How did the word "cracker" as a derogatory word towards whites come out? Anyone know?
Cracker = Georgia white man.
Because if you're from the south, you're obviously a racist.
Look in Wikipedia under "White cracker."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_cracker
i love this term.
Cracker refers to the whip cracker. The man who whipped the slaves.
Cracker, Southern U.S. derogatory term for "poor, white trash" (1766), is from c.1450 crack "to boast" (e.g. not what it's cracked up to be), originally a Scottish word. Especially of Georgians by 1808, though often extended to residents of northern Florida.
"I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode." [1766, G. Cochrane]
And from Phrasesonline.org.UK (a good source for such) is this...
Grady McWhiney, in "Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South," (The University of Alabama Press, 1988) makes a distinction concerning the term CRACKER and tries to reclaim the term that is now used as a slur. He says that "cracker," in Scotch-Irish dialect meant "a person who talked boastingly." Later the term Crackers came to mean a Scotch-Irishmen, a particular group of people. McWhiney says Cracker eventually became a disparaging term and Crackers were equated with "poor whites."
He quotes historian Lewis C. Gray, in "History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860," as associating the term Cracker with other slurs: "The distinctive characteristics of poor whites were recognized in the various special appellations by which they were contemptuously known in different parts of the South, such as, 'piney-woods people,' 'dirt-eaters,' 'clay-eaters,' 'tallow-faced gentry,' 'sand-hillers,' and 'crackers.'"
McWhiney asserts that Crackers are a distinctive ethnic group - the Scotch-Irish - and is appalled that, ".in a nation in which slurs based upon race, ethnicity, or religion have become strictly taboo, it is still acceptable to lampoon Crackers as a group."
Cracker used to be the term of choice in Georgia for rural whites. The more generic 'redneck' has now largely displaced the term. Before the Braves moved from Milwaukee to play in the recently constructed (at that time) Atlanta Stadium, the facility was the home to the Atlanta Crackers of the AAA Southern League.
The joke is that you can call a native Georgian a 'Cracker' and he won't be insulted - just like a real redneck will laugh at a Jeff Foxworthy 'You may be a redneck...' joke.
It's not actually derogatory towards all whites, when I was growing up, that's what we called poor whites as a slur, it's usage is virtually identical the other word which I will not say, in that, by most people, if it is used, it is only used to describe a certain lower/lowest class of the group in question.