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Posted on 01.19.09 by K. Daniel Glover @ 6:23 pm
How ironic that a black columnist at a major newspaper in New York today celebrated the historical significance of two black men, Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama, by using a racially loaded slur.
Yes, that’s right, “redneck” is a slur. Some folks in the 21st century, including myself, embrace it as a symbolic term of endearment for the hard-working everyman. But historically speaking, “redneck” is a stereotypical slur aimed unfairly at all white Southerners, and then some, for more than a century now. Back in 1995, the academic journal Southern Cultures published a lengthy essay on the history of rednecks. I have a copy of that issue, and Stanley Crouch’s bigoted jab at rednecks via the New York Daily News sent me running to the bookshelves for it. (Crouch, incidentally, has a bad habit of using redneck as a synonym for racist.)
And here’s another theory on the etymology of “redneck” from the article:
The article does note that racist white farmers and sharecroppers who wanted to distinguish themselves from blacks may have brought the slur on themselves. The theory goes that they refused to wear the same wide-brimmed hats as blacks in the field and ended up with sunburned necks. But the bottom line is that “redneck” entered the American vernacular as a direct result of bigotry and condescension — both of whites toward blacks and blacks toward whites. So why is a columnist for the New York Daily News still using the slur today? How did both Obama and one of his key allies get away with insulting “the cracker vote” and still get elected? The answer may be found in these words from a college student at the University of Washington, written after the presidential election last year:
For whatever reason, it remains perfectly acceptable to openly insult a large swath of the U.S. population — the common folk who live in “flyover country” — as “bitter” or “racist” or “redneck.” If Obama, a man determined to pursue “post-racial politics,” can change anything about American culture while occupying our nation’s bully pulpit, that would be a good thing to change. Unfortunately, he and his admirers are not off to a good start. UPDATE (1/20): Another newsman, another redneck slur. “When my sister’s secret finally hit the fan, the angry redneck buried inside my dad came to the surface. Every slur I thought he didn’t know bubbled up and peppered his speech when it came to my sister’s love interest.” Newsflash to John Kroman and all of my other journalistic colleagues: “Redneck” is not synonymous with “racist.” This is what made your Dad a redneck, Mr. Kroman: “Dad was a carpenter who put in long hours at work and at home, and never really heard of this thing called leisure time. He was much more at home in a pair of overalls and a cap than in a suit.” Filed under: Culture and Hatin' On Rednecks and History and News & Politics and People Comments:
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Libaugh would love this!
Comment by Will Venable — January 19, 2009 @ 10:19 pm
[...] DANNY GLOVER says it’s time to stop the “redneck” slurs. [...]
Pingback by Instapundit » Blog Archive » DANNY GLOVER says it’s time to stop the “redneck” slurs…. — January 20, 2009 @ 7:50 am
I recently saw an History Channel special on the unionization of the West VA coal minors in the early 20th century that suggested that the term “Redneck? originated with the use of red Kerchiefs or bandanas worn by the union miners as they fought for unionization of the W VA coal mines.
Comment by Wally B — January 20, 2009 @ 8:05 am
I see you have no problem using the word “redneck” but signify “nigger” with the simple N. So what’s your problem?
Comment by Arlo — January 20, 2009 @ 8:12 am
Get over it, boy. They’re always going to keep you down. Get all the advanced degrees, make all the money you like. Until you repudiate your roots, and start mocking your own, nothing’s going to change. Look what they did to Sarah Palin.
Comment by cottus — January 20, 2009 @ 8:12 am
Wait a minute - a liberal cannot be racist! By definition, only someone who disagrees with them is.
So, logically, any attempt by yourself to point that out only shows what a racist you are as you try to tar them with your evil!
The only fair thing to do now is to contact Jesse Jackson to apologize
Comment by GW Crawford — January 20, 2009 @ 8:24 am
You obviously didn’t get the memo. It’s perfectly fine to use racial slurs on white people. All others are protected.
Because, you know, feelings. Being created from all the evil in the universe, we white ice people deserve all the scorn the sun people can heap upon us. We deserve it. Also, having no feelings we can handle it.
Thanks, YaKub. Oh, and that moon thing. Cool.
Comment by Patrick Carroll — January 20, 2009 @ 8:26 am
How can Obama overcome this since one of us dared challenge his ascension and is still a viable popular figure even from way out in Alaska.
Comment by JKB — January 20, 2009 @ 8:33 am
Cracker is a racist slur also.
Comment by Brian Macker — January 20, 2009 @ 8:34 am
Actually, the term came over from England in the seventeenth century. It has nothing to do with sunburn. It was used to describe the so-called Scots-Irish (who settled Appalachia and the south), because of the red collars that many Presbyterians wore in the Midlands. Fischer traced it in Albion’s Seed.
Comment by Rand Simberg — January 20, 2009 @ 8:49 am
I celebrated Martin Luther King’s birthday by taking my dad to see Gran Torino. It was great to hear Americans laughing at the utterances of spook…beaner…slope…dago…polack…mick.
Post-racial indeed.
Comment by Reno Sepulveda — January 20, 2009 @ 9:08 am
I prefer the term appalachian-american.
Comment by mike — January 20, 2009 @ 9:23 am
The etymology and history of the word “redneck” is well-known, see wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck
But, yes, it’s a racial slur.
Comment by Michael Chaney — January 20, 2009 @ 10:25 am
Maybe the thing to do is position “Redneck” as an equivalent term to the “N”-word. A word that only white southerners can use as a term of slang/inclusion amonst themselves, yet is verboten for anyone else.
Comment by Mark C. — January 20, 2009 @ 11:06 am
Redneck first referred to religious dissenters in Scotland who wore red scarves. By 1830, it was “a name bestowed upon the Presbyterians” according to an account by Anne Royall in NC.
Hoosier and cracker are also North British terms that crossed the Atlantic. Funny how Hoosier isn’t so derogatory anymore.
Comment by Donna B. — January 20, 2009 @ 11:41 am
For an insult to hurt, you have to at least care a modicum about the opinion of the person giving said opinion. Since I could care less, he can insult away.
Comment by Tim McDonald — January 20, 2009 @ 11:47 am
My quick two cents: the term ‘redneck’ and ‘nigger’ are not racial epithets exclusively. Even during the times of slavery, one would never call a prosperous free black of Charleston or Boston, a nigger; any more than one would call a white prosperous merchant a ‘peckerwood’ or ‘redneck’. These two terms are extensions of an elitist and exclusionary agrarian society, where most of the land was held of a privileged elite and to use either term to designate someone is to remind them that they (a) do not have any economic power and (b) that you think it right that are under someone’s control b/c you are obviously an ‘idiot’. And that is horrible thing to say about anybody
Comment by bob — January 20, 2009 @ 2:05 pm
I prefer Dixie- American.
Thank you, ya’ll.
Comment by Mockingbird — January 20, 2009 @ 5:59 pm
New Yorkers are the biggest hicks in America.
They don’t know anything about anything outside of New York, but they are convinced they are more sophisticated than everyone else. It’s always hilarious.
I wish all New Yorkers hated the South like most New Yorkers seem to. More people from the Northeast move South every year. They tend to be annoying, but some are nice.
Comment by TN — January 20, 2009 @ 6:16 pm
[...] I’ll say it again: “Redneck” is not synonymous with “bigot” or “racist,” and everyone, especially journalists like Brokaw and Stanley Crouch of the New York Daily News who should know better, need to stop using it as a slur. Jennerationx does a great job of taking Brokaw to task. Here’s an excerpt, but read the whole thing: The American redneck runs this country. We drive semis, we work in the fields, we fix cars, we work in grocery stores, department stores, pharmacies, car washes, mills, factories, mines, we work on the docks, the ships, the junkyards, we work as beauticians, as police as firefighters as nurses and construction workers. [...]
Pingback by The Enlightened Redneck » Tom Brokaw’s Cultural Ignorance — January 23, 2009 @ 2:18 pm
[...] organized that particular flea market fueled a misinformed media stereotype by equating the Confederate flag (and thus Southern bigotry) with being redneck. [...]
Pingback by The Enlightened Redneck » Manic Mother: The Poster Child Of Elitism — May 5, 2009 @ 8:56 pm
[...] “attempt to keep it redneck,” a phrase that Ellison subtly equated with racism, because “redneck” is not a synonym for “racist”, and celebrating Southern history is not necessarily [...]
Pingback by The Enlightened Redneck » Foolish Confederate Pride — April 8, 2010 @ 9:01 pm