Redneck is a derogatory term mainly applied to white Americans perceived to be crass and unsophisticated, closely associated with rural whites of the southern United States.Harold Wentworth, and Stuart Berg Flexner, Dictionary of American Slang (1975) p. 424.
Its meaning possibly stems from the sunburn found on farmers' necks dating back to the late 19th century.Huber, 1995.
Authors Joseph Flora and Lucinda MacKethan describe the stereotype as follows:
Redneck is a derogatory term currently applied to some lower-class and working-class southerners. The term, which came into common usage in the 1930s, is derived from the redneck's beginnings as a "yeoman farmer" whose neck would burn as they toiled in the fields. These yeoman farmers settled along the Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina coasts.
Its modern usage is similar in meaning to cracker (especially regarding Texas, Georgia, and Florida), hillbilly (especially regarding Appalachia and the Ozarks),
Anthony Harkins (2005). 9780195189506, Oxford University Press. . ISBN 9780195189506
and white trash (but without the last term's suggestions of immorality).Wray (2006) p. x.Ernest Cashmore and James Jennings, eds. Racism: essential readings (2001) p. 36.Jim Goad, The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America's Scapegoats (1998) pp. 17–19. 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." People from the white South sometimes jocularly call themselves "rednecks" as insider humor.
John Morreall (2025). 9781444358292, John Wiley & Sons. . ISBN 9781444358292
Some people claim that the term’s origin is that during the West Virginia Mine Wars of the early 1920s, workers organizing for labor rights donned red bandanas, worn tied around their necks, as they marched up Blair Mountain in a pivotal confrontation. The West Virginia Mine Wars Museum commemorates their struggle for fair wages. A monument in front of the George Buckley Community Center in Marmet, WV, part of the "Courage in the Hollers Project" of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum depicts the silhouettes of four mine workers cut from steel plate, wearing bright red bandanas around their necks or holding them in their hands. However, the term was used as early as 1830 to refer to white rural Southern laborers, so although the 1920s wearers of red bandanas may have used the term, they did not originate it.
By the 1970s, the term had become offensive slang, its meaning expanded to include racism, loutishness, and opposition to modern ways.Robert L. Chapman, Dictionary of American Slang (1995) p. 459; William Safire, Safire's New Political Dictionary (1993) pp. 653-54; Tom Dalzell, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English: J–Z (2005) 2:1603.
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."
The term originally characterized farmers that had a red neck, caused by sunburn from long hours working in the Farm field. A citation from 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".Frederic Gomes Cassidy & Joan Houston Hall, Dictionary of American Regional English VOL.IV (2002) p. 531. 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.
Elaine Stone (2025). 9781501324000, Bloomsbury Publishing. . ISBN 9781501324000
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.
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 , 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.Kirwan (1951), p. 212.
Linguist Sterling Eisiminger, based on the testimony of informants from the Southern United States, speculated that the prevalence of pellagra in the region during the Great Depression may have contributed to the rise in popularity of the term; red, inflamed skin is one of the first symptoms of that disorder to appear.
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 mining regions of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.Patrick Huber, "Red Necks and Red Bandanas: Appalachian Coal Miners and the Coloring of Union Identity, 1912–1936", Western Folklore, Winter 2006. It was also used by union strikers to describe poor white strikebreakers.
Writers Edward Abbey and Dave Foreman also 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".Bookchin, Murray; Foreman, Dave. Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman. South End Press. 1991. p. 95. However, many Southerners have proudly Reappropriation. Similarly to Earth First!'s use, the self-described "anti-racist, pro-gun, pro-labor" group Redneck Revolt have used the term to signal its roots in the rural white working-class and celebration of what member Max Neely described as "redneck culture".
According to Chapman and Kipfer in their "Dictionary of American Slang", by 1975 the term had expanded in meaning beyond the poor Southerner to refer to "a bigoted and conventional person, a loutish ultra-conservative".Robert L. Chapman and Barbara Ann Kipfer, Dictionary of American Slang (3rd ed. 1995) p. 459. For example, in 1960 John Bartlow Martin expressed Senator John F. Kennedy should not enter the Indiana Democratic presidential primary because the state was "redneck conservative country". Indiana, he told Kennedy, was a state "suspicious of foreign entanglements, conservative in fiscal policy, and with a strong overlay of Southern segregationist sentiment".
Ray E. Boomhower (2025). 9780253016188, Indiana UP. . ISBN 9780253016188
Writer William Safire observed that it is often used to attack white Southern conservatives, and more broadly to degrade working class and rural whites that are perceived by urban progressives to be insufficiently progressive.William Safire, Safire's political dictionary (2008) p. 612 At the same time, some white Southerners have Reappropriation the word, using it with pride and defiance as a self-identifier.Goad, The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America's Scapegoats (1998) p. 18
Johnny Russell was nominated for a Grammy Award in for his recording of "Rednecks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer". Further songs referencing rednecks include "Longhaired Redneck" by David Allan Coe, "Rednecks" by Randy Newman, "Redneck Friend" by Jackson Browne, "Redneck Woman" by Gretchen Wilson, "Redneck Yacht Club" by Craig Morgan, "Redneck" by Lamb of God, "Redneck Crazy" by Tyler Farr, "Red Neckin' Love Makin' Night" by Conway Twitty, "Up Against The Wall Redneck Mother" by Jerry Jeff Walker, "Your Redneck Past" by Ben Folds Five, "American Idiot" by Green Day, and "Picture to Burn" by Taylor Swift.
Comedian Jeff Foxworthy's comedy album You Might Be a Redneck If... cajoled listeners to evaluate their own behavior in the context of Stereotype redneck behavior.
The Swedish band Rednex adopted the name as a misspelling of "rednecks."
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 Scottish 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 Oliver Cromwell.Fischer, David Hackett. (1989) . New York: Oxford University Press.redneck (1989); Oxford English Dictionary second edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eventually, the term began to mean simply "Presbyterianism", 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.Herman, Arthur, How the Scots Invented the Modern World. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001, p. 235.
Dictionaries document the earliest American citation of the term's use for Presbyterians in , as "a name bestowed upon the Presbyterians of Fayetteville (North Carolina)".
An Afrikaans term which translates literally as "redneck", rooinek]], is used as a disparaging term for English South Africans, in reference to their supposed naïveté as later arrivals in the region in failing to protect themselves from the sun.
Abbey, Edward. "In Defense of the Redneck", from Abbey's Road: Take the Other. (E. P. Dutton, 1979)
Ferrence, Matthew, "You Are and You Ain't: Story and Literature as Redneck Resistance", Journal of Appalachian Studies, 18 (2012), 113–30.
Goad, Jim. The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America's Scapegoats (Simon & Schuster, 1997).
Harkins, Anthony. Hillbilly: A cultural history of an American icon (2003).
Huber, Patrick. "A short history of Redneck: The fashioning of a southern white masculine identity." Southern Cultures 1#2 (1995): 145–166. online
Jarosz, Lucy, and Victoria Lawson. "'Sophisticated people versus rednecks': Economic restructuring and class difference in America's West." Antipode 34#1 (2002): 8-27.
Shirley, Carla D. "'You might be a redneck if ... ' Boundary Work among Rural, Southern Whites." Social forces 89#1 (2010): 35–61. in JSTOR
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)
