The text reads as follows:
The text reads as follows:
Publisher's Note
Hill Billies, White Trash, and You
During the Depression, large numbers of migrants would gather in squatter
camps on the outskirts of cities and towns throughout California. In the
camps, the people found solace in each other’s company, and, being very
poor, they would combine their meager resources for survival. One family
might have some potatoes, another tomatoes, another some meat, and they
would gather round an open fire and assemble a stew from the combined ingredients,
finding sustenance for another day. After the meal, brother would produce
a guitar, cousin a fiddle, and they would play forlorn songs that reminded
them of their long deserted homes somewhere on the Great Plains—homes that
turned to dust and blew away in the wind. Of the music played in these
squatter camps, folksinger Woodie Guthrie said, "It cleared your head
up, that’s what it done—caused you to fall back and let your draggy bones
rest and your muscles go limber like a cat’s."
These people and their music were viewed with great suspicion and scorn
by the locals of the time. In 1936, the Los Angeles chief of police sent
136 officers to patrol the Oregon, Nevada and Arizona state borders to
"keep undesirable persons out of Los Angeles." An article in
Los Angeles Times reported the following: "Indigents coming to California’s
verdant valleys, Chief Davis said, have one or more of just three purposes:
to beg, steal, or throw themselves upon already overburdened relief rolls.
Local police records show they are responsible for 20 percent of local
crime, he said." Chief Davis’ bid to extend the L.A. city line to
the borders of California was dubbed the "bum blockade" by the
national media. Due to national ridicule and court action, he was forced
to withdraw his officers after six weeks.
Over time, the squatter camps developed into more permanent communities
and the music moved into what were called "Okie bars." Most of
the week these bars were not places that respectable folk could be found,
but at least one night a week the Okie bars would host a dance featuring
popular hillbilly bands. For this one night, church-going couples could
overlook the iniquity of the locale and enjoy the music and dance.
As the Dust Bowl and Depression brought more Okies to California and Los
Angeles, radio began to pick up on the popularity of the music they brought
with them—music that was called "country." However, in order
for the music to find a mainstream audience, hillbilly music couldn’t be
taken seriously. According to American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration
and Okie Culture in California, by James Gregory, "Stations used hillbilly
performers as novelty acts and insisted on as much humor as music in the
show. The state’s most famous early country-music group illustrates this
expectation. The Beverly Hill Billies were the brainchild of the managers
of Los Angeles station KMPC. In 1930 they hit upon a gimmick to boost ratings.
The station would ‘discover’ a band of hill folk long lost to civilization
in the recesses of posh Beverly Hills. A troupe of musicians, some with
Hollywood and vaudeville experience, others brought in from Arkansas, were
hired to play the parts, and the Beverly Hill Billies became an instant
Los Angeles phenomenon. With their ever present cornpone routine, they
also gave southern Californians an opportunity to indulge comic-page stereotypes
of white Southerners."
Today, we still indulge in "comic-page" stereotypes of white
Southerners. In many ways we have made scapegoats of a class of people
derisively labeled "white trash." Upon these people we project
our worst characteristics, such as ignorance and bigotry. Scapegoating
is a process of transference by which we attempt to purge ourselves of
qualities that we loathe. But scapegoating is a lie. It doesn’t purge us
of our worst qualities, it merely covers our conscience so that we don’t
have to undergo any real change in our own attitudes and beliefs. Meanwhile,
a group of people get a whole lot of ridicule piled on them—a form of bigotry
that is no more excusable than racism or homophobia.
Try this little experiment at your next gathering of friends. Survey the
group for their opinion of country music, and you will likely find some
people who hate it. If you query further, you may find that it’s not so
much the music, but the people that the music represents that are loathed.
If you find yourself in that category, as I once did, take a look at yourself
and what you believe. You just might find that you’re not the tolerant
person you imagined yourself to be. Then take another listen to country
music and see what it can teach you about yourself. You might be surprised.
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