Just wondering if the name given to White Folks (Honky) was really assigned to them by Colored Folks because of the turn of the century manner in which many of the White Folks would use the car horn (Honking) to signal laborors instead of getting out of the car and coming to the door. Just curious.
I don’t know. I remember a 70s Doonesbury comic strip refering to this, but primarily, the term I recall the most is “Cracker”.
What a minute, didn’t the perfect master comment on this?
I know of this great website where people write in and this guy answers them.. I wish this place was more like that.
Apparently not.
What about peckerwood? I always wondered how that term relates to something perjorative about caucasians.
Gesundheit! 
I’ve heard (albeit an apocryphal tale from a history teacher) that the term came from India during the time of British empire. “Honk” is English slang for “bad smell”, and to the native Indians the colonial British smelt really bad, hence the wonderfully disrespectful “honky”.
If that isn’t true, it should be.
So they adopted a slang term not from their language, but from a foreign one?
Honky derives from bohunk and ultimately from Bohemian. Originally, a “honky” was ethnic Czech. The only time I’ve heard it used this way was in a documentary about working conditions at the Ford Motor Company’s plants in Detroit. There is still a “honky” style of polka music, as opposed to Polish-style polka.