''Redneck'' is a historically derogatory slang term used in reference to poor white farmers in the Southern United States. It is similar in meaning to ''cracker'' (especially regarding Georgia and Alabama), ''hillbilly'' (especially regarding Appalachia and the Ozarks), and ''white trash'' (but without the last term's suggestions of immorality).

In recent decades, the term expanded its meaning to mean bigoted, loutish, and opposed to modern ways, and has often been used to attack Southern conservatives and racists. At the same time, some Southern whites have reclaimed the word, using it with pride and defiance as a self-identifier.

Political term for poor farmers

The term characterized farmers having a red neck caused by sunburn from hours working in the fields. A citation from 1893 provides a definition as "poorer inhabitants of the rural districts...men who work in the field, as a matter of course, generally have their skin stained red and burnt by the sun, and especially is this true of the back of their necks".

By 1900, "rednecks" was in common use to designate the political coalitions (Democratic Party) of the poor white farmers in the South. The same group was also often called the "wool hat boys" (for they opposed the rich men, who wore expensive silk hats). A newspaper notice in Mississippi in August 1891 called on rednecks to rally at the polls at the upcoming primary election:

By 1910, the political supporters of the Mississippi Democratic Party politician James K. Vardaman—chiefly poor white farmers—began to describe themselves proudly as "rednecks," even to the point of wearing red neckerchiefs to political rallies and picnics.

By the 1970s, the term had turned into offensive slang and had expanded its meaning to mean bigoted, loutish and opposed to modern ways, and was often used as a term to attack Southern white conservatives and racists.

Coal miners

The United Mine Workers of America (UMW) and rival miners' unions appropriated both the term redneck and its literal manifestation, the red bandana, in order to build multiracial unions of white, black, and immigrant miners in the strike-ridden coalfields of northern and central Appalachia between 1912 and 1936. The origin of redneck to mean "a union man" or "a striker" remains uncertain, but according to linguist David W. Maurer, the former definition of the word probably dates at least to the 1910s, if not earlier. The use of redneck to designate "a union member" was especially popular during the 1920s and 1930s in the coal-producing regions of southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and western Pennsylvania, where the word came to be specifically applied to a miner who belonged to a union.

The term can be found throughout McAllister Coleman and Stephen Raushenbush's 1936 socialist proletarian novel, ''Red Neck,'' which recounts the story of a charismatic union leader named Dave Houston and an unsuccessful strike by his fellow union miners in the fictional coalfield town of Laurel, Pennsylvania. The word's varied usage can be seen in the following two examples from the book. "I'm not much to be proud of," Houston admits to his admiring girlfriend Madge in one scene. "I'm just a red necked miner like the rest." In another scene, a police captain curses Houston as a "God-damned red neck" during a fruitless jailhouse interrogation, before savagely beating him with a sawed-off chair-leg.

The earliest printed uses of the word red-neck in a coal-mining context date from the 1912-1913 Paint and Cabin Creeks strike in southern West Virginia and from the 1913-1914 Trinidad District strike in southern Colorado. It is not known where the term originated. UMW national organizers quite possibly transported "redneck" from one section of the country to the other. Then again, its popularizers may have been agents of the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency, an industrial espionage and mine security company headquartered in Bluefield, West Virginia, which supplied company guards and spies in both the West Virginia and the Colorado strikes. What is relatively certain, however, is that it originated as a negative epithet. Apparently, coal operators, company guards, non-union miners, and strikebreakers were among the first to use the term "redneck" in a labor context when they derided union miners with the slur. According to industrial folklorist George Korson, non-union miners derisively called strikers "rednecks" in the Appalachian coalfields, while slurring them as "sweaters" in Oklahoma and the southwestern coalfields. It is possible that redneck emerged in strike-ridden coalfields to mean "union miner" independently of its use in the deep south. Clearly, the best explanation of redneck to mean "union man" is that the word refers to the red handkerchiefs that striking union coal miners in both southern West Virginia and southern Colorado often wore around their necks or arms as a part of their informal uniform.

Late 20th and early 21st century

Late 20th century writers Edward Abbey and Dave Foreman use "redneck" as a political call to mobilize poor rural white Southerners. "In Defense of the Redneck" was a popular essay by Ed Abbey. One popular early Earth First! bumper sticker was "Rednecks for Wilderness." Murray Bookchin, an urban leftist and social ecologist, objected strongly to Earth First!'s use of the term as "at the very least, insensitive."

But many members of the Southern community have proudly embraced the term as a self-identifier. Among those who dispute that the term is disparaging, Canadian Paul Brandt, a self-identified redneck, says that primarily the term indicates independence.

Popular culture

The Grand Ole Opry and ''Hee Haw'' are popular entertainments from years past, and they, as well as entertainers Hank Williams, Grandpa Jones and Jerry Clower, have seen lasting popularity within the redneck community. Entertainers like Minnie Pearl used homespun comedy as much as music to create a lasting persona, and musicians like Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt appeared on shows such as ''The Beverly Hillbillies'', lending credence to broad humor about uncomplicated rural Americans. According to James C. Cobb, a history professor at the University of Georgia, the redneck comedian "provided a rallying point for bourgeois and lower-class whites alike. With his front-porch humor and politically outrageous bons mots, the redneck comedian created an illusion of white equality across classes."

Johnny Russell was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1973 for his recording of "Rednecks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer," parlaying the "common touch" into financial and critical success. ''Rednecks'' is a song by Randy Newman, the lead-off track on his 1974 album ''Good Old Boys''. Country music singer Gretchen Wilson titled one of her songs "Redneck Woman" on her 2004 album ''Here for the Party''.

In recent years, the comedy of Jeff Foxworthy, Ron White, Bill Engvall, and Larry the Cable Guy has become popular through the "Blue Collar Comedy Tour" and ''Blue Collar TV''. Foxworthy's 1993 comedy album ''You Might Be a Redneck If...'' cajoled listeners to evaluate their own behavior in the context of stereotypical redneck behavior, and resulted in more mainstream usage of the term.

Historical use

There is an historic use that is no longer currently used.

Scottish Covenanter usage

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 by the English ruling class to denote that they were the rebels in what came to be known as The Bishop's War that preceded the rise of Cromwell. Eventually, the term began to mean simply "Presbyterian", especially in communities along the Scottish border. Because of the large number of Scottish immigrants in the pre-revolutionary American south, some historians have suggested that this may be the origin of the term in the United States.

Dictionaries document the earliest American citation of the term's use for Presbyterians in 1830, as "a name bestowed upon the Presbyterians of Fayetteville [North Carolina]".

See also

Yokel

Culture of the Southern United States

List of ethnic slurs

References

Sources

Abbey, Edward. "In Defense of the Redneck", from ''Abbey's Road: Take the Other''. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979

Goad, Jim. ''The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America's Scapegoats'', New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997

West, Stephen A. ''From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850–1915'' (2008)

Weston, Ruth D. "The Redneck Hero in the Postmodern World", ''South Carolina Review'', Spring 1993

Wilson, Charles R. and William Ferris, eds. ''Encyclopedia of Southern Culture'', (1989)

Wray, Matt. ''Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness'' (2006)

External links

Poor Whites — The Georgia Encyclopedia (history)

Category:American culture Category:Social groups Category:Culture of the Southern United States Category:Pejorative terms for people Category:Stereotypes Category:Ethnic and religious slurs Category:American folklore Category:History of subcultures Category:Social class subcultures Category:American regional nicknames Category:American slang Category:Slang of the Southern United States Category:Rural culture

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Jeffrey Marshall "Jeff" Foxworthy (born September 6, 1958) is an American comedian, television and radio personality and author. He is a member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, a comedy troupe which also comprises Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall and Ron White. Known for his "''you might be a redneck''" one-liners, Foxworthy has released six major-label comedy albums. His first two albums were each certified 3×multi-Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. Foxworthy has also written several books based on his redneck jokes, as well as an autobiography entitled ''No Shirt, No Shoes... No Problem!''.

Foxworthy has also made several ventures into television, first in the mid-1990s as the star of a sitcom called, ''The Jeff Foxworthy Show''. He has also appeared alongside Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy in several Blue Collar television specials, most notably ''Blue Collar TV''. Since 2007, he has been the host of the quiz show ''Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?'' on Fox (2007–09) and syndication (2009–present). Foxworthy hosted a nationally syndicated radio show called ''The Foxworthy Countdown'' from April 1999 to December 2009. He has then became a part-time shark on Shark Tank (TV Series).

Early life

Foxworthy was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the first child of Jimmy Abstance Foxworthy, an IBM executive, and Carole Linda (Camp) Foxworthy. His grandfather, James Marvin Camp, was a fireman in Hapeville for more than 30 years.

Foxworthy graduated from Hapeville High School. He attended Georgia Tech in Atlanta and graduated in 1979. He worked for five years in mainframe computer maintenance at IBM (where his father also worked). At the urging of IBM co-workers, he entered and won the Great Southeastern Laugh-off, at Atlanta's Punchline comedy club, in 1984.

Career

Comedy albums

Foxworthy received the award for "Best Stand-Up Comic" at the 1990 American Comedy Awards.

In 1993, he released ''You Might Be a Redneck If…'', which started the "You Might Be a Redneck" fad, topped the comedy album charts and sold more than three million copies.

His July 1995 release, ''Games Rednecks Play'', received a 1996 Grammy nomination for "Best Spoken Comedy Album".

''Totally Committed'' was released in May 1998. In conjunction with the CD was a one-hour HBO stand-up special by the same name. The CD reached "gold" status and received a 1999 Grammy Award nomination. The video of the song, ''Totally Committed'' featured frequent references to then-Atlanta Braves pitcher, Greg Maddux as well as an appearance at the very end by Maddux himself (along with teammate, John Smoltz).

In 2001, he received a nomination for "Best Spoken Comedy Album" at the 43rd Annual Grammys.

Foxworthy hosted Country Weekly's ""TNN Music City News Country Awards" show for 1998, 1999 and 2000.

Television

In 1995, he starred in ''The Jeff Foxworthy Show'', a sitcom created out of his stand-up comedy persona. It aired on ABC, but was canceled after one season. NBC subsequently picked up the show, but it was again canceled after one season. Foxworthy later remarked that the network did not understand how to properly market his humor; thinking his routine was "too Southern" for a national network ("Has anyone heard me talk?", he commented in one of his stand-up routines), they based the first season of his sitcom in Bloomington, Indiana. The show later aired on Nick at Nite and CMT in 2005 and 2006. He also appeared in Alan Jackson's video for I Don't Even Know Your Name in 1995.

Foxworthy hosted the game show ''Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?'' which aired on Fox in prime time. He hosted the syndicated version of the show from September 21, 2009 until its cancellation on March 24, 2011. In addition, he is a host on ''The Bucks of Tecomate'' which airs on Versus with Alabama native David Morris.

Jeff will also be a potential investor on about half of the next edition of the ABC reality series, Shark Tank, where moneyed entrepreneurs decide if they will invest in new products, ideas and the like from those requesting funding in exchange for a percentage of ownership.

He was the subject of a Comedy Central Roast in 2005.

Blue collar comedy

In the early 2000s, Foxworthy had a career resurgence as a result of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, in which he and three other comedians (Larry the Cable Guy, Ron White, and Bill Engvall), specializing in common-man comedy, toured the country and performed for record crowds. The tour lasted three full years, constantly being extended after an initial run of 20 shows.

In 2004, he launched a new television show called ''Blue Collar TV'' on The WB Television Network, Comedy Central, and Comedy Network (2007). He served as executive producer, and starred alongside Blue Collar Comedy Tour-mates Larry the Cable Guy and Bill Engvall. (Ron White turned the show down but made occasional guest appearances). The show was relatively successful compared to the anemic performance of the WB's other sitcoms. On Larry the Cable Guy's website, he posted that the show was canceled on October 17, 2005 by WB. Reruns of ''Blue Collar TV'' continued until the network merged with UPN to form The CW.

Jeff resurrected the ''Blue Collar TV'' format (albeit with only himself participating along with some of the Blue Collar TV co-hosts) on Country Music Television (CMT) with ''Foxworthy's Big Night Out''. The show began airing in summer 2006 and was cancelled after one season.

Books

Foxworthy has authored several books, including ''You Might Be a Redneck If...'' (1989), as well as his autobiography, ''No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem!'' (1996). Artist Layron DeJarnette provided illustrations for the Redneck Dictionary books. R. David Boyd has been the exclusive illustrator for most of Foxworthy's books and album covers.

He also has released a cookbook entitled ''The Redneck Grill'', co-authored with Newnan, Georgia artist R. David Boyd, and "''Redneck Extreme Mobile Home Makeover''" (2005), a book with some of his redneck jokes.

His books are:

''Jeff Foxworthy's Redneck Dictionary: Words You Thought You Knew the Meaning Of'' (2005)

''Jeff Foxworthy's Redneck Dictionary II: More Words You Thought You Knew the Meaning Of'' (2006)

''Jeff Foxworthy's Redneck Dictionary III: Learning to Talk More Gooder Fastly'' (30 Oct 7)

''Rednecks In College''

In February 2008, Foxworthy released his first children's book, ''Dirt On My Shirt''. This was followed by ''Silly Street'' in 2009 and ''Hide!!!'' in 2010, both of which were illustrated by Steve Bjorkman.

In May 2008, Foxworthy released ''How to Really Stink at Golf'', with co-author Brian Hartt and illustrations by Layron DeJarnette. In May 2009 he released ''How to Really Stink at Work, A Guide to Making Yourself Fire-Proof While Having the Most Fun Possible''. This book was also co-authored with Brian Hartt.

Radio work

In April 1999, Foxworthy began ''The Foxworthy Countdown'', a nationally syndicated, weekly radio show, which featured the top 30 country hits of the week, as reported by ''Mediabase''. He received a Country Music Association nomination, in 2001, for "Broadcast Personality of the Year". The program's last broadcast, the 2009 year-end countdown, aired the weekend of December 27, 2009. Blue Collar Comedy Radio airs on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 103 and is associated with Raw Dog Comedy on Sirius 104.

Personal life

Foxworthy has been married to Pamela Gregg since September 18, 1985 and has two daughters, Jordan (born in 1992) and Julianne (born in 1994). A noted hunting enthusiast, Foxworthy has appeared as host and featured guest on several programs on the Outdoor Channel and Versus. Foxworthy is also a devout Christian, and performed stand-up at a Young Life conference.

Discography

Foxworthy has released five comedy albums for Warner Bros. Records as well as one for DreamWorks Records. One of his albums included the novelty Christmas song "Redneck 12 Days of Christmas", which reached number 18 on the Hot Country Songs charts in late 1995-early 1996.

See also

List of stand-up comedians

List of game show hosts

Notes

References

Gilbert, Calvin (1998). "Jeff Foxworthy". In ''The Encyclopedia of Country Music''. Paul Kingsbury, Editor. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 180–1.

External links

Jeff Foxworthy Interview on The Big Idea w/Donny Deutsch

WB">''The Jeff Foxworthy Show'' on The WB

Category:1958 births Category:Living people Category:Actors from Georgia (U.S. state) Category:American Christians Category:American game show hosts Category:American Protestants Category:American radio personalities Category:American stand-up comedians Category:American voice actors Category:Children's writers Category:Georgia Institute of Technology alumni Category:People from Atlanta, Georgia Category:Warner Bros. Records artists

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