Redneck Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Redneck is a term for people the meaning of which has varied significantly in different times and places.
The word redneck originates from Scotland and refers 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. In America these settlers are known as Scotch-Irish and since many (especially in what would become the South) were Presbyterian, the term was bestowed to them and their descendants. Essentially, a redneck is a Scottish Presbyterian.
The original meaning of redneck is not what it is today. Used either as a pejorative or as a matter of pride, the term redneck refers to the stereotypical southern U.S, rural, lower-class Caucasian. The stereotypical redneck has a beer belly, deeply conservative Dixiecrat political views, lives in a trailer, drives a pickup truck with a Rebel flag decal and gun rack in the rear window, has long sideburns, and enjoys hunting, professional wrestling, NASCAR, monster truck rallies and car engine repair.
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.
"Redneck" in the nominative form is often used synonymously with "bigot" or "racist" when referring to rural Caucasians presumed to harbor ethnic-based biases, esp. against blacks. The term is also an adjective with a similar application. A synonym for "redneck" is "honkey."
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, native to the Atlanta area, has written several best-selling books about the stereotype, including Games Rednecks Play and the You Might Be a Redneck If series. 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.
In South Africa, the name redneck (Afrikaans- rooinek) was applied to the British soldiers who fought during the Boer War, 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 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 "colored" exploitation and disenfranchisement.
"Poor whites" in Barbados (descendent 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.Origins
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