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


From Kirkus Reviews
An often reactionary diatribe on reverse discrimination by the editor of the 'zine Answer Me!, redeemed in large part by its author's phenomenal sense of humor. Goad disavows both the political right and left, but he's most likely to be tagged as a conservative. He's most lucid when characterizing the centuries-old race struggle in our country as a smokescreen for what should really be a class struggle. The poor have been enslaved, persecuted, and exploited by the upper class regardless of skin color, Goad maintains. That words like ``redneck'' and ``white trash'' are deemed acceptable while the ``N-word'' is not is proof that as Americans, by and large, we have been duped by rich folks into playing the race card. The author is at his best when using humor to elucidate a point, as when he argues that both black slaves and some disenfranchised whites were cheated and lied to by society in the same manner. Ex-slaves were offered 40 acres and a mule (which they never saw); whites in 18th- century America who had been bonded servants (in effect, white slaves) were promised ``two suits, an ax, and two hoes.'' The hoes, ``we are to presume, were gardening tools instead of prostitutes, unless `weeding' and `grubbing' were sexual euphemisms in colonial America.'' Goad's astute command of history and his sharp wit make for a volatile combination, and one that could be misread. A truly bigoted reader may take Goad's remarks about Lincoln not really intending to free the slaves, or about there being other Holocausts besides the Jewish one, out of context and use them to buttress their racism or anti-Semitism--views that Goad clearly does not sympathize with. But, of course, ideas that have value are also often dangerous. While Goad's defense (and overview) of redneck culture past and present is sure to infuriate the liberal reader, he is also likely to make that same reader laugh ruefully, and often. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
Ethan G. MachadoOur TownDares to rewrite American history, take on government greed and lambaste white liberals....Goad's eight-cylinder prose intentionally rattles the reader, driving home a message that challenges the conventional wisdom of many a Honda Accord owner.


Review
Ethan G. Machado Our Town Dares to rewrite American history, take on government greed and lambaste white liberals....Goad's eight-cylinder prose intentionally rattles the reader, driving home a message that challenges the conventional wisdom of many a Honda Accord owner.


Book Description
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. 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 that negatively affects more people of all colors than does racism. 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.


Simon & Schuster
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.


About the Author
Jim Goad himself a proud member of The White Trash Nation, was the creator and chief writer for ANSWER Me!, a controversial "zine" that he used to publish in Los Angeles. He does not presently live in a trailer park but is thinking about it. The Redneck Manifesto is his first book.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

From its coruscating opening sentence, this broadside by the publisher of ANSWER Me! magazine in Portland, Ore., presents a number of home truths that will provoke controversy, if not riots in the streets. Now that it is infra dig to target African Americans, Native Americans and all immigrants, the only scapegoats left, notes Goad, are rednecks, aka hillbillies and hicks. But they, too, he points out, are members of the underclass and hence victims. Turning to history, Goad shows that they have been exploited as Egyptian and Roman slaves, medieval serfs, indentured servants in the American and Australian colonies, child laborers in mines and factoriesthe very people whose labor created the rich and powerful. Goad's manifesto, however, is not a call to class warfare, but a call to awareness of the fact that class warfare has been waged for millennia, conducted exclusively by the upper class against the underclass, who have almost invariably surrendered supinely. And, he shows, the underclass still gives more voice to issues like racism and crime while the distribution of the world's goods becomes ever more inequitable. Goad, writing at the top of his voice, merits a listen. (May)

Kirkus Reviews

An often reactionary diatribe on reverse discrimination by the editor of the 'zine Answer Me!, redeemed in large part by its author's phenomenal sense of humor.

Goad disavows both the political right and left, but he's most likely to be tagged as a conservative. He's most lucid when characterizing the centuries-old race struggle in our country as a smokescreen for what should really be a class struggle. The poor have been enslaved, persecuted, and exploited by the upper class regardless of skin color, Goad maintains. That words like "redneck" and "white trash" are deemed acceptable while the "N-word" is not is proof that as Americans, by and large, we have been duped by rich folks into playing the race card. The author is at his best when using humor to elucidate a point, as when he argues that both black slaves and some disenfranchised whites were cheated and lied to by society in the same manner. Ex-slaves were offered 40 acres and a mule (which they never saw); whites in 18th- century America who had been bonded servants (in effect, white slaves) were promised "two suits, an ax, and two hoes." The hoes, "we are to presume, were gardening tools instead of prostitutes, unless `weeding' and `grubbing' were sexual euphemisms in colonial America." Goad's astute command of history and his sharp wit make for a volatile combination, and one that could be misread. A truly bigoted reader may take Goad's remarks about Lincoln not really intending to free the slaves, or about there being other Holocausts besides the Jewish one, out of context and use them to buttress their racism or anti-Semitism—views that Goad clearly does not sympathize with.

But, of course, ideas that have value are also often dangerous. While Goad's defense (and overview) of redneck culture past and present is sure to infuriate the liberal reader, he is also likely to make that same reader laugh ruefully, and often.