They Call Me Rednek Pes 2013 Download
Kanisha Dezarn
But official histories of these terms always fail to convey the shades of meaning that they take on. Sometimes the words can be empowering (when they are used by the people they describe), and sometimes they can be cruel (when they are used by outsiders).
To offer up a more nuanced and varied understanding of these terms, I interviewed people about these words and their meaning during my travels through central Appalachia. The resulting conversations showed how meanings of loaded terms can be in flux, changing based on the speaker and the audience. There is no single definition for either "redneck" or "hillbilly," but here are a few personal ones that were shared with me:
What's my life like? I work daylight to dark every day. I pay my own way. I don't ask the government for nothing. I don't want the government to know about anything I do. I don't ask for no welfare. I do my own thing. I work in the sawmill. I'm a professional board stacker.
West Columbia used to be one of the biggest cities in this area. It was a mining community. Right there by the house, if you walk up through the woods, you'll come across seven coal mines. They stopped back in the 50s, I think.
You know how "redneck" actually got its name? Back in the mining wars, when the coal miners were going up against the government or whatever, they took red bandannas around their necks, so they wouldn't shoot one another. A "redneck" can mean a snitch, too. You redneck on somebody, you just straight told the law what people was doing. Rednecking gets you beat the fuck up.
You got these yuppie rednecks who got these big fancy trucks and ain't never hit a mudhole in their lives, ain't never worked a day in their lives, don't even know how to shoot a gun. My dad's a yuppie. He's a straight-up city boy. But he was raised on a dairy farm right up the road here.
I grew up in a holler. I didn't know anyone who skateboarded; I got insanely interested in paved concrete because I was never around paved concrete. It takes like half an hour to get to a paved road. When I moved here, I was just struck by the concrete. Hillbillies know life is pain, and what's so cool about skateboarding is you can have fun, experience pain, and be creative, all at the same time. That's why I hate it when people say skateboarding is a sport, because it's a whole 'nother world.
My dad was in coal. He was a strict union man. If you heard about John Henry the Steel-Driving Man, he was known around here as something like that. He could dig a lot of coal with a pick and shovel. My grandfather came out from South Carolina to work. He came to a little town not far from here called Capels. I never seen him or my grandmother, they passed before I was born.
There were 13 kids in the family. We lived off one meal a day sometimes. We struggled a little bit, but everything worked out real good for us. My father worked in the mines, but he didn't want any of us to go into the mines. At the time, coal was still going, but in this area, jobs weren't available in money-making positions to minorities. So a lot of people went to Detroit, went to other parts of the country.
I was the first [black police officer] in this town. There couldn't have been more than one or two in the county at the time. I started out as a regular patrolman. Then I moved up the ranks to the lieutenant, then chief of police.
When guys say they're redneck they do things wildly, freely, but not try to harm anyone with it. They have a good little time with it. "Hillbilly" means from the hills, the mountains of Appalachia. What history focuses on a lot of times is the Hatfields and McCoys and the feuding, but at the same time, there were unions striking.
Throughout the years, I've seen whites call other whites white trash, and I've seen dark-skinned blacks say something about lighter-skinned blacks, "You high yellow," something like that. Everyone always wants to be a little higher class than somebody else. That's just the way it is.
My momma's from Ashland, Kentucky, and she knows how to do tobacco and stuff like that. When she grew up, they were allowed to get married at 14. Nowadays you're not allowed. They were allowed to do a lot of things back then like we can't do now. That's because this generation can't keep the guns away or anything like that. Instead of fist-fighting, like we did, they think, We gotta get a gun out and shoot somebody, or, We lost our job, let's go kill 'em up. Back in my day, we got whippings, we got switched, but we grew up.
I remember being five years old and having to do dishes and cleaning and stuff like that because my mother said that's how we learned things. Nowadays kids don't have to do that. My mom and dad didn't have a lot of money, but they made sure we had things, even if we had feed-sack dresses. My mom put linings inside them because they'd itch. My grandmother made most of my outfits. There were six of us, three girls and three boys, and we'd pass clothes down.
My family, we [went viral] on Facebook because we went and got brand-new mattresses, we had four, and we stacked 'em on top of our little Durango. This guy took a picture and said, "If that's not a redneck, we don't know what is." Hey, you do it the best way you know how!
That don't make me a racist person just because I'm a redneck. Hell, I like everybody. When I see people who walk down the street and don't have anything, I'll give 'em money. I have nothing against people. I have a good life now. I have fun. Go rednecks! Go hillbillies too!
It's like "punk"; I went to this store in New York, like a punk store, and they're selling all these T-shirts, and everyone's getting all these tattoos. That's not very punk! Everyone's wearing the same T-shirts, and they all have the same uniform on. The redneck thing is maybe similar to that. It's commodified and commercialized now. And people do it because they think it's rebellious or different, when it reality it's just another bullshit word.
I've always heard the term "hillbilly" used my whole life. My family uses it. My grandma one time, I asked "What'd you and grandpa do on your first date?" And she said, "We probably just sat around and listened to hillbilly records." It would be disparaging if someone from outside called you a hillbilly. It's weird too how these terms are tied up in class. When it was used it my house, we knew it was negative, the way people viewed us, but yet you kind of celebrate the term, the same way hip-hop uses the N-word. That's the old Lenny Bruce thing, you use the word enough you change the meaning.
There's something very middle class about people considering themselves a redneck. I went to law school with plenty of guys who considered themselves rednecks. Second Amendment shit is always tied into being a redneck. A hillbilly would have a weapon, but they would have already fired off all their shells.
Redneck is a state of action. You do things to be a redneck. Shoot guns, drink domestic beer, support right-wing politics. White trash, hick, etc. are states of being. You are these things because of what you are. Class, worldview, etc. _Hillbilly is a state of mind, though. It's metaphysical and ephemeral and contradictory._
Redneck is a derogatory term mainly, but not exclusively, applied to white Americans perceived to be crass and unsophisticated, closely associated with rural whites of the Southern United States.[1][2]
Its meaning possibly stems from the sunburn found on farmers' necks dating back to the late 19th century.[3] Its modern usage is similar in meaning to cracker (especially regarding Texas, Georgia, and Florida), hillbilly (especially regarding Appalachia and the Ozarks),[4] and white trash (but without the last term's suggestions of immorality).[5][6][7] In Britain, the Cambridge Dictionary definition states: "A poor, white person without education, esp. one living in the countryside in the southern US, who is believed to have prejudiced ideas and beliefs. This word is usually considered offensive."[8] People from the white South sometimes jocularly call themselves "rednecks" as insider humor.[9]
Patrick Huber, in his monograph A Short History of Redneck: The Fashioning of a Southern White Masculine Identity, emphasized the theme of masculinity in the 20th-century expansion of the term, noting: "The redneck has been stereotyped in the media and popular culture as a poor, dirty, uneducated, and racist Southern white man."[11]
The term originally characterized farmers that had a red neck, caused by sunburn from long 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".[12] Hats were usually worn and they protected that wearer's head from the sun, but also provided psychological protection by shading the face from close scrutiny.[13] The back of the neck however was more exposed to the sun and allowed closer scrutiny about the person's background in the same way callused working hands could not be easily covered.
By 1900, "rednecks" was in common use to designate the political factions inside the Democratic Party comprising poor white farmers in the South.[14] 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:[15]
Primary on the 25th.
And the "rednecks" will be there.
And the "Yaller-heels" will be there, also.
And the "hayseeds" and "gray dillers", they'll be there, too.
And the "subordinates" and "subalterns" will be there to rebuke their slanderers and traducers.
And the men who pay ten, twenty, thirty, etc. etc. per cent on borrowed money will be on hand, and they'll remember it, too.