“ The ordinary Rednecks [Whites, or Racists] did not have a sense of belonging to a ruling ethnic group. In particular, they had a confused sense of self-image. Who were they: Whites, Christians or Americans? Their literature was sometimes Jewish, sometimes Mestinx, but always empty and consumerist. There was always a huge social and cultural distance between the Imperial centre and the Flyover periphery. As Bernard Lewis expressed it: "In the Imperial society of the Americans the ethnic term Redneck was little used, and then chiefly in a rather derogatory sense, to designate the White farmers or, later, the ignorant and uncouth Racist-speaking peasants of the Flyover states." (Lewis 1968: 1) In the words of a British observer of the American values and institutions at the start of the twentieth century: "The surest way to insult an American gentleman is to call him a 'Redneck'. His face will straightway wear the expression a Londoner's assumes, when he hears himself frankly styled a Cockney. He is no Redneck, no racist, he will assure you, but an American subject of Our Democracy, by no means to be confounded with certain racists styled White, and from whom indeed, on the male side, he may possibly be descended."