guthriedm15's blog

Throughout history, education has been a large source of power over people that are uneducated. Because of the differences in culture and education, certain words and phrases have been used to stereotype groups of people. A couple of examples of this in America are the words “redneck” and “hillybilly”.

According to Wikipedia, rednecks are white people in the southern US that are often uneducated working class people. Merriam-Webster dictionary and Wiktionary both say similar things. If one was to Google images of the term “redneck”, pictures of men and women with mullets, individuals in overalls, and the Confederate Flag. Usually, the term “redneck” and the people that it portrays are used as punchlines in jokes and in online memes; however, this term is sometimes accepted by the very people that this word describes. Often time, the Confederate Flag is flown in these areas as a source of personal pride of one’s southern heritage (this is from personal experience).  Additionally, many country music songs embrace the term to describe the people that they get along with, or how they would describe themselves.

The term “hillbilly” is very similar in nature to the term “redneck”. They are used in very similar, derogatory ways in addition to the common self-identification that was described above.  “Hillbilly” is used to describe people that live in rural areas in the Appalachian area. Hillbillies often resist modernization and change in general. They are often uneducated and self-sufficient that live a life that is reminiscent of the hunter-gathers of the Stone Age (or so it’s portrayed). If one were to search for images, one would of men with “beer guts”, toothless smiles, and overalls.

These two terms are similar to other terms that have been used in the past to describe groups of people. While they began as derogatory terms, they have become terms that are embraced by the culture that they are used to stereotype. When the terms were strictly derogatory, it was a source of power. Now that it is often used by the “hillbillies” and “rednecks” themselves, it is again a source of another type of power. In either case, it’s clear to see that words are very powerful indeed.