Redneck

Redneck, in modern usage, predominantly refers to a particular stereotype of white people who may be found in many regions of the United States. Originally limited to the Appalachians , and later the Ozarks and Rocky Mountains, this stereotype is now widespread in northern states. The word can be used either as a pejorative or as a matter of pride.

Etymology

Possible Scots-Irish etymologies

The National Covenant and The Solemn League and Covenant (a.k.a. Covenanters) signed documents stating that Scotland desired a Presbyterian Church Government, and rejected the Church of England as their official church (no Anglican congregation was ever accepted as the official church in Scotland). What the Covenanters rejected was episcopacy — rule by bishops — the preferred form of church government in England. Many of the Covenanters signed these documents using their own blood, and many in the movement began wearing red pieces of cloth around their neck to signify their position to the public. They were referred to as rednecks. Large numbers of these Scottish Presbyterians migrated from their lowland Scottish home to Ulster (the northern province of Ireland) during the 17th century and soon settled in considerable numbers in North America throughout the 18th century. Some emigrated directly from Scotland to the American colonies in the late 18th and early 19th-centuries as a result of the Lowland Clearances. This etymological theory holds that since many Scots-Irish Americans and Scottish Americans who settled in Appalachia and the South were Presbyterian, the term was bestowed upon them and their descendants.

Possible American etymologies

A popular etymology says that the term derives from such individuals having a red neck caused by working outdoors in the sunlight over the course of their lifetime. The effect of decades of direct sunlight on the exposed skin of the back of the neck not only reddens fair skin, but renders it leathery and tough, and typically very wrinkled and spotted by late middle age. Similarly, some historians claim that the term redneck originated in 17th century Virginia, because indentured servants were sunburnt while tending plantation crops.

It is clear that by the post-Reconstruction era (after the departure of Federal troops from the American South in 1874-1878), the term had worked its way into popular usage. Several blackface minstrel shows used the word in a derogatory manner, comparing slave life over that of the poor rural whites. This may have much to do with the social, political and economic struggle between Populists, the Redeemers and Republican Carpetbaggers of the post-Civil War South and Appalachia, where the new middle class of the South (professionals, bankers, industrialists) displaced the pre-war planter class as the leaders of the Southern states. The Populist movement, with its message of economic equality, represented a threat to the status quo. The use of a derogative term, such as redneck to belittle the working class, would have assisted in the gradual disenfranchisement of most of the Southern lower class, both black and white, which occurred by 1910.

Another popular theory stems from the use of red bandanas tied around the neck to signify union affiliation during the violent clashes between United Mine Workers and coal mine owners between 1910 and 1920.

Historical usage

The Hatfield clan, of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, in 1897.

People stereotyped as rednecks are largely descendants of the Irish, Ulster-Scots and Lowland Scots immigrants who traveled to North America from Northern Ireland and Scotland in the late 17th and 18th centuries, although some of them are descended from people of Germanic and other stock. The Ulster-Scots had historically settled the major part of Ulster province in Northern Ireland, after previous migration from the Scottish Lowlands and Border Country. These pioneering people and their descendants are known in North America as the Scots-Irish. (The 18th century influx of Highland Scots into the Carolinas also contributed to the bloodlines.)

The "Celtic Thesis" of Forrest McDonald and Grady McWhiney holds that they were basically Celtic (as opposed to Anglo-Saxon), and that all Celtic groups (Irish, Scottish, Welsh and others) were warlike herdsmen, in contrast to the peaceful farmers who predominated in England. U.S. Senator James H. Webb of Virginia uses this thesis in his book Born Fighting to suggest that the character traits of the Irish and Scots — loyalty to kin, mistrust of governmental authority, and military readiness — helped shape the American identity. According to Webb, these people characterized as "rednecks" and "crackers", were unwelcome in the "civilized" coastal regions and were encouraged by colonial leaders to settle the Appalachian mountains, as a bulwark against the Indian Nations. [2] Although sometimes hostile to the Indians, they found much in common with them and engaged in trade and cultural exchanges. In the Appalachians they also encountered pockets of Melungeons, English-speaking people of mixed racial origins (black, white, Indian), whom they tolerated and with whom they coexisted.

Over time, they intermarried with Britons from the West Country, another group with Celtic origins, and absorbed members of other groups through the bonds of kinship. Nevertheless, their culture and bloodlines retained their Celtic character.

Fiercely independent, and frequently belligerent, people characterized as rednecks perpetuated old Celtic ideas of honor and clanship. This sometimes led to blood feuds such as the Hatfield-McCoy feud in West Virginia and Kentucky. [3]

In colonial times, they were often called rednecks and crackers by English neighbors. A letter to the Earl of Dartmouth included the following passage: "I should explain ... what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode." [4]

The fledgling government inherited a huge debt from the American Revolutionary War. One of the steps taken to pay it down was a tax imposed in 1791 on distilled spirits. Large producers were assessed a tax of six cents a gallon. Smaller distillers, however, most of whom were of Scottish or Irish descent located in the more remote areas, were taxed at a higher rate of nine cents a gallon. These rural settlers were short of cash to begin with, and they lacked any practical means to get their grain to market other than fermenting and distilling it into relatively portable alcoholic spirits. From Pennsylvania to Georgia, the western counties engaged in a campaign of harassment of the federal tax collectors. "Whiskey Boys" also made violent protests in Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. This civil disobedience eventually culminated in armed conflict in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. [5]

People characterized as rednecks, and sometimes merely as southerners, serve in the U.S. armed forces at a much higher rate than other Americans. [6] [7] This trend is also present among the Scots in the British armed forces. [8] Stereotypical rednecks, and especially Tennesseans, are known for their martial spirit. Tennessee is known as the "Volunteer State" for the overwhelming, unexpected number of Tennesseans who volunteered for duty in the War of 1812, the Texas Revolution (including the defense of the Alamo), and especially the Mexican-American War. During the Civil War, poor whites did most of the fighting and the dying on both sides of the conflict. Poor Southern whites stood to gain little from secession and were usually ambivalent about the institution of slavery. They were, however, fiercely defensive of their territory, loyal to family and home and typically resolute in the cause of independence from the Union.

Although slaves fared the worst by far, many poor whites had "a hard row to hoe" as well. The disruptions of the Civil War (1861-65) and Reconstruction mired African Americans in a new poverty and dragged many more whites into a similar abyss. Sharecropping and tenant farming trapped families for generations, as did emerging industries, which paid low wages and imposed company-town restrictions (see Carpetbagger). Once-proud yeomen frequently became objects of ridicule, and sometimes they responded angrily and even viciously, often lashing out at blacks in retaliation. Destitute whites were increasingly labeled "poor white trash" (meaning financially and genetically worse off than others) and worse; “cracker,” "clay eater," "linthead," "peckerwood," "buckra" and especially redneck only scratched the surface of rejection and slander. Northerners and foreigners played this game, but the greatest hostility to poor whites came from their fellow Southerners, sometimes blacks but more often upper-class whites. Generally, the view of poor white Southerners grew more and more negative, especially in modern movies and television, which have often stressed the negative and even the grotesque while reaching huge audiences. Rednecks have borne their full share of this stereotype of lower-class Southern whites who share poverty status with immigrants, blacks, and other minorities.

Modern usage

Redneck has two general uses: first, as a pejorative used by outsiders, and, second, as a term used by members within that group. To outsiders, it is generally a term for those of Southern or Appalachian rural poor backgrounds — or more loosely, rural poor to working-class people of rural extraction. (Appalachia also includes large parts of Pennsylvania, New York and other states.) Within that group, however, it is used to describe the more downscale members. Rednecks span from the poor to the working class.

Generally, there is a continuum from the stereotypical redneck (a derisive term) to the country person; yet there are differences. Rednecks typically are more libertine, especially in their personal lives, than other country brethren who tend towards social conservatism. In contrast to country people, stereotypical rednecks tend not to attend church, or do so infrequently. They also tend to use alcohol and gamble more than their church-going neighbors. Further, "politically apathetic" may describe some members of this group. Until the late 1970s they tended toward populism and were solidly behind the Democratic party, but have supported Republicans since the Carter presidency. They are less homogeneous than the country people and other Southern whites. Many Southern celebrities like Jeff Foxworthy and Lee Roy Mercer embrace the redneck label. It is used both as a term of pride and as a derogatory epithet, sometimes to paint country people and/or their lifestyle as being lower class.

Although the stereotype of poor white Southerners and Appalachians in the early twentieth century, as portrayed in popular media, was exaggerated and even grotesque, the problem of poverty was very real. The national mobilization of troops in World War I (1917-18) invited comparisons between the South and Appalachia and the rest of the country. Southern and Appalachian whites had less money, less education, and poorer health than white Americans in general. Only Southern blacks had more handicaps. In the 1920s and 1930s matters became worse when the boll weevil and the dust bowl devastated the South's agricultural base and its economy. The Great Depression was a difficult era for the already disadvantaged in the South and Appalachia. In an echo of the Whiskey Rebellion, rednecks escalated their production and bootlegging of moonshine whiskey. [9] To deliver it and avoid law-enforcement and tax agents, cars were "souped-up" to create a more maneuverable and faster vehicle. Many of the original drivers of Stock car racing were former bootleggers and "ridge-runners."

Federal programs such as the New Deal era Tennessee Valley Authority and the later Appalachian Regional Commission encouraged development and created jobs for disenfranchised rural southerners and appalachians. World War II (1941-45) began the great economic revival for the South and for Appalachia. In and out of the armed forces, unskilled Southern and Appalachian whites, and many African Americans as well, were trained for industrial and commercial work they had never dreamed of attempting, much less mastering. Military camps grew like mushrooms, especially in Georgia and Texas, and big industrial plants began to appear across the once rural landscape. Soon, blue-collar families from every nook and cranny of the South and Appalachia found their way to white-collar life in metropolitan areas like Atlanta. By the 1960s blacks had begun to share in this progress, but not all rural Southerners and Appalachians were beneficiaries of this recovery.

The recent prosperity of the New South changed the social status of the redneck. The 20th century ideas of Southern upward mobility, which required dropping or modifying a regional accent and joining the mainstream, was considered the norm for the region. (Exceptions were made for politicians and college football coaches, for whom a drawl was still required for regional credibility.) Newfound prosperity allowed rednecks to cling to their old ways and reject the status quo of modernity. In the 1990s, when Jeff Foxworthy drawled "you might be a redneck …" he wasn't just needling folks who had ever "fought over an inner tube." In one of his stand-up routines, Foxworthy summed up the condition as "a glorious absence of sophistication." Foxworthy also rejected the misconception that a redneck has to be a Southerner, saying "A lot of people think you have to talk like this"(meaning his Georgia accent) "to be a redneck. That is not true. I've been all over this country, there's rednecks in every single state." According to Slate columnist Bryan Curtis, "Foxworthy was also preaching to the newly minted white middle class, those who had ditched the pickup for an Audi and their ancestral segregation for affirmative action." According to University of Georgia professor James C. Cobb, "Now, feeling relatively secure and closer to the mainstream, they rebel against acting respectable, embracing this counterculture hero—the 'redneck' who is what he is, and doesn't give a damn what anybody thinks."

Writer Edward Abbey, as well as the original Earth First! under Dave Foreman, proudly adopted the term redneck to describe themselves. This reflected the word's possible historical origin among striking coal miners to describe white rural working-class radicalism. "In Defense of the Redneck" was a popular essay by Ed Abbey. One popular early Earth First! bumper sticker was "Rednecks for Wilderness." Murray Bookchin, an urban leftist and social ecologist, objected strongly to Earth First!'s use of the term as "at the very least, insensitive."

Author Jim Goad's 1997 book The Redneck Manifesto explores the socioeconomic history of low-income Americans. According to Goad, rednecks are traditionally pro-labor and anti-establishment and have an anti-hierarchical religious orientation. Goad argues that elites manipulate low-income people (blacks and whites especially) through classism and racism to keep them in conflict with each other and distracted from their exploitation by elites.

U.S. Representative Charles B. Rangel caused controversy on February 13, 2005, by referring to Bill Clinton as a redneck in response to Hillary Clinton's refusal to support his views on the Amadou Diallo case.

Popular culture

The Grand Ole Opry and Hee Haw are popular entertainments from years past, and they, as well as the entertainers Hank Williams, Grandpa Jones and Jerry Clower, have seen lasting popularity within the redneck community, as well as forging opinions in the minds of those on the outside.

Since the dawn of the radio age, entertainers have traded on the redneck stereotype for humor and as a means to bond with their audiences. Stars like Minnie Pearl used homespun comedy as much as music to create a lasting persona, and sophisticated and intelligent musicians like Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt appeared on shows such as "The Beverly Hillbillies," lending credence to broad humor about uncomplicated rural Americans. Some musicians who toured the country in tailored suits were put on stage in overalls surrounded by hay bales when they appeared on the television show "Hee-Haw."

The character Bob Ewell from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird has many characteristics of a redneck. He's a racist, poorly dressed, and can barely make a decent salary.

According to James C. Cobb, a history professor at the University of Georgia, the redneck comedian "provided a rallying point for bourgeois and lower-class whites alike. With his front-porch humor and politically outrageous bons mots, the redneck comedian created an illusion of white equality across classes." [10]

Johnny Russell was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1973 for his recording of "Rednecks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer," parlaying the "common touch" into financial and critical success. Country music singer Gretchen Wilson titled one of her songs "Redneck Woman" on her 2004 album, Here for the Party. Wilson was born and raised in Illinois.

Rockabilly and Southern Rock are among Rock and Roll musical genres favored by stereotypical rednecks. In particular, "Free Bird" and "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd are considered "Redneck Anthems."

The TV series, "The Dukes of Hazzard," followed the adventures of two good ol' boys, Bo and Luke Duke, their uncle Jesse and their cousin Daisy, living in an unincorporated area of the fictional Hazzard County, in Georgia, racing around in their modified 1969 Dodge Charger, "The General Lee," evading corrupt Boss Hogg and his inept county sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane. Consistent with a redneck stereotype, Bo and Luke had been sentenced to probation for illegal transportation of moonshine.

In recent years, the comedic stylings of Jeff Foxworthy, Ron White, Bill Engvall, Larry the Cable Guy and Lee Roy Mercer have become popular, with the first four forming first a "Blue Collar Comedy Tour", and now a "Blue Collar TV" television show and film. Foxworthy's definition of redneck is "a glorious absence of sophistication."

"King of the Hill" is a contemporary American animated sitcom showing a modern suburban family in Arlen, Texas. In the show, they are sometimes derisively called "redneck" and "hillbilly" by a Laotian neighbor.

WWE Superstar Stone Cold Steve Austin has always been referred to as a "Texas Redneck" by his opponents. However, he has never taken offence to it which may imply that to a degree, he probably acknowledges himself as one.

Exclaves

Alberta and Saskatchewan are sometimes said to be the home of rednecks in Canada, due to its similarities to Texas (oil, farming, and ranching). Like rural people elsewhere, some Canadians continue to see this as a highly offensive term while others have claimed it and proudly describe themselves as rednecks. This difference often arises because the former consider the term to connote racist beliefs while the latter believe it implies traditional rural values (e.g. work ethic, honesty, self-reliance, simplicity).

Related terms

Australia and New Zealand

The term "bogan" is used in Australia and New Zealand to describe individuals from western parts of major cities, particularly Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. There is no one ethnic heritage that ascribes a bogan, most indeed are from anglo saxon origins. There is no majority, however the stereotype is identified by a significant "mullet" hair cut, or the middle eastern style of shaving all but the tops of their head. In Sydney - Westie is most often applied.

The Caribbean and Latin America

"Poor whites" in Barbados (descendants largely of seventeenth century English, Scottish, and Irish indentured servants and deportees) were called "red legs." Many of these families moved to Virginia and the Carolinas as large sugar plantations replaced small tobacco farming in the Caribbean.

In Brazil, the term "caipira" is used to define inhabitants from the countryside of Brazilian states (chiefly rural); they are considered the Brazilian counterparts of American rednecks.

In Chile, the term "huaso" describes people who work or live in the rural sectors of the country. They are described as wearing a poncho, straw hat and cowboy boots.

In Mexico, the slang term "Naco" can be used to define a lower-class Mexican who displays qualities similar to North-American rednecks such as ignorance and low-brow tastes. [11].

In Nicaragua, the slang term "jincho" is a pejorative term used to describe people with poor education or from the countryside. Also, "jincho patarrajadas" as a pejorative in arguments literally "bruised feet fool" implying that people from the countryside walk barefoot.

In Puerto Rico the term "jíbaro" can be considered a rough equivalent of the word "redneck" since it is used to refer to residents of rural areas that typically work as farmers or manual-laborers. It is also similar to the term "redneck" as it can be used pejoratively or complimentary. In the latter sense it is used to refer to "true boricuas" that live a rugged life of farming and maintain typical Puerto Rican traditions and values alive. In the pejorative sense however, it refers to uneducated rubes who are close-minded and oblivious to the ways of the modern world.

North America

In the United States, the term "farmer tan" is sometimes used to refer to a sunburn, particularly when the sunburned area covers only the neck and arms of the individual. This can also refer to a suntan covering the same area. Another variation of the "farmer tan" is the trucker tan, which refers to the occurrence of the left arm being of a deeper tan than the right arm, as a result of being rested along or out of the driver's side window of the stereotypical redneck's pickup truck or tractor-trailer.

"White cracker" or simply "cracker" was originally a pejorative term for a white person, mainly used in the Southern United States, and still is in many instances. It has also, however, increasingly been used as a proud (or self-deprecating) term by some Southern whites —or American whites in general—in reference to themselves.

The term "goat roper" is sometimes used as a term of derision for unsophisticated rural people in the Southwestern United States, Arkansas, and Gulf States. It alludes to the belief that a person who raises or "ropes" goats is inferior to a cowboy or cattle rancher. This term may have roots in the range wars between ranchers and sheep or goat ranchers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term is used in some western communities to describe individuals who prefer a western/cowboy image, but not the rugged life-style (e.g. "Him in a rodeo? Only if he's roping goats with the kids.")

The term "peckerwood," an inversion of woodpecker, is also used, but usually only with negative connotations. It was coined in the 19th century by Southern blacks to describe poor whites. They considered them loud and troublesome like the bird, often with red hair like the woodpecker's head plumes. This word is still widely used by Southern blacks to refer to Southern whites.

"Swamp Yankee" is a term used by urban Yankees to describe rural New Englanders.

In Canada, "redneck" is used in much the same way as it is in the United States. It is mostly used for people from the Prairie provinces and rural areas in British Columbia and Ontario.

The term "blueneck" is a recently coined corollary of redneck. Its meaning can vary significantly based on usage. It can refer to a "cold-weather redneck" from Canada, Alaska, or other cold areas of North America. It can also be used to signify a "leftist redneck."

South Africa

In South Africa, the Afrikaans term "rooinek" (meaning redneck) was derisively applied by Afrikaners to the British soldiers who fought during the Boer Wars, because their skin was sensitive to the harsh African sun. The phrase is still used by Afrikaners to describe South Africans of English descent.

See also

• Boer
• Cajun
• Caldoche
• Classism
• Folk culture
• Good old boys
• Good ol' boy network
• Hick
• Hillbilly
• List of ethnic slurs
• The Redneck Manifesto
• Pākehā
• Pied-noir
• Redneck Rampage
• Southern Culture
• Redneck Riviera
• Whiskey Rebellion
• White Trash

Sources

• Abbey, Edward. "In Defense of the Redneck", from Abbey's Road: Take the Other. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979
• Goad, Jim. The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America's Scapegoats. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997
• Webb, James H. Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. New York: Broadway Books, 2004
• Weston, Ruth D. "The Redneck Hero in the Postmodern World". South Carolina Review, Spring 1993
• Wilson, Charles R. and William Ferris, eds. Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, 1989

External links

• New Redneck Workshop
• Redneck Words of Wisdom
• Poor Whites — The Georgia Encyclopedia (history)