What It Means to Be a 'Redneck' or a 'Hillbilly'

Vice Newsletter ^ | Apr 29 2016, 12:00am | Stacy Kranitz

[Salamander]

Nah.

All Scots/Irish/Welsh/Danish.

Outen here is like iffen and a’walkin.

We’re generally incomprehensible.

:D

[Salamander]

*I just used “hogs ate ‘im” in a reply and it was not recognized.

:D

[Salamander]

It’s not done, here.

More than once, anyway.

[Beowulf9]

Boy was this an interesting read and the comments that followed really interesting!

but is it really true about how a holler got its’s name?

[jy8z]

Farmboy, you’re a farm boy?

That's me. A sh:t kicking farmboy. Everything from meadow muffins to Southdown pellets. (-:

[MayflowerMadam]

Like outen the lights

[PistolPaknMama]

The term redneck is from the Scottish Presbyterians who settled the south. Some of their ministers wore red clerical collars. In Scotland folks endured widespread persecution and wore red around their neck to signify their solidarity in the rebellion against the Church of England. Maybe the author will do some research before her next article.

[robowombat]

Actually the first use of the term in print can be traced to the 1830’s. It must have been in use well before the literati caught up with it. The term, at least in the South, referred to a yeoman farmer who plowed his own fields and got a deep red tan on all of his neck as he had to lean forward between the plow handles to watch the plow cut the turf and keep the furrow relatively straight.

In other words a redneck was a man few possessions but one who owned his own land. The very figure Jefferson extolled as the backbone of the agrarian order.
Poor Whites, whom the term is confused with were entirely different. They were the marginalized people who owned no land and in the ante-bellum South squatted on marginal land and at the edge of forests. After the war the impoverishment of the South grew and contracted with the passage of time and many of the yeomanry were forced into the ranks of the broken people through the effects of monoculture and crushingly cheap staple prices after 1873 crash and monetary crisis.

[robowombat]

the name Windsor is not really the name of the present royalty. The name was changed during, or prior, to WW1.

In 1917 George V saw a reference to himself as part of an ‘alien and uninspiring dynasty’. Reputedly he said “I may be uninspiring, but I'll be damned if there is anything alien about me’. A month or so afterward the Royal Assent was given to change the house name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the resoundingly British Windsor.

[Viking2002]

Exactly! We have a country kitchen complete with a wood stove and a line of trivets above the cabinets, and I've also placed a sign from the Amish Flour Milling Co. and a framed black-on-tan cameo silhouette of an Amish horse and buggy on the wall. A taste of home.

[mumblypeg]

Hollywood elites are nothing but white trash with money.

[Viking2002]

Down here in Alabama, saying 'hogs ate 'im' could trigger a police investigation. We got some big ones out in the brush. Mean, too, especially if you get between a sow and her piglets.

[RedMonqey]

The first time it appeared in print was in connection with coal miners at the Blair Mountain mine in West Virginia

Hmmmmmm. No. It isn't. Redneck was in common usage long before the miners of West Virginia acquired the term.

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 factions inside the Democratic Party comprising poor white farmers in the South.[13

Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck#19th_and_early_20th_centuries

The term "redneck" in the early 20th century was occasionally used in reference to American coal miner union members who wore red bandanas for solidarity. The sense of "a union man" dates at least to the 1910s and was especially popular during the 1920s and 1930s in the coal-producing regions of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.[17] It was also used by union strikers to describe poor white strikebreakers.[18]

[robowombat]

That is certainly true of the Cyrus clan. But they were long before they went Hollywood.

[fortes fortuna juvat]

Down here in Alabama, saying ‘hogs ate ‘im’ could trigger a police investigation. We got some big ones out in the brush. Mean, too, especially if you get between a sow and her piglets.
..................................................
Just in the news within the last two weeks that some woman, I think in Georgia, was killed by a wild hog. I remember the article included a photo of one and it was HUGE (the hog, not the woman)!

[a fool in paradise]

Mick Jagger is a far better singer (country or otherwise) than “Lil Naz” but it’s racist to point that out

Dead Flowers (live 2015)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Nd_l6kbxhU

You can’t even find the original pre-stardom “hit” version of “Old Town Road” (before Miley Piecrust’s daddy got in on it) anymore.

Vocorder Bullsh!t trap rap crap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG-2Gvq1SvU

[a fool in paradise]

Don’t need hills to be a hillbilly

Rodney Crowell - “Flatland Hillbillies” [Official Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMF1dpygnq0

[Viking2002]

Didn’t hear about that one. Although I have seen two huge sows go at it to the death. One was related by marriage. ROTFLMAO!

[BikerTrash]

bfl

[Salamander]

It’s just the smartass answer here, for when anyone asks “Where is so-and-so?” dating back to when we all had outhouses.

:)