"Chicken Fried Steak Don't Come With Peas" and Why I Love Eastbound & Down

I'm not sure how long ago this was, but one day my family was watching Comedy Central, one of those shows where a bunch of random comics come on, tell one funny joke and six bad ones, then leave the stage. I think it was called Friday Night Comics (or maybe I'm thinking of ESPN's Friday Night Fights). Anyway, this skinny unassuming white guy came on the stage and was pretty much like all the rest of the comics. Towards the end of his set though, he starts an amusuing rant about the ways that Black comics imitate white people.
Comic: Everytime a Black comic tries to imitate white people he always talks like this (does white "nerd" voice ala Dave Chappelle in, say, the Nutty Professor).
Family: **smattering of laughter**
Comic: But really, white people don't talk like that. White people talk like this (with just the right mixture of country and southern). "Chicken fried steak don't come with peas."
Family: **non-stop laughter** because we know people who are like that.

The comic was right though. I think Black comics have an acute case of "Stuff White People Like"-syndrome, something a lot of people suffer from. When Black comics make fun of white people it's actually a specific set of white people, the coastal, liberal, NPR-types, who, for better or worse, have become the white archetype. Now it's different when they make fun of southerners; they'll appropriately use a southern accent. But I would be willing to bet more white people talk about chicken fried steak and peas.

Fot a long time I've been fascinated by white history, and more specifically, the history of the white underclass. I'm not talking about Italian and Jewish immigrants to northern cities during the turn of the century though, I'm talking about the some of the old Scots-Irish immigrants from the South, the people in Appalachia who still spoke Elizabeathan English. The people in many ways were used by the Southern Aristocrats and the Northern bankers to further their various agendas. The people, who today, at least outwardly, are the most "proud" of their country. I don't know if this makes me just as bad as the white liberals who fetishize "foreign" cultures. I just think that it's integral to an understanding of American history. And not some overwrought slobjob like James Webb's book, something real that doesn't focus on them in the periphery, as simply pawns in a game, or as the primary antagonist in the story of Black people, but also not something that gushes over them as the "salt of the earth," or the "real Americans."
I know there are whiteness studies programs but they're pretty much the antithesis of what I'm talking about. See, I'm not looking for explanations of the privileges of white people (and there are plenty) or the historical wrongs visited on minorities by white people (and there are a bunch)- what I'm interested in is mindset so to speak, and that's something that's a little harder to find. There are plenty of classes that try to explain the reasons behind some of the "pathological" behavior of Black people. There aren't too many that touch on the "pathological" behaviors of other groups of people. Most of the time it's chalked up to just being poor, unlike with Black people, where it's being poor and something else. A lot of it has to do with Black being synonymous with poverty, one would guess. A lot of it also has to do with the same problems that Black comics have when imitating white people. In academia, as in American society, white is like the video game default setting and to a degree, academic, liberal whites are the starting point for the default. But, there are specifics to white "underclass" culture that don't come simply from being poor and I would love to see how these particular features came about.

Part of my fascination comes from the impetus to try and engage with people who on the surface I have very little in common with, without immediately dismissing what they have to say (if they come at me with the appropriate demeanor, not on some Rush Limbaugh shit). Whether or not the grievances of cultural conservatives (who by and large are representative of this group) are based in logic, they are real grievances, and acting like they're not is a recipe for disaster in the end. In my experience, when you study history and gain an understanding of where someone is coming from then they're more likely to approach to you with respect.

Finally, all of this reminds me of one of the reasons I love Eastbound and Down (besides the hilarity and the wonderful acting and writing). In the very first episode, Kenny Powers (the main character) after hitting rock bottom, only has two posessions to his name, a truck with floodlights and a jet ski. And man does he love that jet ski, won't give it up for anything in the world, even when he needs the money. The way they portrayed it was just perfect, I know people like that, country boys who can't give up their one item of luxury. Jet ski : country white man :: rims : urban Black man, as I always say.