What does "redneck" mean?

[Bouncy Ball]

I think my family is redneck. Thing is, I see that term associated only with republicans around here. And my entire family always votes Democrat.

So what is redneck? Am I a bit confused on the term?

Is it eating fried bologna on white? Stirring the Kool-Aid with your hand? (Don't laugh, people do it.)

Is it living in a rural area? Being poor? If so, my dad's side of the family qualifies on both counts, but they practically worshipped FDR. Credited him with saving their lives when they were hardscrabble tenant farmers.

Is it pulling the grill around to the front driveway and sitting around in lawn chairs, drinking cheap beer and waving at passing cars?

If so, I've seen that in northern states, too.

Is it working in a factory your whole life? Owning just one suit or nice dress? Being a hunter or fisherman(person)?

Trying to figure this out.....

[solinvictus]

1. White field worker...

the "red neck" was due to hours spent working in the sun in cotton fields. It's a perjurative term for poor whites.

[Reverend_Smitty]

2. I think the term basically means...

the working class type...blue collar. Originally the term was coined because "rednecks" were often the one's working outside all day so the back of their necks got all red.

There is a tendency to stereotype and generalize on this board, but there are rednecks who vote Democrat and Republican

[RevolutionaryActs]

3. You might a be a redneck if.........

You listen to Jeff Foxworthy. :crazy:

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. Poor, white, rural, usually Southern.

That's "redneck" (term comes from the sunburn dirt farmers would get on the back of the neck after a day in the field under the hot sun). It's gained a host of associated meanings culturally dependent on one's perception of poor white rural Southerners, which generally include things like ignorant, uneducated, bigoted, utterly lacking in qualities of taste and refinement, etc. As such, it's a stereotype, but stereotypes exist in the first place because there's either some grain of truth to them or because they accord with dominant cultural perceptions.

[Jamastiene]

5. Originally it was

a term for white farmers who had red necks from sunburn from working in the fields, the Foxworthy made it "cool" then Bush came along and the definition became, at least from my vantage point, anyone who is racist sexist and homophobic and proud of it.

[Bouncy Ball]

6. Well then by THAT definition my family

is most definitely NOT redneck.

[EC]

7. That's what us hippies used to call the non-hippies

the guys in the backwoods like in Deliverance...usually Republicans by birth -if they voted - bigots and militant...


But yeah original meaning was poor white farmers with sunburned necks from bending over in fields...

[Seabiscuit]

11. Yup - the non-hip during the hippie era - not necessarily "Deliverance".

E.g. San Diego military retirees in Pacific Beach, San Diego in the early 70's - falling-down-drunks on the dole spending their government money on booze, ergo constantly "broke" at the end of the pay period, Repukes, anti-hippie, anti-pot, anti-youth, anti-gay, pro-Nixon, pro-imperialist war.

[A HERETIC I AM]

8. There is another origin that i heard that has lots of dignity to it.

apparently during the struggles to organize the coal miners in Appalachia way back when, the strikers would wear red bandanna's around their necks to readily identify themselves in skirmishes with strike breakers and as a sign of solidarity. A red scarf around the neck thus a Red Neck.

[Jamastiene]

9. I never heard that one

but, the way it is most commonly used is to describe the racist, sexist, homophobic types nowadays.

[JohnKleeb]

10. I dont know but get this

My dad tells me he thought my grandparents, his in laws were intially rednecks, wtf Dad I told him, you know that they grew up speaking another language other than English.