"There are parts of Florida that remain very ingrained in the old Florida cracker lifestyle, and it would not surprise me one bit if that was the case here."
appeared / appears to me to imply that you believe that the behavior of the subhuman punkperps in this article was due to their being part of the "Florida Cracker" subculture.
How else would you interpret it?
I am well aware that Blacks sometimes use the term "Cracker" in the same opprobrious, racist manner that some Whites use "the 'N' word". Both usages are racist. But, bigotry can have many other forms -- other than racial.
Were you not saying that the behavior of the criminals in this story typified that of the "Cracker" subculture?
If not, would you like to re-phrase it?
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This thread has provided some intriguing "insider view" education on the Florida "Cracker culture". Particularly noteworthy was jwparkerjr's #26...
And, I had just about come to the conclusion that you were a supporter of that culture until I read #24:
"The old country/cracker/hillbilly attitudes persist in many parts of this State, and with the influx of non-native Hispanics, perversion is the soup du jour in the sticks."
Is yours a urban vs rural thing? What gives?
Color me honestly confused as to where you stand...
You’d have to live in or have grown up in rural parts of Florida to truly gain a depth of knowledge to understand it. Just like there were outlaws in the “cowboy west,” there are reprobates in the “cracker culture” of Florida. The rural area around my hometown was quiet and filled with mostly orange groves.
When I was 6, there was a young girl murdered in one of those orange groves by a young man who used to pick fruit for the farmer who owned the land. He was, for all intents and purposes, a decent kid, but he wasn’t right in the head. The farmer was relatively poor, but he paid his men well enough, and there was no indication as to the reason for the man to murder this young girl except for the thrill. She, too, was poor, there was no sign of sexual assault, it was just a random act of violence. Some of these kids have nothing to do in their day to day, and they took to sniping rabbits or squirrels with .22s or plinking at strays as “harmless fun.”
While the old crackers of Florida were hard working, gruff men, there are plenty of cases of weird behavior or otherwise inexplicable crimes being committed for no reason other than boredom. While this case was clearly some “slight” against a girl, these rural chits have little to do with their daily lives other than wake up, feed the critters on their lots, then retire to the Internet or TV nowadays. When I was young, we’d climb trees all day or ride our bikes to town, but boredom was pretty common. That’s what local swimming holes or sinkhole lakes were good for.
So put aside your understanding of “cracker” as a negative term, because it is a part of our culture and heritage much the way the Confederate flag is part of the culture of much of the South despite being a “symbol of racism” to northern Americans. Likewise, the cracker culture of Florida is replete with examples of depravity despite the overarching positive nature of the work that they did on the cattle farms of old Florida.