I was leaving work the other day when I heard one of my co-worker's cell phones go off. Her ringtone was set to Lynard Skynard's Sweet Home Alabama. To put it mildly, I was shocked. She's hardly the stereotypical fan of that particular tune. I asked her why she had that as her ringtone, and she said "I liked the movie."
For starters, man, do I feel old. Secondly, she had no idea as to why I was as shocked as I was. (and finally we get to the point of this post)
I grew up in a small, redneck, Southern town. We're talking Dixie flags all over the place, gun racks in the back of the truck windows, an Appalachia kind of area. Sweet Home Alabama was the soundtrack of so many racist idiots from my youth that I have an automatic association of that song to bigotry. And I don't think I'm the only one to make that connection. It seems to be rather commonplace for Lynyrd Skynyrd to backfill the introduction of a new character in film and TV, a shorthand way to ascribe lots of unsavory characteristics to a person. If you think I'm wrong, please, suggest an counter-example.
Perhaps this is a function of both age and location. J had no idea of any of the connotations of the tune, but she's fairly young and from upstate New York. I got it right away (I'm both older and from the South), as did another one of my co-workers (older than both J and I, as well as a native of DC). In any case, my distate for Sweet Home is hardly a revelation for those who know me.
Article comments
1 - SFC SKI
YOu really should listen to the Drive By Truckers, they address "the duality of the Southern Thing" in many of there songs, especially Skynyrd and politics, as well as driking and rock 'n' roll.
2 - Lono
respectfully, I find Sweet Home to be one of the greatest songs in rock history. Now, I didn't grow up with the baggage you did. I didn't even get the Neil Young reference until college. Quite simply, regardless of the rather bizarre lyrics... it is perhaps the greatest rock riff of all time. Just this Saturday I was performing onstage with some drunk relatives and friends of relatives. We couldn't agree on a song that we all knew, until the other guitarist kicked into Sweet Home... and I was locked in.
3 - Eric Olsen
Casper, I understand your perceptions of this, but I think it's a case of connotations overwhelming denotations. While the song has doubtless been embraced by rednecks and bigots, I think the key lyric is the response by the backing singers to "in Birmingham they love the gov'ner (boo boo boo)."
I think the song is about refusing to be tarred by stereotypes - "does your conscience bother you?" - and saying you can love the South without embracing the stereotypes or being embraced by them.
Plus, as Lono said, it's one of the great guitar tunes of all time
4 - JR
I always thought the point of that lyric was that those who opposed Wallace helped put Nixon in the White House, therefore they were partly responsible for Watergate.
5 - Mac Diva
The lyrics of the song are ambiguous. But, more troublesome is that Lynyrd Skynyrd appears at far Right events displaying the Confederate flag. The current band ducks questions about the controversial issue, but is obviously reaping benefits from its reputation as racist. Indeed, at neo-Confederate and Aryan Nations sites, it is one of the few bands considered acceptable other than those of the White Power genre.
Here, a fan explains the appeal of Lynyrd Skynyrd to him.
It should be noted that dumb as a Pet Rock Kid Rock also displays a Confederate flag at some of his performances. He says it stands for freedom.
6 - Phillip Winn
Referring to Kid Rock as "dumb as a pet" is an insult to my pets, all of whom are more intelligent than Kid Rock -- even the pet rock.
7 - Mac Diva
LOL! 'Pet Rock' is probably also a reference to a fad the girl in Casper's entry never heard of. Time marches on.
8 - Lenny
I'm from Brooklyn and I love that song and never thought of it past just a great song with brilliant music and interesting lyrics.
9 - Jason
An Appalachian sort of area, huh? Your derision is thinly veiled. I live in an Appalachian town. Many of my friends as well as some ex-girlfriends are black. A statue to "our confederate dead" stands in town ( in february against a back drop of Black History Month Banners adorning lightpoles). I look upon that statue with the same pride I would when seeing black and white children together here at play. When one paints southerners as rascist with one sweeping brushstroke a great diservice is done to millions. The notion that Southern pride is synonymous with racism is absurd. The other day at the barbershop I heard an old black man in his 80's refer to "those Damn yankees"(not the baseball team) and I couldn't help but laugh. He was referring to a VISTA worker from NY telling his daughter how "poor" she was and how she had a bad life. Good thing there are Northeners to hold our hands ,huh?...As for the "gunracks", well sir, I carry a concealed pistol( licensed through my state) every day. It, nor any weapon I own, has ever been fired in anger. God willing, it will never have to be used in my defence. It would be brought to bear if necessary as that is my right...I guess this to you would be a "redneck" town. In the U.S. 15% of the pop. has bachelor's degree's, in this little "redneck" town 19% of our people have doctorate degree's.Imagine that...As to slavery and racism, one was an insipid institution and the other is the spawn of ignorance and the South constantly hears of Northern moral superiority on the issue.Was this the same moral superiority which allowed the U.S. govt. to attempt Genocide and to destroy the way of life of Native Americans in the decades after the civil war? The next time you choose to propound on the crimes of the south, shake away the blood of Indians and Southerners from your striped banner and look in the mirror...Shocked because somebody likes a song? Oh lord, Better get the Kerry and Schumer thought police on the case.
10 - Nancy
I always just liked the tune; never could figure out the words. As for the southern war flag, I thought they used it as a kind of 'campy' prop, not as a gen-yew-ine piece of propaganda. And the appalachians - & the people therein, black, white, red, & sundry - are lovely, by any definition (so is the cooking).
11 - Billy Bob
I think that regardless of what "Sweet Home Alabama" meant at the time (and I beleive personaly that it was simply a tongue in cheek reply to Neil Young), that people grow up. The proof to that is look at the Skynard band now. Singing a revised version of "Sweet Home Alabama". Not as young rebels without a clue, but as grown ups who are now "Born Again" beleivers in Jesus Christ. Who by the way isn't a racist!
12 - greg
most people of color look for any thing to attack if it dont go boom or talkes about dis respecting woman its not good musicits a good song and that just kills them
13 - none
hmm
14 - None
By Hunter Lewis : The Herald-Sun ROXBORO, NORTH CAOLINA -- Under a warm October sun Friday, a black man carried the Confederate battle flag and led 20 white men up the middle of Main Street to the front lawn of the Person County [North Carolina] Courthouse, singing "Glory, glory hallelujah. The South will rise again." The old song competed with the squelch and squawk of police radios. Outnumbering the marchers, police officers, sheriff's deputies and state troopers looked on from the corner sidewalks of the courthouse. As the short, gray-bearded man who led the march stepped up to a monument honoring Person County's fallen Civil War soldiers, he was met with cheers from the men holding several versions of flags flown by the Confederacy. "We love you H.K.!" they shouted. H.K. Edgerton, a political activist and former president of the Asheville chapter of the NAACP, acknowledged them and launched into a passionate rhetoric in defense of the Confederate flag and race relations in the South. "You go over there to Person High School and tell the students I said to keep the undying devotion of the South in their hearts," he said, jamming the butt of the flagpole against the cement ground. "Tell the black people of Roxboro about this flag. [It is] history! [It is] heritage! Not hate!" Person High officials banned the display of Confederate paraphernalia Oct. 7 after a rash of incidents, in which some students displayed the flag while using obscenities against blacks. About two dozen students were suspended in the aftermath, but school officials say things have returned to normal. The E. Fletcher Satterfield camp, which honors Person County's place in the Civil War, invited Edgerton because of the ban. Throughout his 30-minute speech, Edgerton harked back to life in the South before and after the Civil War. He ticked off the contributions of blacks who fought alongside whites and spoke of what he called the "bond of love and affection" between the two races leading up to and during the war. And he assailed the North, continually blaming "Yankees" for stirring up hate after the war. "It's hard to tell Yankees about love between blacks and whites in the South," Edgerton said. "The North's divide-and-conquer approach did much to strengthen the rancor between black and white." "Tell 'em H.K," several men said. "Amen!" Some of the men who marched with Edgerton wore the gray wool uniforms of the Confederacy. As he spoke in the shadow of a statue of Edward Fletcher Satterfield, a Person County native who died in Gettysburg, the number of onlookers grew to about 40. The march and speech was met with little dissent, except for a white man who walked out onto the sidewalk on Main Street and shouted to the authorities: "When are the Nazis coming through? Are they next?" Edgerton said a black woman also told him to "go to hell" earlier in the parking lot as the men prepared to march. After the speech, the men marched back down Main Street to a city parking lot, passing Royal Medley on the way. Medley, a 54-year-old black man, watched the procession of waving flags near the Henry Daniel Clothier shop. He said the flag symbolized racism to him, but Friday's display "[didn't] bother me, man." Born and raised in Asheville, Edgerton, 55, has spent the last decade traveling the South to defend the Confederate flag. From October 2002 into January 2003, he walked the flag from Asheville to Austin, Texas in his "Walk Across Dixie." Edgerton described the 20-mile days and 77 cities he visited as "glorious." He's been beaten for his beliefs before and said people have called him "everything under the sun." "I'm not here to defend the institution of slavery," he said. "[But] I've always been passionate about my Southland." Edgerton said he came to Roxboro to support his "babies" over at Person High. As for those using the flag as a sign of hate? "Those babies that do that don't know history," he said, pointing to the flag. "This flag is not a white thing. That red is my blood just as much as it is theirs."
15 - NONE
Dressed in Confederate gray, a black man named Anthony Hervey marched with the banner clutched in his hands. His brother, Harry, accompanied him, wearing jeans and a Robert E. Lee T-shirt.
Hervey's devotion to the flag began when he discovered that a great-great-uncle, James Hervey, was a black American who fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. James Hervey served in the Army of Mississippi and was killed at the battle of Shiloh.
Further research helped Hervey discover records of at least 100,000 black Confederates who fought in the war.
"I am marching for freedom," Hervey said. "The battle flag stands for freedom and states' rights. The U.S. flag is the flag of slavery. It flew over 100 years of slavery, and Native Americans were annihilated under that flag."
For his march, Hervey chose the site where a Confederate flag once stood, one of eight representing entities that have governed the Coast. Harrison County removed the flags because of protests over the Confederate flag, a racist symbol to many, flying on the public beach.
Hervey's crusade also has taken him to Jackson. In the Jackson City Council chambers June 13, Hervey showed up wearing his battle grays, wrapped in the flag. A scuffle erupted between a Jackson man, who said he supported Hervey, and a city councilman who exchanged words, according to published reports. Hervey was not involved in the shoving match.
Hervey sees a correlation between the past and today's controversies over the flag.
"We currently live under a psychological form of reconstruction," he said. "Whites are made to feel guilty for sins of their ancestors, and blacks are made to feel downtrodden. This keeps all of us from communicating. The political correctness of today is killing the pride of the people."
Hervey is the founder of the Black Confederate Soldier Foundation, an Oxford-based, not-for-profit organization. Its stated mission is to foster new thought on the Civil War. Claims that the Confederate flag is a racist symbol are, to the group, part of a nonissue. Black Confederates, the group says, have been misrepresented in historical texts.
Hervey wants to build a memorial that will include the names of the black Confederates who fought and died in the War Between the States.
As the Hervey brothers continued their march, shouts of support and anger could be heard from passing motorists. A group of young black men hanging from car windows shouted at the pair. Hervey instructed his brother to look forward "like a true soldier."
"Don't even look at them," Hervey said, citing the young men's behavior as an example of black psychology today.
"They will yell a lot and want you to confront them, but they will not do anything," Hervey said.
"I found it appalling what happened in South Carolina, and I'm afraid this is going to happen in Mississippi." Hervey said. "We seek only to correct the errors in history - to right the wrongs done to the memories of these brave soldiers.
Source: The Sun Herald, June 22, 2000
16 - the dude
omg thats the stupidist piece of propaganda ive ever seen you fools lost the war get over it
17 - STIGO
ya, the north liked slavery because they taxed it, both sides wanted to abolish it once the war started, the north turned into england, a confederacy would be a better government, it would work better, look at old norway now they are like the richest country in the world per capita,,, and no thats no propaganda hes talking about, it falls under the Partisan Ranger Act April 21, 1862