It is racist speech - especially if it’s a Black person doing it (or, in this case, an Asian by proxy). How is it not racist speech?
And of course it disparages Black people as a group. It suggests that they are a group of people (not one or two, but collectively, all his Black relatives, so their group membership is a commonality) who would mouth racist slurs behind a White relative’s back - how is that anything but disparaging?
To me, it does somewhat mitigate but not negate the level of offense but not the offense itself: there’s always a level at which it will still be offensive. For instance, awhile back we had a troll who said vile things about white people, including specific posters, and some people still said “but but but, you only don’t want him to call you these things because you’re not used to it! Fragility!”
It’s still wrong if the so-called punching is due solely to inclusion in a group. Actions based strictly on collective properties is exactly what bigotry is. This punching up and down nonsense is a nothing more than a weak argument used to justify abhorrent behavior.
If someone says, “I’m gonna get a second opinion, just in case you’re angling for your yacht payment, har har,” that’s an asshole move. If someone says, “I’m gonna get a second opinion, just in case you’re an affirmative action hire, har har,” that’s way way way worse. And the reason it’s worse is punching down.
I’ve been the subject of such jokes. Not often, and it’s been years since. I put up with them for awhile, then when someone made some affirmative action joke, I finally said, “You know, I actually think I’m a decent teacher and didn’t just get hired because I’m male.” The jokester was shocked and apologetic and never repeated the joke.
So as someone who’s been subject to that kind of punching-up humor, I can distinguish clearly between obnoxious/asshole humor and systemically harmful humor. Those jokes were asshole jokes (made by a friend who just wasn’t thinking and who changed her tune when I confronted her), but they never endangered my career. Conflating them with punching-down humor is the sort of intellectually lazy deliberate ignorance of historical and societal dynamics that makes such discussions so difficult.
As I wrote above, I don’t think the term cracker is inherently insulting or even uncivil. Today I ate lunch from a restaurant called The Cracker Barrel. My neighborhood has many cracker style homes. White people here don’t normally refer to themselves as crackers, but it won’t turn any heads if the word gets thrown around in casual conversation(, unless directed at a snowbird or Northerner).
In my opinion cracker means ‘old-fashioned southerner’, which can be a praise or insult depending on context. That the word “cracker” passes from the lips of a Black person makes no difference, in my opinion. It is not necessarily an insult for a Black person to call a white person an old-fashioned southerner, or to say they have an old-fashioned southern house, or to say they act like an old-fashioned southerner. And when a Black person says “he’s a racist cracker”, that means “he’s a racist old-fashioned southerner”. The insult comes from context, in this case an explicit accusation of racism.
It is not necessarily racist to accuse a Black person of being racist. Nor is it necessarily racist to accuse a white person’s family of being racist. I will agree that it is racist to imply your Black relatives are all racists for no apparent reason other than the fact that they are Black. That would disparage Black people as a group by accusing the entire Black race of being racist.
But damuriajashi had a reason for singling out Black relatives specifically, and that was to rebut the strawman argument he constructed for you: that having Black relatives shields you from his rhetoric. If you were in fact a racist white dude who used Black relatives as a rhetorical shield, I don’t think it would be racist to accuse your Black relatives of thinking of racist slurs for you. That damuriajashi’s assumptions about you were wrong does not make him a racist.
~Max
Do you seriously think the term gets applied to Black or Indian or Asian or Latinx Southerners? Like, “I love eating at Mama Dip’s Kitchen, that woman was a genuine cracker”?
Do you seriously think the term is used as a compliment sometimes? Not as a bit of wry self-deprecation, but as genuine praise?
Do you seriously think the “cracker” in “Cracker Barrel” is intended to refer to “old fashioned Southerners”?
How much time have you spent in the South?
It would be very unusual to see such a person referred to as a cracker. But not impossible - like when a Black person is called out for being too “white”.
Yes, just like “redneck”.
Yes, I do. There’s a picture of one such cracker on the sign. I certainly don’t think it refers to crackers, the food (which don’t usually come in barrels), but until this moment I never put any thought into it. I could be wrong.
My first year of life was up North, in Tennessee. Since then, Florida.
~Max
Then it seems you agree with me that saying derogatory things is bad in itself, even if it is sometimes more bad than others.
How do you know that sexist attitudes never endangered your career? Someone said earlier in the thread that male elementary teachers were viewed with suspicion.
The whole thing just seems way more complicated than people want to admit. What if the doctor in @puzzlegal’s example makes a derogatory comment about white people? Is she still going to feel comfortable being seen by him? What if her kid’s teacher does the same? Both those people have a certain amount of power over their patients/pupils.
And what if a black person says something anti-Asian or anti-Semitic? Is that punching up or down?
Personally, I try not to make derogatory comments. I’m not always perfect. But I do think that one of those is a lot worse than the other. And you know, there are derogatory comments and derogatory comments. A joke about doctors not being audited because they aren’t good enough with numbers to cheat on their taxes, for instance, might be okay. (I don’t remember the details, but have heard such a joke at work.) A joke about Black people not being good with numbers wouldn’t be okay, imo.
And yes. I agree that derogatory comments aimed at the local minority, like the one guy in the female-dominated profession, are problematic.
Huh, I always assumed it literally referred to a barrel of crackers. Lots of foods used to be stored in barrels. Pork, apples, flour… I assumed crackers were, too.
down.
And if the Asian or Jew says something anti-Black, that is also down.
But if the black person says something anti-white, that is punching up?
It looks like I was wrong on that one.
https://www.southernliving.com/culture/where-did-cracker-barrel-get-its-name
As it happens, Merriam-Webster defines “cracker-barrel” as an adjective “suggestive of the friendly homespun character of a country store.” […] The phrase “cracker-barrel” was inspired by the barrels full of soda crackers that were for sale in the country’s country stores.
~Max
In that extremely rare case, though, it’s not being used to reference a traditional southern person’s traditional southernness. It’s being used to reference their whiteness.
Some insulting terms are used as defiantly proud words. On reading, it sounds like in Florida, “cracker” is used this way more often than in my neck of the woods, so, granted.
It’s never used as a defiantly proud term when preceded by the word “racist.” Then it is always a racial pejorative.
Yeah, you’re definitely wrong.
I guess Florida counts as the South. I tend to think of Florida as Florida, much like I don’t think of California as the West.
I disagree. In the following sentence, I believe the two instances of cracker have the same neutral meaning.
“He is a well meaning cracker, but also a racist cracker.”
~Max
Let’s be really careful here, if you don’t mind. The implication that Jews (and Asians) are somehow higher on the scale is highly problematic. That CRT tends to ascribe Jews as “more powerful” is highly controversial, without even including the fact that Mizrahi and Black Jews exist and many Ashkenazic Jews do not identify as white.
Intersectionality is not linear, it’s combinatorial. Punching “up vs down” is a decent heuristic in general, but the devil’s in the details and it’s a lot more complicated than that.
That is not a sentence you have ever heard in your life. Nor is it the one that is being discussed.
I feel like we’re back in “wetback” territory again- where someone claimed it wasn’t racist, it’s just Hispanic! I forgot who, but it was a ludicrous argument.
For the umpteenth time, could we please stop with the argument that “If I don’t think it’s racist, it’s not racist”?
Wikipedia: “Cracker , sometimes white cracker or cracka , is a racial slur directed towards white people,[1][2][3] used especially with regard to poor rural whites in the Southern United States.”
Merriam-Webster: “offensive —used as an insulting and contemptuous term for a poor, white, usually Southern person”
dictionary.com: “Slang: Disparaging and Offensive. a contemptuous term used to refer to a white person in the South, especially a poor white living in some rural parts of the southeastern U.S.”
And you do understand that crackers used to come on barrels and people–not just Southerners–would sit around the cracker barrel at the general store and chat? The slur “cracker” has an entirely different eytmology than the thin, crisp biscuit.
But again, the standard definition of a term does not rely on what a term means to you. If to me the term “idiot” means “refined and intelligent person,” (It doesn’t.) I might not mind if someone called me that, but most people go by the standard definitions of a word and would have a very different reaction to it.
That’s the point.
Then look at the sentence fragment actually being discussed,
“your non-white relatives (who probably think you are a racist cracker)”
and this sentence, which I have actually heard spoken,
He’s a well-meaning cracker with a good heart.
I think the word cracker carries the same meaning in both sentences.
~Max