Peckerwood
Peckerwood (or simply Wood) is a slur used through the mid 20th century by southern African Americans and upper class whites to describe poor rural whites. It is roughly synonymous with "cracker" and "redneck", more prevalent in the southeast, and "White trash", although the last implies a degree of moral turpitude. Blacks saw blackbirds as a symbol of themselves, and the redheaded woodpecker as a representation of working class whites. They considered them loud and troublesome like the bird, and sometimes with red hair like the woodpecker's head plumes. This word is still widely used by southern blacks to refer to southern whites. Pecker-wood, (a.k.a. Peck-a-wood), is also a mentality in which white people deem themselves superior to African-Americans, look down on them, and justify ill and inhumane treatment of them, and as a basis of discrimination and separation. Whereas the word Pecker-wood may refer to, but is not limited to, southern whites, the Pecker-wood mentality is prevalent in all regions in the United States, and throughout the world.[1]
In the 1940s, the abbreviated version "wood" entered California prison slang, originally meaning an Okie mainly from the San Joaquin Valley. This has caused the symbol of the woodpecker to be used by white power skinheads and other pro-white groups.[1][2] Some white supremacist groups call male members "peckerwoods" and female members "featherwoods".[3] It is usually drawn with a long beak, sometimes drawn to resemble Woody Woodpecker or Mr. Horsepower. Sometimes the letters "PW" or "APW" (Peckerwood and American Peckerwood) are used.[1] The peckerwood gangs are concentrated in California, where some trade in methamphetamine.[1] In the East Bay Area of California (Contra Costa County, Martinez, Richmond, Pittsburg, Antioch) the peckerwood gang members are identified by the CO. CO. (contra costa county tattoo, usually in but not limited to the abdominal/stomach region). The tattoo and Co. Co. County "WhiteBoy" gang trails to the prison California gang F.A.M.E affiliates of the Aryan Brotherhood.
"Peckerwood" is used in a 1975 Saturday Night Live skit in which Richard Pryor must complete a word association test as part of a job interview, with interviewer Chevy Chase giving increasingly inflammatory words as prompts.[4] The term is also used in the 1985 Robert Zemeckis film Back to the Future as a rebuttal to the opposing epithet "spook."[5] The term also appears in The Right Stuff, in a scene with Pancho Barnes declaring that "Some peckerwood's gotta take the beast up, and some peckerwood's gotta land the son-of-a-bitch. And that peckerwood's called a 'pilot'."
Sometimes "peckerwood" is used in combination with redneck as "redneck peckerwood", for example in Sam Peckinpah's classic Western Ride the High Country.
In the television show Sons of Anarchy the term "peckerwood" is used throughout mainly as slang for members of the Aryan Brotherhood.
[edit] See also
- Mr. Horsepower, woodpecker mascot of Clay Smith Cams
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d Hate On Display: Pecker-wood Anti-Defamation League's hate group resource page. Accessed January 16, 2007.
- ^ Vanguard News Network
- ^ Double-Tongued Dictionary
- ^ "Saturday Night Live Season 1:Episode 7 Transcript". Saturday Night Live Transcripts. http://snltranscripts.jt.org/75/75ginterview.phtml. Retrieved 2010-09-07.
- ^ "Memorable quotes for Back to the Future". IMDb, the Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088763/quotes. Retrieved 2010-09-07.
