“You really are a redneck,” someone told me as we walked out of a meeting. A grin and a raised eyebrow told me he’d made the comment in good fun, so I played along. I asked what gave it away, but I already knew the answer.
My antiquated laptop usually sits at home on the bottom shelf of a spindly bedside table, but when circumstances require quick note taking, I’ll squeeze it into its case, pray I won’t drop it, and lug the black plastic brick along with me. As soon as I open the laptop and set it in front of me, eyes shift toward the magenta and Gadsden-flag-yellow stickers.
There’s nothing like a brisk fall afternoon spent tromping through leaves at the sporting clays course with a 28 gauge over your shoulder, and in support of shooting sports, I slapped a couple bumper stickers on my laptop during college. The side effect of disapproval from self-important professors and approbation from fraternity boys only encouraged my cheek.
Plastering bumper stickers on a laptop is like getting a tattoo: When you smooth down the adhesive meant to withstand rain, snow, sleet and hail, you are, quite literally, branding yourself forever… or until your software can’t support updates. Apparently, the logo for a bow tie company stuck beside the markers of rural America doesn’t quite offset them, and my current label reads “redneck.”
I assumed the gentleman with whom I had the conversation used the term in his joke because he knows that I’m a Virginian and by extension, a Southerner. Since moving to Iowa, however, I’ve heard locals bandy the term about in reference to fellow Iowans, and I quickly realized the joke didn’t hinge on my state of origin.
Historians and anthropologists tell us only a Southerner can earn the title “redneck.” They still debate the circumstances of origin, but they’ve narrowed the location to somewhere below the Mason-Dixon. Historian Patrick Huber notes the slur as we understand it today emerged from the lower Mississippi Valley region in the late 19th century, but historians of the American South agree the cultural circumstances that created that word— manual labor, irregular work patterns, a fondness for drink and general ignorance— existed since the English started shipping debtors to the shores of North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia.
The saying likely has roots in the sun burn that scalded the necks of poor white sharecroppers, but linguist Sterling Eisiminger indicates the symptoms of pellagra — chiefly inflamed, pink skin — rampant in the vitamin-deprived rural South during the Great Depression, reinforced the idea. Huber would agree, the United Mine Workers of America’s decision to wrap its trademark red bandana around their necks between 1912 and 1936, had the same effect.
The multifaceted permutations of this term led to its ubiquity in the Southern lexicon. It’s almost replaced antiquated expressions like “cracker” and “peckerwood” as well as regional dialectic like “cottontail” — an urban white Southerner who sweltered in cotton mills — “sandhiller” — a poor farmer tilling away on the eastern side of Georgia or the Carolinas — and “ridge-runner” — me, or any other Appalachian American according to the national imagination.
Although these older descriptors may have lost their clout, a couple phrases still linger on our tongues beside “redneck” — “hillbilly” and “white trash.” Like the old terms, they each carry a different definition.
A hillbilly must be an Appalachian American. He must have some immediate local knowledge of his landscape and traditions, but he lacks a formal education and is wholly ignorant on national or global affairs. A few pearly whites may have rotted out of his skull, and is not to be confused with the mountain man who has a vast knowledge of local flora, fauna and hunter-gatherer traditions. The mountain man may have received a formal education but rejected civilization.
You can find white trash anywhere, but we typically associate them with the South, from the squalor of trailer parks depicted in “My Name is Earl” to every mother from Virginia to Texas hissing “I didn’t raise white trash” whenever she wants her children to get off the couch and pick up a broom. A slovenly appearance, coarse language, ignorance, loose morals and bad manners qualify white trash. A pink flamingo in the yard doesn’t hurt, either. This category also crosses socio-economic lines: the Kardashians and Miley Cyrus hold VIP membership cards to this club.
A redneck combines aspects of the other two terms: ignorance, slovenliness and regional location. A redneck distinguishes himself from white trash and hillbillies by his overarching streak of anger at the world that manifests itself in belligerence. A redneck, who takes his name from hours picking fat, green tobacco worms off Nicotiana tabacum or plucking pillowy white cotton fibers until his fingers bled, might also hold a labor-intensive job.
Language constantly evolves, and we’ve begun to blur distinctions between “hillbilly,” “white trash” and “redneck.” Suddenly, 20-somethings from the suburban sprawl of Washington, D.C., are pulling on cowboy boots and knocking back whole cases of PBR at Luke Combs concerts. Apparently one ride in a pickup truck and knowing the chorus to “When it Rains, it Pours” qualifies anyone for these descriptors, which we’ve started to use interchangeably. It’s another symptom of technology’s quick-zipping electric impulses mainstreaming local culture into mass media phenomena.
The idea of a redneck however, has had more than half a century of exposure in mainstream America. After World War II, 10 million Appalachian Americans left the hills and hollers for the industrial midwest experiencing labor shortages. They flocked to cities like Chicago, Detroit and Columbus, and they took their speech patterns — their squished “RS” sound, their harsh “R” and peculiar phrases like “mushmellon” — with them. They preserved their clannish Scotch-Irish habits and clustered together with other migrants in the cities. Today we have China Towns and Little Italies, but in the 1950s and ’60s, Midwestern cities supported Outpost Appalachias.
The migrants also experienced the unfortunate circumstances of any other outsider in an established society, and the slur stuck in midcentury Midwestern newspapers.
Descendants of the original far-flung Appalachian Americans stayed where their parents and grandparents had landed. Other dialectic particulars may have vanished, but the slur hangs on.
Under the proper circumstances, I suppose you could call an Iowan a redneck. To appease linguistic traditionalists, you’d have to dive into dusty genealogical records before making the accusation. A quick quip based on a couple bumper stickers, however, is well worth a laugh.
Contact Phoebe Marie Brannock at 641-792-3121 ext. 6547