Rednecks
One of our copy editors speaks English as a second language, and she often has difficulty with idioms and nuances. Friday, she asked aloud whether "redneck" was an insult.
Several of us explained, by way of answer, that it depends on who's using it and how. I added that, however, rednecks were the one ethnic group that could safely be mocked in the U.S. in a mainstream newspaper without popular censure.
This was one too many for my Chomskyite colleague, who shot back that redneck was a "lifestyle choice," not an ethnicity. I thought of a reply to that, but I held my tongue, in part because I didn't feel like Getting Into It on a Friday night, and in part because I hesitated because perhaps he was right about it not being an ethnicity, at least in most modern people's minds.
I have a bad habit of thinking historically in matters like this. And historically, "redneck" hews pretty close to "Appalachian Scots-Irish," which is an ethnicity. Just like "cracker," which was invented to describe the same ethnic group (out of a word from their dialect), it was used the way we might use "Arab" or "Indian" today. Not always with precision, but with a definite set of people in mind, bound by lineage and heritage.
In fact the very first surviving use of "redneck" in print is from the delightful early 19th century travel-bug Ann Royall, who defines it quite precisely as refering to "Presbyterians in Fayetteville," meaning, I think, Arkansas.
The same sort of person, in another part of 1830s America, from another background, would have been known by a different word. "Swamp Yankee" in Connecticut, perhaps, or "Canuck" up in Maine, or "shanty Irish."
"Redneck" implied something of a class (e.g. "poor white trash") as well as an ethnicity. Class and ethnicity often covered the same territory in the old days. "Hunkies" were steel-workers, but they were "Hungarians," too. The word probably is the source of the '60s black English slang "honky," the derogatory term for "white person."
Rednecks had "red necks" most likely because they were mule farmers who worked outdoors in the sun wearing a shirt and straw hat with their necks exposed. It obviously wouldn't apply to, for instance, blacks, be they slave or free.
Nowadays, I suppose, there can be black rednecks, as ironic as that is. "Redneck" seems to have taken on, in popular discourse, some of the un-ethnic qualities of "NASCAR dad." It is now identified with a set of values and tastes.
But I wonder. There's a way to disguise an ethnic slur by pretending to unmoor it from its ethnicity. Does anyone pretend to believe that the verb "jew" is a purely commercial construction having nothing to do with an intended slur? Or that to "welsh" on a bet shouldn't be taken in the wrong spirit by the Cymry?
I could be blinded by the history, but it seems to me that "redneck" retains an identity deeper than "executive" or "skinhead." For many people who wear the label, it's a cultural heritage, closer to what is represented by a religious background. After all, faith is a choice, too. To hear my Catholic-born friends talk about it, Catholicism is something you never really escape (hence the jocular term "recovering Catholic," borrowed from the language of AA). It's a matrix of experiences and a pattern of learned behaviors that help shape who you are. You can maneuver around them, but you can't really get rid of them.
At any rate, whether it's a choice, the way religion is, or an ethnicity, it doesn't seem fair to me to mock people based on that. I don't think my Chomskyite co-worker would be pleased if someone forwarded him a "dumb Muslim" jokes e-mail. And I don't think a political view that is based on damning America as the abode of exclusive white racism is serving itself well by simply reversing the formula by embracing a diversity that includes everyone but excludes rednecks.
Several of us explained, by way of answer, that it depends on who's using it and how. I added that, however, rednecks were the one ethnic group that could safely be mocked in the U.S. in a mainstream newspaper without popular censure.
This was one too many for my Chomskyite colleague, who shot back that redneck was a "lifestyle choice," not an ethnicity. I thought of a reply to that, but I held my tongue, in part because I didn't feel like Getting Into It on a Friday night, and in part because I hesitated because perhaps he was right about it not being an ethnicity, at least in most modern people's minds.
I have a bad habit of thinking historically in matters like this. And historically, "redneck" hews pretty close to "Appalachian Scots-Irish," which is an ethnicity. Just like "cracker," which was invented to describe the same ethnic group (out of a word from their dialect), it was used the way we might use "Arab" or "Indian" today. Not always with precision, but with a definite set of people in mind, bound by lineage and heritage.
In fact the very first surviving use of "redneck" in print is from the delightful early 19th century travel-bug Ann Royall, who defines it quite precisely as refering to "Presbyterians in Fayetteville," meaning, I think, Arkansas.
The same sort of person, in another part of 1830s America, from another background, would have been known by a different word. "Swamp Yankee" in Connecticut, perhaps, or "Canuck" up in Maine, or "shanty Irish."
"Redneck" implied something of a class (e.g. "poor white trash") as well as an ethnicity. Class and ethnicity often covered the same territory in the old days. "Hunkies" were steel-workers, but they were "Hungarians," too. The word probably is the source of the '60s black English slang "honky," the derogatory term for "white person."
Rednecks had "red necks" most likely because they were mule farmers who worked outdoors in the sun wearing a shirt and straw hat with their necks exposed. It obviously wouldn't apply to, for instance, blacks, be they slave or free.
Nowadays, I suppose, there can be black rednecks, as ironic as that is. "Redneck" seems to have taken on, in popular discourse, some of the un-ethnic qualities of "NASCAR dad." It is now identified with a set of values and tastes.
But I wonder. There's a way to disguise an ethnic slur by pretending to unmoor it from its ethnicity. Does anyone pretend to believe that the verb "jew" is a purely commercial construction having nothing to do with an intended slur? Or that to "welsh" on a bet shouldn't be taken in the wrong spirit by the Cymry?
I could be blinded by the history, but it seems to me that "redneck" retains an identity deeper than "executive" or "skinhead." For many people who wear the label, it's a cultural heritage, closer to what is represented by a religious background. After all, faith is a choice, too. To hear my Catholic-born friends talk about it, Catholicism is something you never really escape (hence the jocular term "recovering Catholic," borrowed from the language of AA). It's a matrix of experiences and a pattern of learned behaviors that help shape who you are. You can maneuver around them, but you can't really get rid of them.
At any rate, whether it's a choice, the way religion is, or an ethnicity, it doesn't seem fair to me to mock people based on that. I don't think my Chomskyite co-worker would be pleased if someone forwarded him a "dumb Muslim" jokes e-mail. And I don't think a political view that is based on damning America as the abode of exclusive white racism is serving itself well by simply reversing the formula by embracing a diversity that includes everyone but excludes rednecks.
Labels: journalism
