I recently heard that the term “cracker” came from the crack of a slave master’s whip. Not sure if true or not.
“I recently heard that the term “cracker” came from the crack of a slave master’s whip. Not sure if true or not.”
Whippersnapper came from the young carriage drivers who stood around waiting for the owners. They’d idly snap their whips. That may be the term you’re thinking of. I believe cracker came from the shape of the poorer people’s houses; resembling cracker boxes.
From The New Georgia Encyclopedia
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-552
'By the 1760s the English, both at home and in colonial America, were applying the term to Scots-Irish settlers of the southern backcountry, as in this passage from a letter to the earl of Dartmouth:
'"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." The word then came to be associated with the cowboys of Georgia and Florida, many of them descendants of those early frontiersmen.'
First, blacks called whites “white bread”...later it was “soda cracker” (saltine), because those crackers are white.
Recently a black person informed me that the call each other “nigga”, as opposed to “nigger”...obviously the “e r” makes it racist...but only IF YOU’RE WHITE. Sounds a little discriminatory to me, I mean, one race allowed to do what another race can’t?
I find it ridiculous that any random person -black or white-can decide what words we can say, or not say.
To quote Obama, “it’s just words...”.
‘Cracker’ got into regular use in the 70’s and 80’s in reference to white crackers (the kind you eat with soup) NOT anything so dramatic as the “cracker” of a whip.
It was a demeaning way to refer to a white person, like calling them white bread.
Yes, it is as bad as ‘the n-word’ but not as bad as the OTHER ‘c-word’
Nope.
Crack of a cattle driver’s whip, maybe. Crackers generally weren’t rich enough to own slaves.