Mike Cox Traveling Highway 21 between Orangeburg and Yemassee last week, I noticed laundry draped over a chain link fence around someone’s front yard. The sight reminded me of some neighbors from my childhood.

When I was young, a nearby family used a fence as a solar clothes dryer, but it was made of barbed wire, which is usually rusty and requires care when removing delicate things. Unmentionables can get snagged pretty easily.

The Stones were the low class neighbors in our community. The family business was hauling cordwood. There were eight children. Junk cars and rusted transmission parts littered the yard. We called them hicks. Today, the Stones would be considered rednecks.

We lived in a house with outdoor restrooms and bathed in a number three washtub filled with water heated on the stove. The first three Cox children were born without benefit of a hospital, and we had to walk nearly two miles to catch the school bus. But we weren’t as country as the Stones.

They talked funny. The kids were in the special class at school. Their clothes were hand–me– downs. They killed hogs during the fall. We looked down on them and made fun of them. It made all of us feel a little better about ourselves.

Along with food, shelter, and the need to replenish our species, a necessary survival skill of humans seems to be the need to be among others like us. For our ancestors, it was safer; outsiders weren’t trusted. Today, anyone moving to a new town feels isolated until accepted by others with similar beliefs.

We also feel better about ourselves if we can look down and see others. Our plight is not quite so desperate if we can find someone lower in the pecking order.

Until recently, much of our humor has been directed at those different from us. As our society has evolved in the last 40 years, it has become harder to find a group to be the butt of our jokes. We can no longer discriminate because of race, sex, national origin, familial status, or religion. Not much is left.

At a branch meeting last week, we were trying to come up with a costume theme for the company Halloween party. A decision was made to go as rednecks. A theme song was chosen; Jeff Foxworthy’s How To Tell If You’re A Redneck provided material. John Deere hats, mullet hairdos, overalls, and such were offered as outfits.

Everyone was having fun discussing the possibilities. Then someone asked if a confederate flag would be onstage during the skit. A hush fell over the group and a quick “No” was uttered. Not satisfied, the questioner proudly proclaimed she would not participate if the flag were present.

Evidently, displaying the controversial symbol of the Confederacy, which offends most blacks and a lot of others, was unacceptable to her. What I don’t understand is why offending the rednecks of the world didn’t seem to be an issue.

The irony is pretty strong. If we had chosen to be gay, black, Polish, or Muslim, no one would have participated. But making fun of Rednecks is acceptable, socially, and politically. I wonder why.

The folks who have chosen to remain faithful to rural, southern ways are, by and large, a decent group of people. They are true to their parents and children, have a strong loyalty to their customs, and just want to live without bother. Some have some strange ways, but any of us raised in the South have a couple of questionable habits.

Rednecks are definitely an identified group; why aren’t they protected? Where is the distinction that makes it okay to ridicule them, but leave the others alone?