Gee, I wonder if they'll use this in Toy Story 3...

I don't see what's so difficult. Newman is pointing out the hypocrisy of the rest of America using the South as their scapegoat for bad race relations, as if there is no racism in the North or on the West Coast.

Why do people have so much trouble understanding that some songs are written in character? Actors play roles. Sometimes songwriters do too.

>> ^The_Mutt:
Actors play roles. Sometimes songwriters do too.


Definitely true. If you're not singing about yourself, you should always be in character.

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I agree with you that songwriters play roles. But Newman chooses to sing about a very volatile subject: racism in America. And instead of denouncing it, he takes the perspective of a bigot which complicates things.

Wikipedia has a great write up about the song:

Like several of Newman's songs, "Rednecks" is sung from the perspective of an interesting, non-neutral narrator — in this case a stereotypical Southern "redneck". In it he expresses his dismay at the way that the North looks down upon The South. In particular the narrator describes his ire at watching a "smart-ass, New York Jew"[1] mock Lester Maddox on a television program (this is an allusion to Maddox's 1970 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show whose eponymous host is actually a gentile). In response to his frustration at the television show, the narrator goes on to list, sarcastically, a litany of negative qualities that Southerners are reputed to have. He focuses especially on their reputed institutionalized racism, or, as the narrator puts it: "keeping the niggers down."

However, as the song ends, the narrator turns the knife on judgmental Northerners, calling them out as hypocrites. He achieves this by singing that the "North has set the nigger free," but pointing out, again sarcastically, that African-Americans are only "free to be put in a cage" (i.e., segregated) in various bad neighborhoods of big Northern cities — victims of, one assumes, the exact same racism that the Southerners are reputed to have. The song's final verse lyric is: "They [the Northerners] gatherin' 'em up, from miles around/Keeping the niggers down."

Like many Newman songs, it is difficult to tell with certainty how much or little Newman himself identifies with the narrator. Clearly, Newman desires to poke fun at smug Yankees that tar all Southerners with the same brush as ignorant, racist fools. But at the same time, he also pokes fun at the narrator himself, demonstrating the narrator's own clear prejudice ("smart-ass New York Jew") and his slavish adherence to his own kind ("he may be a fool, but he's our fool.") In a sense, "Rednecks" shares a lot with another famous Newman tune "I Love L.A." in that Newman both identifies with and seeks to make fun of the narrator at the same time.

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