Living in a redneck, white-trash, hillbilly neighborhood - Advice?

Just purchased my first house. It's a real fixer-upper and we have a lot of work to do before we move in. We are of limited financial means and had been hunting for a while, so we jumped on this one when the opportunity came up. I knew going in that the neighborhood was a little bit country. It has become increasingly apparent to me however, that a lot of the population are what John Waters has refered to as "extreme white people." Do any of you ilxors live in redneck neighborhoods? How is it working out for you? Any tips or advice? I'm a little worried. (Please note that I'm about to go into a meeting and won't be on this thread again until later)

time to go native imo

move to a real city

i can't imagine what advice you're expecting to find on your return

what state r u in

get over yourself

start thinking of you neighbors as your neighbors

be nice to them, let them be nice to you, avoid getting drunk with them and when opinions get uncomfortable work out a way to leave without being shrill.

serious advice is just keep you lawn moved and mind your fuckin business

I hope your neighbors chase you back out of the neighborhood.

and don't be like, "oh hey, you like Tim McGraw? Well I think you'd really like DRIVE BY TRUCKERS"

Need more deets imo. There's "my neighbors have NRA stickers on their pick-ups" and then there's "my neighbors get drunk and shoot at targets/in the air in their side yard and their under-fed, half-feral dogs howl at raccoons all night".

this is like rural burt stanton

any flags?

"hi, i'm i'm a hipster with big dreams of gentrifying this neighborhood. what can i do about the savages who lived here before me?"

also yeah maybe just be nice to them and learn the delicate art of communicating with people you disagree with

oh boy, this is going to be fun

get over yourself

― congratulations (n/a), Monday, January 11, 2010 10:51 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

having lived in the burbs, you can really go years without talking to your neighbors. its not like on TV where everyone meets on the corner and waves through the window.

buy a dog

plant a garden

build a fence

it's not???????

buy 5 dogs

paint your house

paint a dog

build a mailbox

punch them all in the face and tell them it's a customary greeting where you grew up

All the guys my age that lived around when I was a kid had guns, most got them for around 13th-14th birthday from their dads. They used to tell me if they saw our cats, they'd shoot them (they probably wouldn't have, but I didn't know that when I was 14). They also liked to tell stories about blasting away songbirds (which is illegal) and putting the resulting raw burdy flesh under their babysitter's pizza. Which probably also never happened but c'mon, at least pretend to be a human being.

So maybe I'm just a tiny bit sympathetic. Maybe not, though!

CAN YOU ALL SHUT UP SO I CAN POST FOR A FUCKING SECOND GAWD

i wonder if some wrestling forum right now has someone posting about "some hipsters just moved into my neighborhood. what do i do?"

wash your car

burn a flag

have a baby

go to the doctors office

get a raise

"he was bringing in all these crates of records and what looks like a gun rack but you keep wine in it"

take your family out to dinner

give them all gift baskets of hummus and pita

write a novel

join a softball league

http://annenahm.com/anneimage/2009/11/Michael+Jackson+Jackson_popcorn.gif

buy a suit

Fly this flag in front of your house:

http://rlv.zcache.com/gay_pride_american_flag_poster-p228905582827518799tdad_210.jpg

Porky-Pig it whenever you cut the grass

mow your lawn

shingle your roof

lock your windows

go to home depot

just be yourself :-)

In my experience, these people appreciate politeness. If you always address them by their correct title of "redneck white trash hillbilly extreme white person", then I'm sure you'll get along just fine.

10000%

really can't imagine it's worth it to let your kids play with his

ya. may want to have a conversation with your kids before dude indoctrinates them.

xpost

did you move to aa county? maybe he's the kind of person that if he gets hints you are liberal he will start not to be so "friendly," like if you asked that he not say stuff like that in front of your kid

really can't imagine it's worth it to let your kids play with his

And also 1000% impossible not to let them play together - they get along really well. I guess I'll have to have a convo with my kid at some point.

xpost: This is AA county!

don't know much about it i just hear stories and comedy accents at work

Does he intimidate you? If not, why don't you tell him you don't feel comfortable hearing that word? Otherwise you're kinda being complacent in his racism. (If you legit feel intimidated it's a different situation entirely.)

Things are mostly good though. We love the house. It's a much much better commute to work (elsewhere in the county for her, DC for me). I like being near the water. And it's not like everyone around here is like my neighbor, but there are people like that and it's just new and weird to me.

Otherwise you're kinda being complacent in his racism.

huh?

There's a huge history of racism being perpetuated by people being too polite to correct their friends/associates. (See Gregory Peck films.)

Well yeah! And therein lies my dilemma - I don't want to be too polite to correct his racism. I CAN'T be too polite to correct his racism. But as I grew up in a wealthy, ethnically diverse rainbow of a neighborhood, this has just never come up. Guess I gotta just be like "Dude, don't talk that way around me."

There's a huge history of people getting a can of whoop-ass opened on them when they try to confront their racist friends/associates. (see every film set in Mississippi)

xpost

Have a friend who bought a house in a crappy area just so they could get a house. Now he's putting sound proofing up against adjoining house walls and gets comments because he doesn't look/dress.
Wouldn't it have been best to wait rather than put oneself in this situation, especially knowing the area wasn't the best?

If you've got a diverse neighborhood then the guy isn't confused that using that word isn't appropriate. I mean, how many people are alive today who don't realize using the term is inappropriate and might be offensive to some people? That's kinda a battle long since past. I can't imagine he'd take it too badly (of course I don't know him) if you just said gently, "Hey, that word kinda offends me. Could you not use it around me?"

Oops, look/dress like neighbours!

xp: Word, that seems like its being direct enough and soft-pedaling it to the right extent.

it's pretty obvious he knows it's wrong, i bet he's just testing to see what kind of dude you are

xxp: yeah, I can't wait for sweater season : )

at this point, you probably won't change this dude's opinions about black people (and tempted though you might be, you shouldn't even try -- you can't be Saint Francis of Assisi). but like others say, you CAN say that you don't appreciate him using the "n" word in your presence (or any other racial slurs against black people that he may use from that point onwards).

FWIW, my younger sister went through something like this herself when she moved to Hanover, PA. she was flabbergasted when she saw Confederate flags and that sort of thing at a bar not far from her house. she had also had black boyfriends growing up and went to college in Baltimore -- and while nowhere is free of racism (certainly not the town where we grew up), she never had to deal with it in such an in-your-face manner.

strangely enough, though, she later told me that a lot of people in the town were very enthusiastically pro-Obama during the 2008 election. all anecdotal, i know, so make of that what you will.

I still don't exactly know how to interact with him.

well ffs don't talk about politics around people you don't know well.

also, you're talking shit about this guy that you don't even seem to know.. the hell are you afraid of?

I had a friend who moved to Annapolis and was shocked to find that everyone on her block subscribed to the Washington Times.

You said he used the 'N' word to describe a white male, so I bet to him the word has nothing to do with race, but everything to do with character. I'd say just don't talk politics, and if he brings it up just don't engage him.

This is a grown-up, an adult, and he's still using this term. From my own experience with adults that rail about mexicans and n****rs, you aren't going to change their mind by confronting them. If you think it's "being complacent in their racism" then you must not have much experience talking with racially insensitive people.

I'd say I have experience talking with racially insensitive people. They were all over my undergrad institute. And when one of them said something racially reprehensible, I asked them to knock it off.

You said he used the 'N' word to describe a white male, so I bet to him the word has nothing to do with race, but everything to do with character.

was just about to type this.

no idea why people are saying you're not going to change his mind, since you never said you wanted to - obv adults who talk like that are going to be set in their ways.

my big concern would be to make sure my kids don't pick that up - from him or his kids. could maybe start by asking if he talks like that around the kids? maybe he might get the hint? really tho - he sounds like a douche and douches can be unpredictable.

xp to Adam, I don't think asking him to stop using the word will magically change his mind on whether it's appropriate or not. he might very well think you're an asshole. but if he stops using it around you, that's one more space where he's not using it. that seems like a net positive to me. especially if it means you don't have to hear it again.

Advice?

Make friends of your neighbors, based on commonalities that have nothing to do with cultural signifiers, but rather the fundamentals of human kindness, mutual aid, and emotional truth?

I wouldn't ask him if he talks like that around his kids, but I would ask him not to talk like that around your kids.

lol @ whiney itt

You moved next door to my dad?

Maybe you misheard him.

I like Aimless' approach.

Good points all around. I'd try hardest to follow Aimless's advice and have a talk w the kids!

lollin @ myself

act like you're going to tell a funny, Jeff Foxworthy style joke that starts with "you might be a redneck if" but instead of delivering a punchline, just stare at him directly in the eyes

― ke$nan (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, January 11, 2010 12:19 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

LOL. Thanks for the constructive advice, everybody. All I can do at this point is see how it goes from here.

I like how a sherriff has arrived to haul a guy off next door to your house and the biggest concern all round is that someone's used a racist word.

^^^^

terrific thread from an awful premise

I like how a sherriff has arrived to haul a guy off next door to your house and the biggest concern all round is that someone's used a racist word.

Well, the sherriff bit was incredibly alarming! I had already known that the tenant was in trouble with the law though, so it wasn't a surprise.

I hadn't let the kids play inside all day because my wife and I were unpacking and didn't want them in the way. I was bringing in some stuff through the garage when five cars pulled up and a bunch of guys with badges jumped out. One of them started running up to my front door because he hadn't heard the address correctly! It was altogether uncool.

Uh yeah this is not sounding wholesome at all :/ Mind you if this guy gets perm hauled off maybe peace will reign?

I hadn't let the kids play inside all day because my wife and I were unpacking and didn't want them in the way.

Oh, I didn't finish this thought: "...so I had to round them up real quick which was really confusing for them, because up til then I had been the mean daddy who wouldn't let them inside to play with toys and then all of a sudden I'm like 'Okay kids, guess what? It's time to go inside now!' And my son was all like 'but dad! I'm a knight and I have to fight off this dragon!' and I'm all like 'BOTH OF YOU GO INSIDE NOW!'"

Aww poor kids! heh. I remember when I was a wee kid a couple of incidents that, in adult hindsight, I've gone "wait... wtf was THAT all about?" and never found out.

they'll be ok. If they're tods they're probably too young to process anything weird.

Otherwise you're kinda being complacent in his racism.
― Mordy, Monday, May 31, 2010 7:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I think the word you want is "complicit."

lol, yeah, thanks. that was an oversight.

I promised LJ the other day that I would give an update to this thread. I don't feel like writing it all out at the moment. Here's a small tidbit.

The neighbor kid comes over the other day with a DVD and holds it up to my wife, asking "Can him watch with me?"

It was Saw II.

My wife got down the street to dish the dirt one of the longstanding residents of the neighborhood.

This past March, the guy two houses down from us had his heat pump stolen from his yard. According to newspaper reports, "The wires and tubes connecting the heat pump had been cut and two wheel tracks "as if made from a dolly" went from the concrete slab where the heat pump had been through the backyard to the road."

What didn't make the news was that the culprit was the guy who lives in between us and the victim. Police apparently didn't arrest him because the victim couldn't confirm the serial number.

This whole story as a means of explaining the huge fence that the victim built this summer.

I don't live in a "redneck" neighborhood, but there are a few "rednecks" in the vicinity. One time the police showed up at my house to complain that my car was parked "illegally" (down the street) and it wasn't even illegal, its that there was a time limit on how long you can park your car there. They were nice about it, but I suspect the neighbors complained because it was parked near their house.

I think they don't like Jews, they hang out on their front porch drinking beer and making veiled remarks like "hey pinhead" "hey dweeb", and I am half-Jewish and a lot of my friends are Jews.

bake them a pie. this will require them to step up their game.

if you complain about a neighbor's car being parked in front of your house ... you just might be a redneck

I love this neighborhood now. I feel awful for starting this thread. At least it was funny.

act like you're going to tell a funny, Jeff Foxworthy style joke that starts with "you might be a redneck if" but instead of delivering a punchline, just stare at them directly in the eyes

― ke$nan (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, January 11, 2010 5:19 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink