Difference between revisions of "Redneck"
(Cracker) |
|||
| Line 2: | Line 2: | ||
southern workingman or farmer and his scrawny, sallow-looking wife and nasty children. By extension it now refers to any uncouth person. | southern workingman or farmer and his scrawny, sallow-looking wife and nasty children. By extension it now refers to any uncouth person. | ||
| − | The term was in use by 1890; the first known print usage of the term appears in an 1891 Mississippi newspaper in reference to an upcoming Democratic primary. The 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 term "redneck" was in use by 1890; the first known print usage of the term appears in an 1891 Mississippi newspaper in reference to an upcoming Democratic primary. The 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). |
| + | |||
| + | "Cracker" has a similar meaning; it was commonly used before the Civil War.<ref> Grady McWhiney, ''Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South'' (1988) [http://www.questia.com/library/book/cracker-culture-celtic-ways-in-the-old-south-by-grady-mcwhiney.jsp online edition]</ref> | ||
The comparable term "white trash" is used by African Americans. | The comparable term "white trash" is used by African Americans. | ||
Revision as of 13:48, April 21, 2009
Redneck is a derogatory slang term for poor whites in the U.S. South. The stereotype depicts a beefy, bestial white southern workingman or farmer and his scrawny, sallow-looking wife and nasty children. By extension it now refers to any uncouth person.
The term "redneck" was in use by 1890; the first known print usage of the term appears in an 1891 Mississippi newspaper in reference to an upcoming Democratic primary. The 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).
"Cracker" has a similar meaning; it was commonly used before the Civil War.[1]
The comparable term "white trash" is used by African Americans.
Social and political history
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."[2]
Appeals to the redneck vote angered the middle class but they were a minority, and redneck oratory proved successful in stirring resentment against cities like Charleston, South Carolina. A major breakthrough came in the 1899 Democratic primary campaign for U.S. Senator in Mississippi between the last of the middle class Redeemers, Congressman John Mills Allen (1846-1917), and Governor Anselm Joseph McLaurin (1848-1909). Supported by the railroads, landowners and bankers, Allen won support because of his effective humor, clean political record, and reputation as a persuasive speaker. But McLaurin ignored Allen's attacks and skillfully reinforced his image as a poor dirt farmer sacrificing himself for his own people to fight single-handedly the organized corporate and political powers. Allen lost partly because of voting frauds, and, mostly because he did not understand the power of the new redneck rhetoric. He did not think that oratory which fanned the flames of class hatred could withstand criticism, and he was wrong.[3]
In the 1900s to 1930s leading reneck politicians included senators Tom Watson of Georgia, Ben Tillman and Cole Blease of South Carolina, Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi and, especially, Huey Long of Louisiana. In the 1960s Governor George Wallace of Alabama made national headlines in his two runs for the White House using redneck rhetoric.
Recent usage
Beginning in 1960s poor working-class white Southerners started to call themselves rednecks, redefining the word to mean an honest, hardworking man who respects traditional Southern values. Their use of the term also suggested a racial and class solidarity that set them apart from the upheaval of the civil rights movement, the 1960s counterculture, and the women's liberation movement.[4]
see also
Further reading
- Carr, Duane. A Question of Class: The Redneck Stereotype in Southern Fiction. Bowling Green State U. Popular Press, 1996. 188 pp.
- Goad, Jim. The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America's Scapegoats (1998) excerpt and text search
- Huber, Patrick. "A Short History of Redneck: The Fashioning of a Southern White Masculine Identity." Southern Cultures 1995 1(2): 145-166.
- McKern, Sharon. Redneck Mothers, Good Ol' Girls, and Other Southern Belles: A Celebration of the Women of Dixie. (1979). 268 pp.
- Roebuck, Julian B. and Hickson, Mark, III. The Southern Redneck: A Phenomenological Class Study. (1982). 210 pp.
- West, Stephen A. From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850–1915. (2008) 262pp
references
- ↑ Grady McWhiney, Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South (1988) online edition
- ↑ "Hillbillies" lived in remote mountain areas. Stephen A. West, From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850–1915. (2008)
- ↑ Clyde J. Faries, "Redneck Rhetoric and the Last of the Redeemers: The 1899 Mc Laurin-Allen Campaign." Journal of Mississippi History 1971 33(4): 283-298 0022-2771
- ↑ Huber (1995)
