• Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
    7·
    9 hours ago

    This might be an odd question. Maybe I don’t understand cause I’m not American. But using the word cracker for oneself almost seems like you embrace your (possible) slaver ancestry. Isn’t that a bit offensive?

    • ZeffSyde@lemmy.world
      4·
      5 hours ago

      Saltines are bright white in color. Also basic and bland. Dry. Cracker

      That has been my take, as a Northern white dude, at least. Possibly wrong, as always.

      I think I would feel more offended if someone called me a ‘honky’ as I am not a fan of basic ass cookie cutter Honky Tonk country music, and I’d be insulted at such an insinuation.

    • MothmanDelorian@lemmy.world
      5·
      6 hours ago

      Older white American here. Historically speaking “crackers” were poor white folks from Appalachian Georgia and the Florida “pan handle” (the bit on top) thus cracker isn’t just racist it is historically classist as well.

      The Jeffersons, a 1970s TV show featuring an upwardly mobile black family moving into a more affluent neighborhood, featured George, the main character, calling a few racist white folks crackers popularizing the term for whites in general.

      I don’t see myself as a cracker. Im not poor nor was I southern. Any ancestor that I had that owned slaves did so centuries ago as none of my relatives who could own slaves did so. The fact that I can ignore racist terms directed at my race is a really strong sign of privilege.

          • thermal_shock@lemmy.worldEnglish
            5·
            4 hours ago

            The term “cracker” has multiple origins, including a reference to whip-cracking, a derogatory term for white Southerners, and a Gaelic word meaning “entertaining conversation”.

            Whip-cracking

            The term may have originated as a shortened version of “whip-cracker”.

            In the 1700s, “cracker” was used to describe poor white drovers who used whips to move cattle through the pine barrens of Florida and Georgia.

            White slave foremen in the antebellum South may have been called “crackers” because they used whips to drive and punish slaves.

    • sit@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      3·
      8 hours ago

      As far as I know cracker is simply an insult. It does not include slave holder status.

      This is a funny little meme.

      (The nword does not have to include the slave association either. When I grew up there were no slaves, and I learned it simply as an insult for brown people, no association with slaves)

    • amino
      2·
      9 hours ago

      I think it’s a way for white Americans to distance themselves from the cognitive dissonance of being a settler by adopting an “embrace, extend, extinguish” strategy towards any term or cultural signifier that was made cool by Black people