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."
Thank you!
If it wasn't for the South we would not have any of this nonsense. LOL.
And does anyone think we could be having this discussion about any group other than southern white males?