What does it mean to be a redneck???

Question

I know I dont like them, but I dont know exactly what a redneck is. Can anyone explain???

Answer 1

Rednecks are largely descendants of the Ulster-Scots and Lowland Scots immigrants who travelled 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 "Celtic Thesis" of Forrest McDonald and Grady McWhiney holds that they were basically Celtic (as opposed to Anglo-Saxon), and that all Celtic groups (Scots Irish, Scottish, Welsh and others) were warlike herdsmen, in contrast to the peaceful farmers who predominated in England. James H. Webb (former U.S. Secretary of the Navy) uses this thesis in his book Born Fighting to suggest that the character traits of the Scots Irish — loyalty to kin, mistrust of governmental authority, and military readiness — helped shape the American identity. According to Webb, they 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. 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, rednecks perpetuated old Celtic ideas of honor and clanship. This sometimes led to conflicts such as the Hatfield-McCoy feud in West Virginia and Kentucky.

In colonial times, they were often called rednecks and crackers by English neighbors. As one wrote, "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."

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. [1] This civil disobedience eventually culminated in armed conflict in the Whiskey Rebellion.

Rednecks, and especially Tennesseeans, 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. Although poor Southern whites stood to gain little from secession and were usually ambivalent about the institution of slavery, they were fiercely defensive of their territory and loyal to their homes and families.

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. Poor whites (meaning, financially destitute) 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.

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 whisky. 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."

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.

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.



Redneck, in modern usage, predominantly refers to a particular stereotype of people who may be found in many regions of the United States or Canada. The word can be used either as a pejorative or as a matter of pride, depending on context.

Usage of the term redneck generally differs from hick and hillbilly, because rednecks reject or resist assimilation into the dominant culture, while hicks and hillbillies theoretically are isolated from the dominant culture. In this way, the term redneck is similar to the word cracker.

Answer 2

A redneck is a country boy or girl that knows how to have a good time. We like to sit round camp fires, fish, hunt, and we even work for a living. Just because we are considered redneck dont mean we f--- our family members. I would say half yall that go round saying stupid s--- like that are the very ones that like to keep it in the familys. If yall so brave to get online and speek freely about us country redneck hill billies, why dont you come ondown to Tennessee and have the balls to speek your mind to us face to face. Might just show some southern hospitality while you visit. Who knows...maybe you will never make it back where yallcome from. I dont mean that in a bad way. I simply mean you might like it here in the redneck parts

Answer 3

Redneck, in modern usage, predominantly refers to a particular stereotype of people who may be found in many regions of the United States or Canada. The word can be used either as a pejorative or as a matter of pride, depending on context.

Usage of the term redneck generally differs from hick and hillbilly, because rednecks reject or resist assimilation into the dominant culture, while hicks and hillbillies theoretically are isolated from the dominant culture. In this way, the term redneck is similar to the word cracker.

click here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck#Etymology

Answer 4

From the urban dictionary:
Mildly offensive term for a lower class white person from the southeastern states of the USA. Derives from someone who spent a lot of time on manual labour outside and so received a "red neck" from the sun.

From the dictionary:
Used as a disparaging term for a member of the white rural laboring class, especially in the southern United States.
A white person regarded as having a provincial, conservative, often bigoted attitude.

Answer 5

it can mean a number of things.
the actual definition comes from farmers that worked in the field all day, when the day was done their neck would be sunburned.

i would be inclined to call you a redneck as you are narrowminded enough to "not like them" but you don't know what they are.

you are a pretty good example of what a redneck is to me.

Answer 6

I'll explain to you in a easy way..... Redneck refers to a white farmer best E.I Hillbillies, you see when white farmers are exposed to the sun while working on the field their necks get red, You see what i mean " Red Necks"......

Answer 7

It's pretty ****** awesome, guns, trucks and all the beer u could want, I'm a redneck and I love it, girls love rednecks

Answer 8

I grabbed out my Ale-8 en some cheesetoes fer lunch then had a Moon Pie fer desert en read sepolavi's answer above en knew that's the one I'd been looken fer in my Uncle John's Bathroom Reader so I picked my teeth en knew I was a redneck en hope you don't unlike me cuz I don't unlike you nessarly but then I dunno yuh But then I don't know yer kind either, too. Yuhno?

Answer 9

Well Sweetheart, If you are going to go to University in Kentucky, then you will surely find out! Mullets! open flannel button down over a stained up t-shirt! they hardly ever have all their teeth & if they do, they are rotten! usually always in camoflauge! a truck with rust & without a muffler! The list is endless!.....look up some Jeff Foxworthy stuff, he should be able to put it into perspective for you! The most luvable red neck there is .............Joe Dirt!!! We love you Joe!!

Answer 10

If your best furniture is outside the house, you might be a redneck.

If a gourmet meal is a bologna sandwich and a six pack, you might be a redneck.

Answer 11

A redneck is just another word for a Hick, you know, country folk.
yeehaw