Both the Far Left and the Far Right love to pit African Americans against rural Southern whites. After all, history tell us that both groups were on the opposite side of Jim Crow. Plus, African Americans support Democrats, Southern whites support Republicans.
But both groups share some cultural similarities.
Religiously, many in both groups are Baptists. The reverends are very expressive, and the followers are very devout.
The sport of American tackle football is very popular among Southern Whites and African Americans, more so than other groups in America.
I thought about those similarities before I ever heard about the book "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" by Thomas Sowell.
Sowell says that African American culture is heavily influenced by the Southern Whites commonly reffered to as "rednecks".
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20050505.shtml
Black identity has become a hot item in the movies, on television, and in the schools and colleges. But few people are aware of how much of what passes as black identity today, including "black English," has its roots in the history of those whites who were called "rednecks" and "crackers" centuries ago in Britain, before they ever crossed the Atlantic and settled in the South.
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Violence was far more common in the South -- and in those parts of Britain from which Southerners came. So was illegitimacy, lively music and dance, and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery. All of this would become part of the cultural legacy of blacks, who lived for centuries in the midst of the redneck culture of the South.
I put the comments about religious oratory in bold, because you would notice when you listen to white conservative preachers from the South, and from black preachers (ie. Martin Luther King, etc.) they are very expressive and dramatic with a touch of sincerity to go along with it.
Of course, Sowell's comments about violence & "illigetimacy" (babies born to unmarried parents) are very controversial. But let's remember that more whites than blacks are on welfare. It's just that low-income blacks outside of the South tend to live in inner cities and therefore more visible to the media and city dwellers, whereas low-income whites tend to live in rural areas far from big cities, and therefore less visible to the media and city dwellers.
While the national conversation on African Americans focus on those living in urban ghettoes, there is also a large number of low-income African Americans living in rural areas in the South. But even in the South, there is a growing African American middle class, especially in Atlanta.
And while some Northern liberals love to stereotype Southern whites as "uneducated", "racist" rednecks who like to shoot guns and get drunk, a lot of Southern whites don't fit that stereotype. Some are very well educated, and not all Southern whites are in the KKK.
