In modern usage, redneck predominantly refers to a particular stereotype of whites from the Western and Southern United States. The word can be used either as a pejorative or as a matter of pride, depending on context.
Modern usage
The redneck stereotype
A redneck is a stereotypical western or southern United States socially conservative, rural, working class white person with sunburned skin and northern European ancestry. The stereotypical redneck is a male, has a beer belly, consumes cheap American beer such as Budweiser by the case, and holds deeply conservative political views. Stereotypically they are homophobic, racist and have a membership in the Ku Klux Klan. The stereotypical redneck also lives in a trailer, drives a large pickup truck with a Confederate flag decal and a gun rack in the rear window, has a stained sleeveless t-shirt, a trucker hat or baseball cap and a mullet haircut with long sideburns. Their favorite activities include hunting, professional wrestling, NASCAR, monster truck rallies, and car engine repair. Country and Southern Rock bands such as Lynyrd Skynyrd are their preferred genre of music. When they encounter a neighbor's dog on their property, they may give it the 3-S treatment.
Females that are called rednecks have similar characteristics and interests, however, on a feminine scale. They are most often barefoot, pregnant and wear Daisy Duke shorts.
The 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 by late middle age. Another popular theory steams from the use of red bandanas tied around the neck to signify union affiliation during the violent clashes between United Mine Workers and owners between 1910 and 1920.
Some historians claim that the term redneck originated in 17th century Virginia, when indentured servants were sunburnt while tending plantation crops.
Popular culture
Randy Newman satirized the "redneck" stereotype in on his 1974 album Good Old Boys with the song "Rednecks", with such lyrics as "We're rednecks, we're rednecks, we don't know our ass from a hole in the ground [...] and we're keeping the niggers down".
Comedian Jeff Foxworthy, himself a Southerner and a self-described redneck, has written several best-selling books about the stereotype, including Games Rednecks Play and the You Might Be a Redneck If... series. His works spawned many types of humorous redneck merchandise such as t-shirts and stickers that are quite popular among white southerners. Foxworthy did much to establish "redneck" as a term of pride and endearment by focusing on humorous and positive aspects of redneck culture, and avoiding references to negative aspects, such as the racist connotations that sometimes accompany the term.
Country music singer Gretchen Wilson titled one of her songs Redneck Woman on her 2004 album Here for the Party.
Author Jim Goad wrote a book titled The Redneck Manifesto that explores some of the socioeconomic history of this word and the people it is leveled at.
Historical usages
Scotland
The word redneck is first cited in Scotland, where it referred to supporters of the National Covenant and The Solemn League and Covenant, otherwise known as Covenanters - largely lowland Presbyterians.
The Covenanters in the mid 1600's signed documents that stated Scotland desired the Presbyterian form of church government and would not accept the Church of England as its official state church. To signify their desire, many Covenanters signed the documents in their own blood, would spill their blood to keep this from happening and wore red pieces of cloth around their necks as distinctive insignia - hence the term Redneck.
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 across the 18th Century. One etymological theory holds that since many Scotch-Irish who settled in what would become the South were Presbyterian, the term was bestowed upon them and their descendants.
Related terms
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 English-speaking white people.
Ironically, the term "redneck" is also used by the English to describe very conservative Afrikaners because of that group's historic support of apartheid, a system of white, minority power and privilege and black and "coloured" exploitation and disenfranchisement, possibly by analogy to the American usage described above.
Barbados
"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.
See also
External Links
Last updated: 05-23-2005 13:46:16
