Is it OK to refer to groups of poor white southern people as “Crackers”? Mr. Glutton seems to think so, presumably based on the idea that some of the people in that group call themselves that.
But, more than a few African Americans call themselves, and others, the N-word. Pretty sure calling groups of black people the N-word wouldn’t be allowed on this message board.
Why the disparate treatment of the two terms on this message board?
In my experience, the word “cracker” isn’t anywhere near as universally offensive as the N word. Its usage seems to vary quite a bit. In the areas where I grew up, it was at most a fairly mild insult, basically the same as calling someone a hillbilly or a hick. I was well into my twenties before I found out that in some areas it is considered to be significantly more offensive than that.
I don’t moderate GD, so I won’t comment at all about its acceptability there. I’m only commenting about my specific experience with the word.
I’d second that. I don’t it’s anywhere near as offensive. The question it raises though is, if you can use some some words that point to a person’s race in an insulting way, what word can one use to insult a black person…that would have the same “weight” as “Cracker”?
Why do you supposed the n-word is so offensive? Because it perpetuates the mindset of 200+ years of slavery and another 150 years of racial discrimination, from the more powerful and dominant race to the less powerful race. There is nothing even remotely comparable that is in the background of poor southern whites. They may have picked cotton right alongside poor blacks, but they WEREN’T BLACK. That made all the difference.
I really don’t believe that there is anyone who grew up anywhere in the U.S. who can’t immediately grasp this difference.
Why would you want to insult a person based solely on their race?
As I posted in the other thread, the minor league baseball team in Atlanta prior to the Braves moving there, were the Atlanta Crackers - Atlanta Crackers - Wikipedia
Well, I AM a mod in GD and I’d say that I’d judge it based on context and the nature of the thread. I have certainly seen the word used as an insult. Because if that I’d be leery of seeing it in a thread at all because it would come fraught with debate land mines. But I wouldn’t say it’s an automatic warning.
When I first read the word, it was in an 1860s-70s British magazine, the name of which I’ve forgotten, but likely Chambers’ Magazine, describing the life style — not exactly Life Styles of the Rich and Famous — of the original Cracker folk, living in maybe Florida or Arkansas, who seemed to live on mud flats in rough cabins swearing at each other a lot, which made contemporary Irish peasantry look like prosperous Belgian bourgeois. A far cry from a mere 100 years later.
When I lived in the foothills of the Blue Ridge the nuns wouldn’t let us call hillbillies, of whom there were plenty in the area, if not at a Catholic elementary school, hillbillies. We tried “Mountain Williams” but it didn’t catch on. We were stuck with calling them people.
I didn’t say or imply I wanted to do anything. My questions was that if cracker is allowed (which I agree is no where as offensive as nigger), is there an insult that could be leveled against a black person that would be the equivalent to “cracker”.
Cracker, used as an insult by blacks against whites, only came into currency in the last few decades. (I am not saying that there was no such use in previous years, but it was rare.) Cracker, used as a self-identifying expression by whites of Florida and Georgia has a much longer history and was and is still in use, generally as a jocular reference.
As used by BrainGlutton in its first appearance in that thread, it was clearly a reference by a white guy to an established population of “native” Floridians with no racist (or even racial) connotations, at all.
Had it been hurled as an insult, it would have received a reprimand.
The word, itself, however, has no intrinsic racial or racist meanings, such meanings having to be imposed by context, so the word is not verboten, per se.
Your use of the word “against” is indicative of the problem we are encountering. BrainGlutton did not use the word against anyone. Not every jocular reference to a group is always intended as an insult or an attack.
