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Response to TheMastersNemesis (Original post)
Response to TheMastersNemesis (Original post)
Response to TheMastersNemesis (Original post)
Response to TheMastersNemesis (Original post)
Response to morningfog (Reply #5)
Did you happen to read what the hidden posts said???? I did. I certainly hope you aren't obliquely equating the 'n' word to "cracker". Because they are not the same kind of words.
From wikipedia:
The etymology of the term "cracker" is uncertain.[3]
One theory holds that slave foremen in the antebellum South used bullwhips to discipline African slaves, with such use of the whip being described as "cracking the whip." The white foremen who cracked these whips thus became known as "crackers."[4][5][6] Contemporary sources suggest, however, that it was not slaves but pack animals over which the whips were "cracked."[7][8]
"The whips used by some of these people are called 'crackers', from their having a piece of buckskin at the end. Hence the people who cracked the whips came to be thus named."[8]
Another whip-derived theory traces this term from the Middle English cnac, craic, or crak, which originally meant the sound of a cracking whip but came to refer to "loud conversation, bragging talk".[9] In Elizabethan times this could refer to "entertaining conversation" (one may be said to "crack" a joke) and cracker could be used to describe loud braggarts; this term and the Gaelic spelling craic are still in use in Ireland, Scotland and Northern England. It is documented in Shakespeare's King John (1595): "What cracker is this same that deafs our ears with this abundance of superfluous breath?"[10][11] This usage is illustrated in a letter to the Earl of Dartmouth which reads:
"I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode."[3]
A "cracker cowboy" with his Florida Cracker Horse and dog by Frederick Remington, 1895
An alternative theory holds that the term comes from the common diet of poor whites. The 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica supposes that the term derives from the cracked kernels of corn which formed the staple food of this class of people,[12] but the Oxford English Dictionary ("cracker", definition 4) says a derivation from "corn-cracker" is doubtful.
Another alternative is that the term is derived from "soda cracker," which is a white unleavened bread product made with baking soda, such as Saltines. Hence, the phrase "white soda cracker" is a derogatory term for white people.
Usage
Frederick Law Olmsted, a prominent landscape architect from Connecticut, visited the South as a journalist in the 1850s and wrote that "some crackers owned a good many Negroes, and were by no means so poor as their appearance indicated."[13]
"Cracker" has also been used as a proud or jocular self-description. With the huge influx of new residents from the North, "cracker" is used informally by some white residents of Florida and Georgia ("Florida cracker" or "Georgia cracker"
to indicate that their family has lived there for many generations. However, the term "white cracker" is seldom used self-referentially and remains an offensive racial slur used to demean Caucasians.[14]
In 1947, the student body of Florida State University voted on the name of their athletic symbol. From a list of more than 100 choices, Seminoles was selected. The other finalists, in order of finish, were Statesmen, Rebels, Tarpons, Fighting Warriors, and Crackers.[15][16]
Georgia Cracker label depicting a boy with peaches
Crackin' Good Snacks (a division of Winn-Dixie, a Southern grocery chain) has sold crackers similar to Ritz crackers under the name "Georgia Crackers". They sometimes were packaged in a red tin with a picture of The Crescent, an antebellum plantation house in Valdosta, Georgia.
Before the Milwaukee Braves baseball team moved to Atlanta, Georgia, the Atlanta minor league baseball team was known as the "Atlanta Crackers". The team existed under this name from 1901 until 1965. They were members of the Southern Association from their inception until 1961, and members of the International League from 1961 until they were moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1965. However, it is suggested[who?] the name was derived from players "cracking" the baseball bat and this origin makes sense when considering the Atlanta Negro League Baseball team was known as the "Atlanta Black Crackers".
The Florida Cracker Trail is a route which cuts across southern Florida, following the historic trail of the old cattle drives. In this context, the term refers to the cracking of the whips used by the Florida drovers.
Singer-songwriter Randy Newman, on his socio-politically themed album Good Old Boys (1974) uses the term "cracker" on the song "Kingfish" ("I'm a cracker, You one too, Gonna take good care of you" . The song's subject is Huey Long, populist Governor and then Senator for Louisiana (1928–1935). The term is also used in "Louisiana 1927" from the same album, where the line "Ain't it a shame what the river has done to this poor cracker's land" is attributed to President Coolidge.
In the 1972 film, Deliverance, Burt Reynolds' character Lewis Medlock refers to the backwoods Appalachians as "crackers."
Response to gollygee (Reply #22)
Response to gollygee (Reply #22)
Response to gollygee (Reply #62)
I think 'reverse racism' is a joke.
But I think racial slurs of any sort are unnecessary, especially here.
Response to marble falls (Reply #7)
Your point is well taken by me - but DU just had a thread lock this weekend because of a subject line with the N word in it. I agreed with that.
We need a higher level of conversation and this won't get us to it. And well - there are some folks at DU (infiltrators) that automatically need the vapors when we tell the truth. As you can see by the number of times that guy 'Name something or another' tried posting.
ETA - Oh well - at least a lot of folks are gonna get Pizza Deliveries today! 
Great Aunt Jenny (she died three years ago) used to describe white people not in her family. 
Evidently the Irish off the boat Grandfather and Cherokee grandmother of hers started using it in the 1890's. They changed those two to black on the census when their oldest daughter married a black man in 1898. I kind of see their point . . . if they were no longer a mixed race white/native couple - then they had the right.
She was black (Aunt Jenny) . Those folks down South who were born in the first 15 years of the last century pretty much used that as their 'go to' (at least in my dad's family they did) whenever describing white people who weren't in their family to us kids - that they encountered in Mississippi and Alabama back then.
Monolith - all white folks are crackers.
So there's more to my 'disapproval' than meets the eye.
And the best part of Aunt Jenny - she would always stop - look at my mom and say . . .
Oh honey I'm NOT talking about you. I'm not a racist.
find 'cracker' offensive. But I guess by that close jury 
they do.
Response to HappyMe (Reply #16)
Thinking there may be some older du'ers who really have ALWAYS had good hearts that would never drop an n-bomb that might be thinking . . . uh - this isn't right.
And the reality is - they probably agree with every single word the Master's wrote. I know I do!
with the n word in any way. The n word is off the charts on the richter scale, the other - not even close.
I guess the whole whiny 'white people too!1' thing gets on my nerves.
a bit ridiculous that someone finds the word offensive. I haven't heard anyone use this word for at least 10 years. Maybe the word should not have been used. But to me, in the light of the fact that black people are more likely to be harassed or killed by the police - a word is hardly something to get upset about. There are a lot of angry people out there, and they have good reason to be. The fact is, is that maybe the poster used the word to get people's attention. Plenty of people use foul language to get attention for their posts.
I am one white (cracker 
) woman that finds the hysteria over this a bit weird.
Response to marble falls (Reply #31)
who responded to me.
I can't understand seeing African Americans killed unjustly week after week, with no justice, and having that be so high up in the news and at DU lately, and while DU is going through that, getting so outraged over the word "cracker." No one in my family has gotten killed because they were white, so I can't get too upset about words used against white people. It seems obscene to get this upset over something so little when people are actually dying because of their skin color. Why not think, "There's a lot of anger and frustration right now" and move on?
