Difference between revisions of "Redneck"

Revision as of 01:28, April 21, 2009

Redneck is a derogatory slang term for poor whites in the U.S. South. By extension it now refers to any uncouth person.

The exact origin of Redneck is undetermined. Perhaps it refers to the sun burnt necks of people who worked in the hot fields all day, or to red necks characteristic of sufferers from pellagra (a disease caused by poor diets).

The comparable term "white trash" is used by African Americans.

After the Civil War the status of the independent white farmers (called "Yeomen") fell drastically in the South. Many became sharecroppers or tenants--they worked land owned by landowners in town. In the towns the rising southern middle class rejected the celebration of rural life associated with the yeoman. They denounced as "demagogues" the radical leaders who appealed to the poor farmers, for example "Pitchfork Ben Tillman who was governor and senator from South Carolina. As the poor farmers endorsed lynching of uppity blacks, the middle class townsfolk denounced lynching in the name of Law and order. Some poor farmers moved to mill towns, especially to work in the textile mills of the Carolinas. The money was much better than on the hard-scrabble farms, but this again represented a fall in social status. By the end of the century the middle class was ridiculing the former yeomen as "rednecks" and "hillbillies."^[1]

see Yeoman

Further reading

• Goad, Jim. The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America's Scapegoats (1998) excerpt and text search
• West, Stephen A. From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850–1915. (2008) 262pp

references

1. ↑ "Hillbillies" lived in remote mountain areas. Stephen A. West, From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850–1915. (2008)