'Cracker' conveys history of bigotry that still resonates

The Philadelphia Tribune ^ | July 2, 2013 | Tom Foreman

[2ndDivisionVet]

With a single phrase, Rachel Jeantel, that friend of Trayvon Martin's, may have lit a fuse in the trial of his accused killer.

Asked by the defense what Martin told her on the phone that night when he first spotted George Zimmerman, she testified a "creepy-ass cracker" was following him. There is nothing illegal about that. Jeantel said she didn't even know it was a racial slur, and numerous commentators have noted that some in Florida use the term in a non-derogatory, colloquial sense.

But for plenty of rural, white southerners, "cracker" is a demeaning, bigoted term, and its appearance does nothing to help the prosecutors.

The origin of cracker is murky. Some sources suggest it came from overseers who commanded slaves. Others say it derives from a Scottish word for boasting. At The Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina, Bill Ferris says it emerged in the 1700s as a descriptive term for drovers who used small whips to move their livestock through the pine barrens along the Gulf of Mexico. "They were basically poor people. White people. A class of people who were landless."

Initially, cracker was not a pejorative term, but Ferris says it has become one, the equivalent of redneck. Its meaning and intensity as an insult depends on who is saying it and who is listening. For example, a white who might not object to being called a cracker by another white might consider Martin's use of the phrase offensive and evidence of ill intent.

In the circumstances described in court, Ferris notes, it was more likely a quick way for Martin to say he was in danger. "If it is used by Blacks (among themselves), it is usually with one meaning: Watch out.....

[HotHunt]

My wife and I retired from urban Arizona to rural Florida a couple of years ago. “City goin’ to country folk” they call it around here. She had inherited her grandparents homestead from the 1920’s. We built a new house on it and started raising beef cattle on the 25 acres surrounding the home. He uncle had lived on the property before us, before he died, and we hear stories from many locals and relatives of his cattle-raising days. He got permission from several timber companies to let his cattle graze on their idle timber land. He had cows everywhere in the surrounding woods for up to 10-15 miles away. He and his friends would use leather whips to manage his several hundred head of wild cattle by horseback in those woods. He had trouble keeping all of his cattle contained on the timberland because their fences weren’t always up to snuff for livestock. So many of the stories we hear are about his cows getting out on the highway or onto someone else’s property by accident. After he died, his friends and relatives tried to round up those cows from the woods and think they got most of them. But there are still a few strays roaming out in those woods to this day from his wild herd. And my wife cherishes his old leather whip he used in his cattle days. It is displayed in a prominent place on the wall in our home, a reminder of those wilder days gone by when her uncle was a cracker in rural Florida.

[xzins]

I see very little correlation between the two words. In my 6+ decades on this earth the n word has always been bitterly demeaning. Likewise, in my 6+ decades on this earth “cracker” has been unremarkable and even a state moniker....as in Georgia cracker

From wiki ... “The term is used as a proud or jocular self-description. Since the huge influx of new residents into Georgia from the northern parts of the United States in the late 20th century, “Georgia cracker” has become used informally by some white residents of Georgia of Scotch-Irish and English stock, to indicate that their family has lived there for many generations. The term is also occasionally used as a pejorative to refer to whites; see Cracker (pejorative).”

So, until relatively recently, cracker was not a racial pejorative.

What it boils down to is that I could not care less if someone called me a cracker. I’d be far more offended by being called a white n....

[Ditter]

Redneck has come to mean “ignorant southerner” but to us Texas rednecks, it always meant someone of Scot/Irish heritage, fair skinned with a sunburned neck. You know those strawberry blonds who never really get tan, they just get sun burned?

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Here is an older cartoon from 1900 which says the same thing!

[Gaffer]

Likewise, in my 6+ decades on this earth “cracker” has been unremarkable and even a state moniker....as in Georgia cracker

Several days ago, I posted what the term Georgia Cracker meant to me and Georgians (I was born here and my family goes back before the Civil War).

Georgians today, especially in the Metro area are probably only one generation deep. Most don't have an idea of the Georgia Crackers (I was inducted in the old Sears building in 68 across from where their stadium USED to be) so in my book the Georgia Cracker argument is specious and became so when the ball park was torn down.

I have Six Decades plus on this earth, too, and in Georgia when not serving my country. To me, my family and friends it IS a pejorative and racist, especially when coming from someone who is black, just like 'honky' and 'white motherf@cker' (you pick what blacks' latest endearing term is).

And, as far as Wiki goes, it is what it is - a compendium of beliefs, positions and ideologies often perverted by persistent influence, especially when concerning subjective 'thoughts' and not pure hard fact. So I call Shenanigans on use of wiki for that.

Lastly, it is not up to someone, anyone other than myself to determine, or lessen what I perceive to be a derogatory and racist pejorative.

[xzins]

I absolutely agree that you have the right to determine your own list of pejorative words. For me, though, cracker is only recently pejorative...to some...and I actually laugh at “honky”. Never heard a dumber attempt at a pejorative anyplace.

[RegulatorCountry]

There is at least some indication that the Florida and south Georgia use of “Cracker” to describe descendants of the white frontiersmen who settled the territory, is a corruption of the Spanish “quaquero,” meaning Quaker. That's what the Spanish called all Protestants there in the early period.

This is different from the English-derived derogatory term, which arose from the Celtic “craic,” meaning braggart or joker. Scotch-Irish frontier settlers from the Shenandoah on down into Carolina and north Georgia were called “crackers” by the Anglican English establishment.

And, both are different still, from the historic black usage of the term, which is a derogatory name for the class of people who were plantation overseers, landless, not people with any material wealth. Poor white trash, essentially.

So, when Rachel Jeantel referred to Zimmerman as a “creepy-@ cracker,” was she calling him:

A) A descendant of Protestant early Florida settlers
B) A backwoods braggart or joker, or
C) Poor white trash who liked to crack a whip on black people?

I'm more than reasonably certain that both A and B can be ruled out, so she was speaking in a racially derogatory manner that itself implied racism on the part of Zimmerman, never mind that he's about as white as Barack Obama and should therefore be incapable of it under the cultural Marxist standard of the day.

[Gaffer]

I guess you just haven’t sat through enough black comedian shows, pandering network entertainment shows that make a mockery and abject joke about white people in general.

It is taboo to refer to ‘stepnfetchit’ or any other form black pejorative, but it is perfectly fine and politically correctly ‘funny’ to sit through all the jokes about uptight, nonrhythmical white men, white ho’s, or even “Uncle Toms” when they are about black conservatives.

I’m not gonna put up with it any more.

[xzins]

I’m not saying I can’t be insulted. I’m just saying that honky, especially, is just gonna make me laugh

I’m like “is that all u got!”

[Gaffer]

When you allow them, even what you consider absurd, the luxury and license to say it, you allow them take it even further.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

There is an effort to keep the breed going. They can run the woods almost like deer, really a great critter, probably a lot smarter than the average farm cow.

I tangled with one in the Lochloosa tract, got between her and a calf and she ran me up a tree for a while. She was highly indignant!

[SWAMPSNIPER]

Crackers were honorable, hard working people, not white trash!

[Jeff Winston]

In the circumstances described in court, Ferris notes, it was more likely a quick way for Martin to say he was in danger. "If it is used by Blacks (among themselves), it is usually with one meaning: Watch out. He didn't say it to Zimmerman. He said it to convey a message to a friend. He said, 'trouble is coming.'"

I don't believe this.

[Jeff Winston]

In the circumstances described in court, Ferris notes, it was more likely a quick way for Martin to say he was in danger. "If it is used by Blacks (among themselves), it is usually with one meaning: Watch out. He didn't say it to Zimmerman. He said it to convey a message to a friend. He said, 'trouble is coming.'"

I've now looked specifically on the internet for uses of the word "cracker" with this meaning, and found pretty much nothing.

This included reading over 100 definitions for the word "cracker."

I'm calling bullsh**.

[HotHunt]

We’re near Hawthorne, east of highway 301, just north of Lochloosa. Every so often, I have people tell me they have seen some of my wife’s deceased uncle’s cattle out in the woods still. He’s been gone six or seven years now.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

I used to stay at the campground on Cross Creek and early in the morning get in my canoe and slip out to Allens Point. I would hide the canoe and slip up through the swamp along the lake. Lots of hogs and turkey in there, got some deer too and saw a few cracker cows. I never saw many people in there except a Seminole who hunted in one of those colorful shirts they make. He had a tree stand over one of the hog wallows and I would make a wide swing so I didn't mess up his hunt.

I used to love heading out on that lake with the morning mist still on the water and the air all fresh.

[OldNewYork]

“You know those strawberry blonds who never really get tan, they just get sun burned?”

Know, and love, them. I kind of am one of them. Interesting, I hadn’t known there was a distinction in usage in different places.

[OldNewYork]

Thanks for making it even clearer. Journalism is not the only casualty.

[PapaBear3625]

When a black calls a white “cracker” these days, it is a very weak curse that either rolls off the back of the white or misses entirely. I have friends who laugh at the use, thinking it far less offensive than “redneck”.

As an insult, it rolls off me, mostly because the kind of person who uses the term is not somebody whose opinion I care about.

On the street, though, being called a cracka by some black folks will have me checking that I can quickly access my concealed weapon, because it is a term of hate, and likely precursor to physical attack.

[Ditter]

Fair skinned people who worked in the sun and had red sunburned necks were the original rednecks. Someone is going to come along and tell us that there was an earlier definition of RN but in the south that is what it meant.

Those people tended to be uneducated laborers, so that is what RN meant. Now it means you are low rent, ignorant southerner, the people we call “white trash”.

My grandmother, born in about 1880 told me that ladies didn't get suntanned. I remember thinking how strange that was but now I understand what she meant. :)