of person is going to be discouraged that kind of person is not going to be encouraged to aim very high in life that kind of person is not going to be encouraged to try hard to practice delayed gratification

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I mean I've worked in delivery appliances before and I've taken appliances into the ghetto after tax season after refund season comes and I've taken plenty of several thousand dollar refrigerators into the ghetto or into the trailer park and essentially seen that the ghetto and the trailer park are often covered with filth you're bringing a very expensive appliance into a place that doesn't really match and you know that that appliance is going to be basically covered with the same level of filth and dirt and grime and bugs that all the rest of the house and our trailer is going to be covered with in just a short amount of time and so there are pathological elements in that and there's a kind of insecurity that comes within redneck culture along those lines too and so if there's any time an individual basically tries to speak proper

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English or tries to read or tries to learn or do well in school there is this kind of indignation that can come from within these kind of subcultures to where the individual who's doing that thinks he's better than everyone else and thinks that he is somebody and trying to be someone and that kind of stuff and there's this kind of insecurity there that's present too where I can't tell you how many times that I've heard a redneck who can barely speak

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English basically looking around the world and saying these liberals think that we're so dumb and everything else and it's like well you could help the issue by just basically making yourself knowledgeable about the subjects that you're talking about and learning to speak proper

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English so in order for any kind of society to function you have to have individuals who have the ability to communicate with each other and there are ways to present yourself as being respectable in the world as a person to be taken seriously and there's ways to present yourself as an individual to be overlooked and diminished and if you are to adopt all the classic trappings of redneck culture you might find that not only are you anti -intellectual but you're not presenting yourself in a very respectable way and if you want people to take you seriously then you might want to try to adopt some of the values and some of the practices that are not just mainstream but are necessary for success in life in general so now when you think about redneck culture there are things about it that are fundamentally destructive so redneck culture is destructive in that it's anti -intellectual redneck culture is typically destructive in that it doesn't practice delayed gratification so as I'm talking about you like in redneck culture there is this emphasis on games and sports and so sports and games and fun and entertainment and destructive practices and habits there's hair trigger violence that's present within destructive within destructive redneck culture to where if an individual disrespects you that might turn into a fight it might turn violent it might end up people getting killed in a territorial way typically there's a lot more violence in redneck culture and criminality and drug use that are present in redneck culture but then one of the things that Thomas Sow was essentially saying is that black redneck culture is the same as redneck culture along these regards and that's fundamentally black redneck culture came from white redneck culture which

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I mean it really doesn't take a whole lot of understanding or knowledge to understand how these things could be considering the slave trade in the south and the location of it and everything else but then one of the things that's happened is that there are some fundamental problems with that as it relates to a biblical view of the way that the world actually works and so when you think about the way the world actually works the bible doesn't necessarily encourage individuals to pursue being educated but certainly you can't read through the book of proverbs or wisdom literature in the bible without seeing the importance of knowledge so Christians should be those who love knowledge who are seeking to learn who are not fixated on entertainment

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Christians should be those who desperately want to know God and the only way to know

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God is to learn how to think and to learn how to argue and learn logic and reason and learn critical thinking skills and not just learn to emote and just basically respond in an emotional way and so the bible would definitely commend to us knowledge

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I mean you can look up the word knowledge in the bible and you're going to see that I mean that word shows up hundreds and hundreds of times in the bible so I'm looking up 158 verses just pulling up the word knowledge right now the times that that shows up and so the bible does commend to us knowledge and wisdom and learning it doesn't necessarily promote what you might describe as the secular pagan education system which you know

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I think that there are fundamental problems with that but at the same time this hostility that redneck culture has to knowledge and information and learning that is a destructive element of the culture and so when you think about all the principles you're going to find in the bible go to the you know go to the aunt you sluggard you know the aunt lays up food in the winter for the summer you know having no chief you think through all these things like the sluggard was only going to lead to poverty a slack hand will lead to poverty just think about a biblical view of the world a biblical view of wisdom and what you're going to find is that much of what you see in southern redneck culture is going to be hostile to wisdom and knowledge and learning in almost every single way and that's true of black redneck culture that's true of white redneck culture also and so we have books in the bible of proverbs that tell us how to get ahead in life and how god generally works in the world and we would do well to learn to read those things and to apply those things and if we do then you can't just be a wholehearted redneck in some kind of unironic way and be the kind of person that the bible is trying to make you to be so it's impossible to be a christian without devoting yourself to hard work and learning and delayed gratification and being a peacemaker and these sorts of things and so when we think about the idea of these destructive cultures one of the things we need to realize is that in order for anyone to get ahead in the world of any kind of skin color there are certain priorities and values that you're going to have to adopt and these priorities and values might be hostile to the identity that certain white southerners take and these priorities and values the bible encourages us to produce also might be hostile to the kind of identity that mainstream american culture right now is trying to shove upon plaques so if we want to honor the lord we might need to look at our culture and look at our culture with more serious eyes and see the problems that are actually there that are keeping us from faithfulness this has been another episode of bible bashed we hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion we thank you for all your support and ask you to continue to like and subscribe to bible bashed and share our podcast with your friends and on social media please reach out to us with your questions pushback and potential topics for us to discuss in future episodes at bible bashed podcast at gmail .com