cracker

[Joel S. Berson]

"Cracker" must be a slur -- Paula Deen put them in the same group
about which must jokes are with Jewish people, gays or straights, and
black folks ... oops, it wasn't "crackers" but "rednecks" she put in
that bucket.  I guess there's a difference.

Joel

At 6/29/2013 12:50 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>I recall that this came up in discussion previously, but, with the
>Zimmerman trial, the word "cracker" is back in the news and for all the
>wrong reasons. There is a lot of push from the right to bring in
>"cracker" as a slur, to give a quasi-justification for Zimmerman
>shooting Martin as defense against a race-based attack. But there is
>also a pushback from a number of Southern bloggers who suggest that
>things are not quite what they seem.
>
>http://goo.gl/f3chi
>>As a frequently self-identified Cracker (or Crackro-American, as Roy
>>Blount, Jr., an adopted Georgian, called it in his 1980 book about
>>Jimmy Carter's meaning to the home folk, entitled Crackers), I guess I
>>need to weigh in on this and register that yes, "Cracker" has a
>>different meaning in Georgia and parts of Florida than it apparently
>>has elsewhere. I remember the term "Georgia cracker" as a
>>value-neutral term from the earliest days of childhood. Atlanta's
>>beloved minor-league baseball team (before the Braves arrived) was the
>>Atlanta Crackers. Since Georgia politics and culture were mostly
>>segregated in those days, the term was attached to white folks, and
>>perhaps more to po' white folks, in contrast to the snooty Gone With
>>the Windcultural legacy of the planters.
>
>Ed Kilgore (who wrote the above passage) then cites another blogger,
>Tommy Christopher:
>
>http://goo.gl/fxNUG
>>As it turns out, in the area in which Rachel Jeantel was raised, the
>>word "cracker" isn't a racial slur at all, but rather, a proud nod to
>>the region's history, and one's own ancestry.
>>A whole mess of white people like to get worked up about the word
>>"cracker," some in the mistaken belief that this will somehow result
>>in permission to use the n-word.
>
>Christopher even quotes Wikipedia:
>
>>In reference to a native of Florida or Georgia, however, it is
>>sometimes used in a neutral or positive context and is sometimes used
>>self-descriptively with pride.
>
>I am not suggesting any resolution on this. I just thought I should
>relate the issue.
>
>VS-)
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org