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In reply to the discussion: This message was self-deleted by its author [View all]marble falls
(71,982 posts)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 (19281935). 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."