It may surprise you but we don’t call ourselves cracker so it’s not something I think much about although I’ve read over the years it refers to ox cart or mule team masters cracking the whip to move the teams around from Florida or Georgia
It’s usually a disrespectful term especially when used by blacks or liberals to address or describe whites
Imagine I ask you
Hey Mac where do you think the word “nigger” comes from mac
Now you might say but Wardaddy that word is far worse and I’d say really....blacks themselves say it constantly ....I mean try being around some and listen ....it’s an affectionate or not so affectionate term for one another ...
In any event I’m sure the black person I asked hey where does the word “nigger” come from would have diffficulty saying the Niger River basin or the Spanish or creole word negro or negra
Cracker is a word that lives between Yankee and “nigger”
But it’s not quite quotation marks worthy
Kinda like squarehead
Amd acceptances morph
Here on free Republic 20 years ago I was publicly admonished for saying wetback or mojado
Can you imagine that today here
Maybe cracker will become a term of endearment to whites one day in America
Yo my cracker wazzup....kinda katchy
Yo my squarehead wazzup.....no quite the same is it
Wars are on the battlefield and history and cultural interpretations and to the victor goes the spoils unless he totally fcuks it up lol I’m the century afterwards
Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways In The Old South
Apparently cracker once meant someone who loves to boast
“Spanish or creole word negro or negra”
It’s my theory that it’s an uneducated lazy bastardization of “negro”. Not much more.
Think how many times people (especially from certain regions) say a word but leave something off or let it drift...e.g., Englishmen often lazily turn an ending “a” into “er”. New Englanders unable to say “r” so leave it off, e.g., “cah” or “lawyah”.