You guys are so silly. 
Not racially, so its ok to call them hillbillies. If anything, their oppression is by the rich, which are disproportionately white. Rich rednecks, basically
Dude, “cracker” has no where near the meaning to white people that any number of slurs has to a black person. See: American history, Volumes I through …
Oh, I can’t believe I forgot to post this Clerks II scene earlier…“I’m taking it back.”
What? “Porch monkey”? “Porch monkey” isn’t racist. My Grandmom called me that all the time because all I’d do is sit on the porch and stare at the neighbors.
I think we can reclaim it.
Doggammit!!!
(Note to self- Always go to Page 2 to see if someone beat you to it.
And get the quote right. ‘Take it back’, not ‘reclaim it’.)
Yes, but once they get really rich they prefer to be called “hillwilliams”.
Topic #1: Off the top of my head, without research, a cracker used to refer to a white man who lives in a rural, poor area, is uneducated (and proud of it?), has poor hygeine, doesn’t wear shoes, takes better care of his dogs than his children, and has too many of both.
A redneck is a white man who is lower middle class or below, rural, a manual laborer (usually a farmer), has some education, owns firearms (and probably uses them for subsistence hunting and vermin killing), and is probably a Baptist or other related Protestant. The term is more descriptive of a subtype of culture that tends to be politically and socially conservative, Midwestern, and often viewed as insular.
The etymology of the term that I’m familiar with is that, as farmers and manual laborers often worked in the sun with their head bent over something, their necks were sunburned. The UMWA picked up the name and wore the red bandanna as a sign of solidarity with all laborers. Growing up in Texas, people around me often identified themselves as rednecks without negative connotations. They even agreed with the people who used it as a pejorative as to what it meant to be a redneck. They just didn’t see those characteristics as a bad thing.
Honky is word with little known etymology - not surprising if the word springs from the descendants of enslaved Africans (no one in The Establishment bothered writing down what they were saying - but didn’t come into common usage until the mid-20th century. The idea was supposed to that honky was as strong a racial epithet as nigger, but . . . well, your mileage may vary. I’ve always found it to be slightly silly, and if someone repeatedly called me a honky, I’d be more annoyed at the lack of insult variety than the disrespect implied by the word.
So, all crackers and rednecks are honkies, and there is some overlap between cracker and redneck population, but the only time I’ve ever witnessed (in person, not on this board) someone get upset over one of these terms is when cracker was used.
Topic 2: Hmmm, Wiki supports your assertion that the term “grandfather clause” and its attendant verb “to grandfather” showed up with Jim Crow, but considering how many situations the concept is applicable to - changes in building codes, British peerages, and zoning laws - it probably escaped into common usage almost immediately after it showed up. Some words and phrases have a habit of doing that. They provide a descriptive and fitting name for a concept that needed one and were adopted wholesale. I doubt many people are aware of the history of the phrase. I wasn’t, and I consider myself fairly well informed about the twists and turns my native language takes.
Topic 3: Nobody has to justify anything about their tipping practices. It’s custom, not law. In practice, especially on this board, it leads to conversations far more heated than those concerning racial epithets. I’ll hazard a couple of guesses:
-
Federally mandated minimum wage, which servers make only a small percentage of, is horrifyingly low. At $7.25/hour, someone working full-time would barely be above the poverty line if they were only supporting themselves. Most people are aware of just how little servers are paid as well as just what hard work, emotionally and physically, being a restaurant server is. So, they’ve increased the percentage they tip to make up for it.
-
Those of us who grew up with the idea of a standard tip being 15% came to think of it as being the standard tip for average service. If service is better than average, you pay a better than standard tip.
-
Those of us who can afford to eat out at a restaurant with servers are aware that the economy really, really sucks and isn’t getting any better anytime soon. So, we’re more generous than we might be if everyone was flush with money.
-
Everyone out there took my dad’s advice that if you always tip well, you will be remembered when you come back, and the servers will take very good care of you. (Which, as far as I’ve experienced, is utterly true. Servers have nearly hijacked my dad when he shows up, and I’ve even seen a seater punish a server she didn’t like by not letting them be my server.)
My experience is that cracker only refers to southerners. You can be a redneck if you’re from Montana or Arizona or Maine but you can’t be a cracker.
You left white trash out of your post. White trash is basically a negative version of a cracker or redneck. A person might call themselves a cracker or a redneck but he won’t call himself white trash.
I thought cracker was more Southern and redneck was more Midwestern, but those are just my own personal connotations.
And, oh, yeah, white trash is extremely pejorative.
I forgot to mention Townhouse before. I saw them in the store yesterday and I was like
“Goddam cracker!”