"We're probably one of the last few groups that it's still politically correct to make fun of," Wright says. "It's still OK to tell, you know, hillbilly, redneck jokes."

Many contemporaries connected slavery to English idleness. WilliamByrd weighed in on the ban against slavery in Georgia in a letter to aGeorgia trustee. He saw how slavery had sparked discontent among poorwhites in Virginia, who routinely refused to “dirty their hands with Labourof any kind,” preferring to steal or starve rather than work in the fields.Slavery ruined the “industry of our White People,” he confessed, for theysaw a “Rank of Poor Creatures below them,” and detested the thought ofwork out of a perverse pride, lest they might “look like slaves.”