...Wikipedia has this--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck_%28stereotype%29Redneck, in modern usage, predominantly refers to a particular stereotype of people who may be found in many regions of the United States and Canada. Originally limited to the Appalachians, and later the South, Ozarks and Rocky Mountains, this stereotype is now widespread in northern states and the Canadian provinces.
The National Covenant and The Solemn League and Covenant (a.k.a. Covenanters) signed documents stating that Scotland desired a Presbyterian Church government, and rejected the Church of England as their official church (no Anglican congregation was ever accepted as the official church in Scotland). What the Covenanters rejected was episcopacy — rule by bishops — the preferred form of church government in England. Many of the Covenanters signed these documents using their own blood, and many in the movement began wearing red pieces of cloth around their neck to signify their position to the public. They were referred to as rednecks.<1> Large numbers of these Scottish Presbyterians migrated from their lowland Scottish home to Ulster (the northern province of Ireland) and soon settled in considerable numbers in North America throughout the 18th century. Some emigrated directly from Scotland to the American colonies in the late 18th and early 19th-centuries as a result of the Lowland Clearances. This etymological theory holds that since many Scots-Irish Americans and Scottish Americans who settled in Appalachia and the South were Presbyterian, the term was bestowed upon them and their descendants.
Possible American etymologies
A possible source of redneck comes from The West Virginia Coal Miners March or the Battle of Blair Mountain when coal miners wore red bandanas around their necks to identify themselves as seeking the opportunity to unionize. Another popular but unlikely etymology says that the term derives from such individuals having a red neck caused by working outdoors in the sunlight over the course of their lifetime. The effect of decades of direct sunlight on the exposed skin of the back of the neck not only reddens fair skin, but renders it leathery and tough, and typically very wrinkled and spotted by late middle age (a condition called cutis rhomboidalis nuchae). Similarly, some historians claim that the term redneck originated in 17th century Virginia, because fair-skinned unfree labourers were sunburnt while tending plantation crops.
Another popular etymology is that the term was originally used by African Americans as a pejorative for white people in general, in the same manner that peckerwood and ofay were coined by blacks.
etcetera
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