Honky (also spelled honkey) is a derogatory term used to refer to white people,
Etymology
The exact origins of the word are generally unknown and postulations about the subject vary.
Eastern European
Honky may be a variant of
Hunky Culture, which was a derivative of
Bohunk, a slur for various
Slavs and
Hungarians immigrants who moved to America from the
Austria-Hungary in the early 1900s.
[ Oxford English Dictionary]
Wolof
Honky may also derive from the term "xonq nopp" which, in the West African language
Wolof language, literally means "red-eared person". The term may have originated with Wolof-speaking people brought to the U.S.
It has been used by Black Americans as a pejorative for
white people.
[Mother Wit from Laughing Barrel. Alan Dundes. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1973. page 138. Google eBook edition. retrieved 04.11.2015]
Other
Honky may have come from coal miners in Oak Hill, West Virginia. The miners were segregated; Blacks in one section, English-speaking whites in another. Foreigners who could not speak English, mostly whites, were separated from both groups into an area known as "Hunk Hill". These male laborers were known as "Hunkies".
[Kline, M. (2011) Appalachian Heritage, (Vol. 59, No. 5, Summer 2011.)]
The term may have begun in the meat packing plants of Chicago. According to Robert Hendrickson, author of the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Black workers in Chicago meatpacking plants picked up the term from white workers and began applying it indiscriminately to all whites.
Notable uses
The adoption of
honky as a
pejorative is attested as early in 1967 by black militants
[ "Carmichael specializes in hate. He objects, quite rightly, to those who use the term 'nigger.' Then he turns around and calls policemen 'honkies,' making a play on the derisive term that outraged Hungarian immigrants generations ago."] within Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) seeking a rebuttal for the term
nigger. The Department of Defense stated in 1967 that National Chairman of the SNCC, H. Rap Brown, told a Black audience in Cambridge, Maryland that "You should burn that school down and then go take over the honkie's school" on June 24, 1967. Brown went on to say: "If America don't come 'round, we got to burn it down. You better get some guns, brother. The only thing the honky respects is a gun. You give me a gun and tell me to shoot my enemy, I might shoot Lady Bird."
Honky has occasionally been used even for white allies of African Americans, as seen in the 1968 trial of Black Panther Party member Huey Newton, when fellow Panther Eldridge Cleaver created pins for Newton's white supporters stating "Honkies for Huey".
"Father of the Blues" W. C. Handy wrote of "Negroes and hunkies" in his autobiography.[ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan. Page 214. no ISBN in this edition]
Use in music
In the 2012
rap song "
Thrift Shop" by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis ft.
Wanz, "Damn, that's a cold ass honkey!" is used in reference to Macklemore and his secondhand clothes.
Eminem, who is also a
white American rapper, uses the line "He looked at me and said, 'You gonna die, honkey!'" in 1999's "Brain Damage." "Play That Funky Music," a 1976
disco/
funk hit by Wild Cherry about a rock band adapting to the rise of disco, substitutes "honky" for "white boy" in the final chorus of the uncensored version.
The British band Hot Chocolate used "honky" and "spook" in their controversial 1973 hit single "Brother Louie" about an interracial relationship as the terms chosen by the respective fathers to slur their child's newfound lover.
Other uses of "honky" in music include Honky (an album by Melvins), Honky Reduction (an album by Agoraphobic Nosebleed), MC Honky (Disc jockey Stage name), Honky Château (an album by Elton John, the first track on which is "Honky Cat"), Talkin' Honky Blues (an album by Buck 65), and Honky (an album by Keith Emerson). Honky's Ladder is a 1996 Extended play by The Afghan Whigs. In 2022 Hank Williams Jr. released a blues album Rich White Honky Blues.
The Chicago style of polka music is also known as honky polka.
Use in television and film
Honky is a 1971 movie based on an interracial relationship, starring
Brenda Sykes as Sheila Smith and John Neilson as Wayne "Honky" Devine.
In a sketch on Saturday Night Live ( SNL), Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor used both nigger (Chase) and honky (Pryor) in reference to one another during a "racism word association interview".
On the TV series Barney Miller, Season 5, Episode 8, "Loan Shark", Arthur Dietrich gives an etymology of the word "honky", claiming it was "coined by Blacks in the 1950s in reference to the nasal tone of Caucasians".
On the TV series The Jeffersons, George Jefferson regularly referred to a white person as a honky (or whitey) as did Redd Foxx on Sanford and Son. This word would later be popularized in episodes of Mork & Mindy by Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters.
See also
