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Posted on 04.05.10 by Danny Glover @ 7:04 am
American comedian Robin Williams sparked an international redneck incident last week, and BBC called little ol’ me to help set the world straight on all this fuss about rednecks. First the back story: In a March 30 appearance on David Letterman’s show, Williams mocked Australians as “English rednecks.” “You down there, ‘How are ya? Good to see you. Hello.’” he said in his worst Aussie accent. “I realized that if Darwin had landed in Australia, he would have gone: ‘I’m wrong.’” The jab didn’t set well with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who threw the redneck charge back at America. “I think Robin Williams should go and spend a bit of time in Alabama before he frames comments about anyone being particularly redneck,” he said in a radio interview. At that point, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley entered the rhetorical fray. “I’m not sure if Prime Minister Rudd has ever been to Alabama. If he has, he would know that Alabamians are decent, hard-working, creative people.” Here’s where I enter the picture: The back-and-forth over who is and isn’t a redneck caught the attention of BBC, and someone there found this Web site. Last Thursday, Alex Last of “The World Today” sent me this e-mail:
The next day BBC’s Leila Touwen recorded a telephone interview with me, and my “expert” insights into the state of being redneck aired yesterday. You can listen to BBC’s redneck segment here, starting at about the 20-minute, 40-second mark, but here’s what I told the British broadcaster:
I wish I had used “we” throughout the interview rather than “they” because I’m proud to be a redneck. I also wish I had emphasized that despite the word’s origins, rednecks work in both blue-collar and white-collar jobs, including journalism. One point I did make in the interview that BBC didn’t air is that rednecks can’t be pigeon-holed geographically. We live in Alabama, Australia and, yes, even England. I can’t help but wonder if BBC left that out so as not to offend any Brits who don’t want to be associated with America’s tea partiers, the targets of a steady stream of redneck hate these days. As for redneck bashers Williams and Rudd, Australia’s prime minister deserves more scorn. Williams may well be an elitist, but he’s also a comedian. He makes fun of people for a living, and rednecks are easy targets. We also know how to laugh at ourselves. Just ask redneck Jeff Foxworthy, who has amassed a small fortune poking good-hearted fun at himself, his kin and kindred spirits. Rudd’s jab at Alabamans, on the other hand, was more mean-spirited. He apparently doesn’t yet understand that two wrongs don’t make any elitist right about what we rednecks are. Filed under: Entertainment and Hatin' On Rednecks and News & Politics and People and Rednecks and Video Comments:
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My understanding was that a redneck was a Scotch-Irish immigrant to the rural South, particularly Appalachia, who brought with him a certain cultural pattern that has persisted for a long time — its most striking modern manifestation being, oddly, poor urban black culture.
Or maybe Thomas Sowell is full of it. You decide.
Comment by Vader — April 5, 2010 @ 10:22 am
I am a redneck, and proud of it. A redneck is a working person, and it is a culture. A Culture much despised by academics and the Media.
Ruggedly individualistic, honorable, decent folks. Hard working, value content of a man’s character more thn his Bank Account. Values a persons deeds more then their status of birth. It is the american culture. IT is the culture that has fought our battles, grown our food, worked in our factories, and always gone where no one has gone before; we were always at the forefront of the push west. we are the (increasingly un-) silent majority and if it were not for our distaste of “Joining” we would not be in the shape we are in politically in this country.
Comment by KOOK — April 5, 2010 @ 10:35 am
The term ‘redneck’ is a racial slur. It was used by wealthy white Anglo planters to denigrate the poor Scot-Irish immigrants to the South who worked their own fields, and hense, had sunburned necks. The slurs laid on the white working southern men are more or less identical to those the English have laid on the Irish for as long as we have record. Like many racial slurs, it has been appropriated by its targets and wielded as a badge of honor, something that in the case of ‘redneck’ is really easy to do, since the term is meant to demean those that work over those that have slaves work for them.
Comment by celebrim — April 5, 2010 @ 10:43 am
As an educated redneck, and very proud of my heritage of hard working Americans who immigrated legally, you are wrong about one thing. Jeff Foxworthy, by my standards, has amassed a pretty large fortune. And God bless him for that, by the way.
He says that being a redneck implies simply a glorious lack of sophistication. I agree with that. Because, you see, most “sophistication” is nothing more than a way of speaking or acting that some elitist has come up with in order to keep the members of the working class in their place. And I despise and reject every bit of it.
Comment by Letalis Maximus, Esq. — April 5, 2010 @ 10:48 am
You are wrong about the origin of the term “redneck.” It was first used to describe the striking coalminers in WV. They were battling private armies financed by the owners of the coal mines. When they formed their own militia their “uniform” consisted of a red bandana tied around their necks, thus the perjorative “red neck” to describe these low income, rowdy miners.
Comment by Scott — April 5, 2010 @ 10:50 am
I believe the term is also often paired with “upland-southerners.”
Comment by Alex — April 5, 2010 @ 10:52 am
This is where the definition has taken a wrong turn..Redneck is not an “all or nothing” proposition. A lot of people view themselves as “part-time” rednecks, or (insert number here) __% redneck. That is why southern rock or C/W music is so popular, even with people who have never been to Alabama :-)
Comment by Tommy K — April 5, 2010 @ 10:57 am
Rudd can’t be blamed for not understanding the nuances of American English. The only connotation of the word he knows is the elitist connotation by which redneck is used to label someone in a derogatory fashion. That’s how it is used by our elitist coastal leaders and their lapdogs in the press. Someone ought to educate Mr. Rudd a bit. He might learn to embrace the term.
Comment by pendejo grande — April 5, 2010 @ 11:28 am
In Texas, the definition of redneck gets narrower the smaller the town you’re in is. It’s usually reserved for white trash - meth heads who sit on welfare and buy flowmaster 2 chamber exhausts for their early 90’s F-series.
Comment by seguin — April 5, 2010 @ 11:35 am
Look at the movie “Don’t Mess With the Zohan.” Who is the common enemy that binds even Israelis and Palestinians? Lower than pond scum? American Rednecks, of course.
Comment by moptop — April 5, 2010 @ 11:38 am
Redneck is at the opposite end of the spectrum to the uppity social and political elite.
It is the rural to the urban… it is the genuine to the pretentious.
I’ve lived both the rural and urban culture and find rednecks to be the better lot. We are most often humble (except when we’re showing off), we admit our faults; we are not quick to judge and don’t wander around with the faux notion that everyone else is an idiot.
Common sense abounds in OUR world but it is largely abolished by the social elite… and we want just what we earn to dispose of as we see fit instead of believing we can and should spend the earnings of others because we know better than they do.
Our world of work/reward and charity is simple… not a complex labyrinth of convolutions made to rationalize a warped zero-sum world-view that makes people subordinate to their government and not the other way around.
We laugh at ourselves and we laugh with our buddies when we all do something stupid; instead of living lives of bitter pompous disdain for those considered inferior by the ‘elite’.
We do cling to our guns and our bibles; but it’s not because we feel disaffected… it is because these are core to our culture… and because we like them and fear we may need them to protect against culture’s destruction and dismantling by people who skipped over common-sense and have never learned enough to know how little they know.
Redneck is best defined by what it is not. We prefer self-reliance to dependence…. and we’d appreciate if you’d keep your pompous, pretentious, high-minded but failed liberal culture of high taxes and low liberty contained to the many urban hell-holes already left in this rancid ideology’s wake.
Comment by JimmyNashville — April 5, 2010 @ 11:46 am
@2
“2.You are wrong about the origin of the term “redneck.” It was first used to describe the striking coalminers in WV.”
Actually it was used considerably before then, and in fact used in the context the author gave as early as 1893 as shown here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck
There reference to WV coal miners accurred in 1921.
The authors use of the word, is also the predominant usage.
Comment by brad — April 5, 2010 @ 11:49 am
the New England version of “red neck” is”swamp yankee”
Comment by Don — April 5, 2010 @ 11:51 am
We rednecks* grow and ship the food, produce and refine the gasoline and heating fuel, produce the electricity, build the houses and roads, provide the police, the fire department, and the military with personnel, fix the leaky faucets and replace the burned out lightbulbs, change the oil, haul away the trash, and do pretty much everything else that’s required to keep the infrastructure of this country running. Our coastal elites are desperately dependent on us while we need them hardly at all.
If I were a psychologist I’d suggest they know that — at least those aware enough not to think that milk comes from the grocery store and electricity from the socket on the wall — and they hate us for it. They hate their dependency and they fear what would happen if we ever just got fed up with them.
But that’s okay. Machiavelli observed that it’s better to be loved and feared, but if you can’t achieve both it’s far better to be feared than loved.
*Truth be told, I’m too lazy to be a redneck. But I’m a pickup drivin’ gun-totin’ red meat-eatin’ hippie, which I figure is close enough.
Comment by Swen Swenson — April 5, 2010 @ 11:52 am
Yes, but can a black man be a redneck? I don’t know about that…
Comment by taylorbad — April 5, 2010 @ 11:59 am
The term has nothing to do with coal miners, or working in the sun, or sunburn. It goes all the way back to England in the seventeenth century, and was a term used to describe Presbyterians from the borderlands between England and Scotland, who wore red collars. They were the people who later emigrated to Ulster and then America and became called the Scots-Irish. Read “Albion’s Seed” by David Hackett Fischer for the actual origin.
Comment by Rand Simberg — April 5, 2010 @ 12:08 pm
I love Aussies, and Williams’ comments just make me like them more. I’m a Mississippi redneck and all the Aussies I’ve met in my travels around the world share the basic redneck values (even if topless beaches might not work out in SC and MS).
I wonder if Rudd is as disconnected from his people as Obama?
Comment by Salt Lick — April 5, 2010 @ 12:35 pm
I’d say Justice Clarence Thomas might be considered a “Redneck” as could Dr. Walter Williams.
Comment by Ralph Gizzip — April 5, 2010 @ 12:38 pm
Ok, if you’re so smart, what’s a “peckerwood”? How about a “cracker”? maybe “trailer trash” rings a bell?
Comment by mojo — April 5, 2010 @ 12:41 pm
Alabama Gov. Bob Riley entered the rhetorical fray. “I’m not sure if Prime Minister Rudd has ever been to Alabama. If he has, he would know that Alabamians are decent, hard-working, creative people.”
Meaning rednecks are not “decent, hard-working, creative people”?
They demonized Bush as a cowboy, not knowing that a whole lot of us love cowboys. They demonize rednecks, not knowing that a whole lot of us appreciate their ruggedness, individuality, and independence. I bet there are less rednecks taking taxpayers’ money than the politicians and their cohorts.
Comment by ic — April 5, 2010 @ 12:51 pm
Ah, yes, Australia is making fun of Alabama… Hey, Prime Minister Rudd, how many Saturn V’s has Australia produced?
Comment by Martin L. Shoemaker — April 5, 2010 @ 1:00 pm
This topic is something that will always plague us, namely, talking about people as groups. It will inevitably involve stereotypes and stereotypes are mostly inaccurate since we’re all individuals with complex personal histories and genes. But it also involves individuals identifying with a group and often embracing the stereotypical myth as the truth and being proud to have those qualities. It’s a sort of feedback system where the myth creates the reality, and the set of people who conform to the stereotypes exist and endure.
Comment by Muggins — April 5, 2010 @ 1:05 pm
My favorite part of the whole thing is the BBC news reader telling us that the “mayor of Alabama” was upset about the prime minister’s remarks.
Ah, the BBC World Service. How I’ve missed your appalling ignorance of the US.
Comment by Brn — April 5, 2010 @ 1:11 pm
Have another snort, Mork.
I have a hard time taking anything this man says seriously.
Comment by Constitution First — April 5, 2010 @ 1:17 pm
You’ll not find a more accurate definition of redneck than in the “Encyclopedia of Southern Culture”. U of Miss. press
Comment by harold montgomery — April 5, 2010 @ 1:28 pm
Alabamans might well blame Bertolt Brecht. And you know why.
As a philological note, in northwest Ohio 13 families of French-and-Indian Quebeckers flat boated to the marshes in the 1840’s and “settled” the area as trappers, hunters and subsistence farmers. Descendants of better-capitalized Germans, who cleared and drained that land a long generation later, called those rural Catholics “rednecks” well into the 1960’s.
As any Ohio countryman can tell you, marsh-rabbit has a pelt prettier than mink, is good eating if you fix it right, and is defined by the diocese as a fish for purposes of Lenten fasting. Dickens called us all “sullen and clownish.”
Comment by comatus — April 5, 2010 @ 1:32 pm
An even earlier possible usage of the term “redneck” is the Scottish Covenanters who rejected the elite church. “In Scotland in the 1640s the Covenanters rejected rule by bishops, often signing manifestos using their own blood. Some wore red cloth around their neck to signify their position, and were called rednecks, but there was no derogatory implication.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck#Scottish_Covenanter_usage
The common thread of all usage of the term “redneck” is rugged individualism. “Redneck” is part of what makes us Americans. Wouldn’t be surprised if other parts of the Anglosphere like Australia have some redneck in their culture too.
Comment by George B — April 5, 2010 @ 1:44 pm
I am a redneck …
… a high-tech redneck with an engineering degree …
… currently serving as an ambassador of Flyover Country culture to the over-civilized on Long Island.
We are everywhere … and thriving … and now that the Best and Brightest who set themselves above as our “betters” are being exposed in public as the Dim Bulbs and Dem Lites they are, we are in a position to convince others that the trappings of academia and media imagry do not equate to wisdom.
Comment by Ritchie The Riveter — April 5, 2010 @ 1:46 pm
The oldest reference known to me of what came to be known a redneck comes from Walter Edgar’s book Partisans and Redcoats.
“This is a very fruitful Spot thro’ which the dividing Line between North and South Carolina runs—The Heads of P.D [Pee Dee] River, Lynch’s Creek and many other Creeks take their Rise in this Quarter—so that a finer Body of Land is no where be seen—But it is occupied by a Sett of the most lowest vilest Crew breathing — Scotch Irish Presbyterians from the North of Ireland.
REVEREND CHARLES WOODMASON , 25 JANUARY 1767″
(the English had a spot of trouble with these folks in the following two decades)
Comment by tmitsss — April 5, 2010 @ 2:00 pm
“It’s usually reserved for white trash”
And is used by the Left the same way the n-word is for black trash.
What an amazing blindspot the “tolerant enlightened sophisticated” Left has.
Comment by Fen — April 5, 2010 @ 2:36 pm
For me, the defining characteristic of a “redneck” is the all but total absence of artificiality for its own sake.
Check out, say, the French nobility of the middle 1700s [or movies about them -- Dangerous Liaisons] for good examples.
Studied artificiality is one of those self-defining identifiers for the “idler” classes and those sycophants who surround them. OF course they hate rednecks who just laugh at the ignorant pretentiousness of such slackers.
Comment by JorgXMcKie — April 5, 2010 @ 5:13 pm
“Redneck” is both a racial slur and a label to be used proudly BY rednecks. If you aren’t a redneck, you can’t use the word without being a racist. As a redneck, honky, cornpone, I am happy to use the word in conversations with other rednecks. You elitist city slicker snobs can mind your own business though…
Comment by Mike Lorrey — April 5, 2010 @ 6:13 pm
[...] Glover, the Enlightened Redneck explains to the BBC what it means to be a redneck. Here’s the back story: First the back story: In a March 30 appearance on David Letterman’s show, Williams mocked [...]
Pingback by Enlightened Redneck: Robin Williams Sparks “International Redneck Incident” | Liberty Pundits dot net — April 5, 2010 @ 9:25 pm
It took all the way to comment #27 for someone to come up with the true origin of where REDNECK comes from. One would think someone who brands themselves as enlightened Redneck would know the history. It is important history with a great deal of bearing on why so many Scots-Irish supported the Revolutionary War. Please read up on the Covenanters. It was war between the English Anglican church and the Scots Presbyterian church, it was the Scots church pledging their blood to ensure their religious freedom as well as the beliefs of John Knox, founder of the Presbyterian church, that the monarch did not have absolute authority, only God had that. During this particular time frame in England people were banned from reading the Bible on their own, and those found carrying a bible were actually arrested and killed. It was the Scots Presbyterians who fought against this. Did you realize that in the late 1600’s more than 80% of lowland Scotland could read because it was so important to them to be able to read the Bible on their own, without a Priest telling them what it said and meant?
Even today Scots Presbyterian Pastors wear a red collar instead of the traditional white of Episcopal/Anglican and Catholic Priests.
What a crying shame you did not know the real history and thus could have shared where so much of stubborn American independence comes from. Not to mention the fact that the New England English continued to dislike the Scots as much as they did in the old country. Funny some things just never change much. The old prigs believed themselves better and smarter in the old country and more 400 years later their descendants still cling to the old belief, while folks who don’t know their own history do nothing to disabuse them of their ignorance.
Real crying shame.
Comment by Grace O'Malley — April 5, 2010 @ 11:00 pm
By the way, it may interest you that in Ireland those Scots that went to Northern Ireland and supported William Prince of Orange against the Catholics were called Billy Boys, and when those same people moved to this country into Appalachia they were derisively called Hill Billies. Billy Boys who moved into the hills and hollers. In Northern Ireland they are still called Billy Boys as well as Orangemen.
Comment by Grace O'Malley — April 5, 2010 @ 11:03 pm
Sorry Robin Williams. Sorry Alabama.
We Aussies really do have a sense of humour!
Unfortunately, our Prime Minister, Rudd, is a thin-skinned humourless nancy boy.
Comment by ekb87 — April 6, 2010 @ 12:05 am
The joke is that Charles Darwin DID visit Australia. In fact, the capital of the Northern Territory is ‘Darwin’. Kevin Rudd should have known this.
And yes, #17, Mr. Rudd is rather disconnected from the people, though he is still quite popular.
Comment by Andrew Parle — April 6, 2010 @ 12:44 am
Indeed Rudd needs more scorn heaped on him.
Down here in Australia we get told by Rudd spin people of his humble upbringing on a farm where his family were sharecroppers.
Rudd is the only red neck that is indeed bad to the bone, that is, the social climbing red neck who forgets who his people are.
Comment by gubbaboy — April 6, 2010 @ 1:13 am
Oh come on. This whole website is an instance of “reappropriation” of a derogatory term to disarm those that would use it to discriminate etc. Like “queer” and “gay” etc. To those who don’t buy post modern crap, “redneck” is a derogatory term. Google image it for pictures of white, toothless, rural Americans with dead cars in front of their house and a chicken cooking in coca cola.
But then generalising is stupid, and probably many such people also display, variously, many of the positive traits mentioned above. Humans are like that. I would love to visit Alabama. Git somma that chicken!
Also current usage is US English only. We don’t have “rednecks” in Australia. We have things like “bogans”, “cockies” and “Tasmanians”. In the UK they have “yobbos” and “chavs” etc. All similar, but none of the map perfectly. Countries and languages are like that.
Also Robin Williams is a saccharine jerk, the BBC’s ignorance is a travesty though funny, and please, PLEASE understand that there are many Australians who are embarrassed to the point of physical pain at the pasty-faced, prissy, ignorant, pompous, self-centred, megalomaniacal and profligate little prat we somehow ended up with as Prime Minister.
Comment by Ooh Honey Honey — April 6, 2010 @ 1:48 am
Rudd is an ignorant little man with a glass jaw and no sense of humour! He suffers with a malady common to Australian men: premature prognostication!
Comment by Gravelly — April 6, 2010 @ 2:57 am
As an Australian, I didn’t take the slightest offence at Robin William’s comments. I am however upset that our Prime Minister lowered the status of his position by even passing comment.
It’s as banal as the US President appearing on Saturday Night Live and the fact politicians get involved in this sort of activity is a worry…
Comment by Dan Lewis — April 6, 2010 @ 3:12 am
As an Australian I can tell you, yes Rudd is popular, but with who? Dumb people, parasites, welfare cheats, government workers, the “intelligencia”, In other words people he doles out a few dollars to. Personally I’m embarrased we have such an awful Prime Minister.
Comment by Austin — April 6, 2010 @ 5:11 am
A hard working, freedom loving, redneck is hands down a better citizen, and more congenial person than a socialist elitist, especially of the Hollywood bully pulpit ilk.
Comment by Forrest — April 6, 2010 @ 1:07 pm
The whole of the South is not noted for many Nobel Prize winners, but is noted for mind dumbing poverty, extreme Protestant Capitalism and inequality.
Comment by jack snyder — April 6, 2010 @ 1:09 pm
“extreme Protestant Capitalism”
So it’s not all bad then?
Comment by Ooh Honey Honey — April 6, 2010 @ 2:39 pm
hello yankies, pay no attention to that rudd… he is a twerp on steroids.
he is the greatest imbecile we have ever had as prime minister and the most annoying… apparently he used to be bullied at school (understandable) and now he is taking his revenge on the world.
Comment by stink foot — April 6, 2010 @ 6:02 pm
Just ignore Rudd. He is a nothing failure.
His only abilities are to lie with great aplomb and to con the public.
I could say “don’t judge Australians by Rudd” but cannot, since the people elected him.
Comment by kevin — April 6, 2010 @ 9:23 pm
@ #17 Salt Lick:
>I wonder if Rudd is as disconnected from his
> people as Obama?
Disconnection doesn’t even come close to describing the man. As an aussie, let me assure you that Krudd doesn’t speak for the vast majority of us, is a woeful embarrassment to our country, and that no real aussies were offended by Williams’ comments. I laughed at it along with my friends.
What I would say to any Americans who see this is, “Would you like to be judged by how your politicians behave?” Neither do we! :-)
Comment by Mark — April 6, 2010 @ 11:13 pm
The use of the term “redneck” is a chance for usually left liberal phony’s to be as racist and bigoted as self loathing moral and vanity driven as such left liberals actually are. They just deny and project it onto others. Left liberals love to hate white Christian working class Americans and any useful stand in for their endless enemies list. No really. Go figure. Colonel Neville.
Comment by Colonel Neville — April 7, 2010 @ 5:27 am
As an Asuuie, I can say that we (or at least most of us) know that K. Rudd is a humourless git. Now most of the world knows too. Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for him!
Comment by Justin — April 7, 2010 @ 8:29 am
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Pingback by Rednecks « Cut and Shoot — April 7, 2010 @ 9:45 am
Although no doubt there are actually some more “enlightened” rednecks, I’d sure love to come across ‘em. Although if they identify with such strong cultural values as drinking, fighting, clannishness, a distaste for education and for “joining” (including community & civic improvement organizations), a distrust of “outsiders”, and a general sense of “entitlement” as being the “original & true” Americans… well, somehow that’s just not what I envision when I think of “enlightened”. In fact put all that together, and it’s more likely to resemble typical jingoisms like the afore-mentioned, “Left liberals love to hate white Christian working class Americans and any useful stand in for their endless enemies list.”
Regardless, I agree it is part of a distinctive culture, and it would be great if we all came to regard it as such. Yett if they’re so proud of it, how they’ve never come up with an acceptable name for themselves like every other ethnic and cultural group? “Ulster-Scots” is probably the most technically accurate term. But in the absence of any self-identity for “outsiders”, instead they always ending having (unflattering) labels assigned to them (i.e. Rednecks, Poor Whites, Trailer Trash, Okies, Crackers, etc.).
Comment by Mateo — August 6, 2010 @ 10:23 pm
[...] me about the meaning of the word redneck. I owe it all to comedian Robin Williams, whose jab at Australia as the home of English rednecks triggered an Australian attack on [...]
Pingback by The Enlightened Redneck » The War Of Redneck Aggression — August 23, 2010 @ 10:58 pm