Cracker, sometimes cracka or white cracker, is a racial epithet directed towards white people, [1] [2] [3] used especially with regard to poor rural whites in the Southern United States. [4] Although commonly a pejorative, it is also used in a neutral context, particularly in reference to a native of Florida or Georgia (see Florida cracker and Georgia cracker). [5]
The exact history and etymology of the word is debated. [6]
The term is "probably an agent noun" [7] from the word crack. The word crack was later adopted into Gaelic as the word craic meaning a "loud conversation, bragging talk" [8] [9] where this interpretation of the word is still in use in Ireland, Scotland, and Northern England today.
The historical derivative of the word craic and its meaning can be seen as far back as the Elizabethan era (1558–1603) where the term crack could be used to refer to "entertaining conversation" (one may be said to "crack" a joke or to be "cracking wise") The word cracker could be used to describe loud braggarts; An example of this can be seen in William Shakespeare's King John (c. 1595) "What cracker is this same that deafs our ears with this abundance of superfluous breath?" [10]
The word was later documented describing a group of "Celtic immigrants, Scotch-Irish people who came to America running from political circumstances in the old world". [11] [12] This usage is illustrated in a 1766 letter to the Earl of Dartmouth which reads: [13]
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.
The label followed the Scotch-Irish American immigrants, who were often seen by officials as "unruly and ill-mannered" [11] The use of the word is further demonstrated in official documents, where the Governor of Florida said,
'We don't know what to do with these crackers—we tell them to settle this area and they don't; we tell them not to settle this area and they do'
By the early 1800s, those immigrants "started to refer to themselves that way as a badge of honor" [11] as is the case with other events of linguistical reappropriation.
The compound corn-cracker was used of poor white farmers (by 1808), especially from Georgia, but also extended to residents of northern Florida, from the cracked kernels of corn which formed a staple food of this class of people. This possibility is given in the 1911 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica , [14] but the Oxford English Dictionary says a derivation of the 18th-century simplex cracker from the 19th-century compound corn-cracker is doubtful. [15] [16]
It has been suggested that white slave foremen in the antebellum South were called "crackers" owing to their practice of "cracking the whip" to drive and punish slaves. [17] [18] [19] Whips were also cracked over pack animals, [20] [21] so "cracker" may have referred to whip-cracking more generally. According to An American Glossary (1912): [22]
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.
Another possibility, which may be a modern folk etymology, supposes that the term derives from "soda cracker", a type of light wheat biscuit which dates in the Southern US to at least the Civil War. [23] The idea has possibly been influenced by "whitebread", a similar term for white people. "Soda cracker" and even "white soda cracker" have become extended versions of "cracker" as an epithet. [24]
"Cracker" has also been used as a proud or jocular self-description in the past. [25] 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.
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." [26]
In On the Origin of Species , Charles Darwin quotes a Professor Wyman as saying, "one of the 'crackers' (i.e. Virginia squatters) added, 'we select the black members of a litter [of pigs] for raising, as they alone have a good chance of living.'"
Late 19th century cattle drivers of the southeastern scrub land cracked whips to move cattle. [27] Many slaves and free blacks joined the Seminoles and found work in the cattle business. [28] Descendants of crackers are often proud of their heritage. [25]
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. [29] [30]
Before the Milwaukee Braves baseball team moved to Atlanta, 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.
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 his essay titled "Black Rednecks and White Liberals", published in 2005, American economist and social philosopher Thomas Sowell argues, that the "ghetto" African-American culture originates in the dysfunctional white southern redneck culture, which came, in turn, from the "Cracker culture".
In 2008, former President Bill Clinton used the term "cracker" on Larry King Live to describe white voters he was attempting to win over for Barack Obama: "You know, they think that because of who I am and where my politic[al] base has traditionally been, they may want me to go sort of hustle up what Lawton Chiles used to call the 'cracker vote' there." [31]
The Florida Cracker Trail is a route which cuts across central Florida, following the historic trail of the old cattle drives.
On June 27, 2013, in the trial of George Zimmerman concerning the killing of Trayvon Martin, a witness under examination (Rachel Jeantel) testified that Martin, an African-American, had told her over the telephone that a "creepy ass cracker is following me" minutes before the altercation between the two occurred. Zimmerman's attorney then asked her if "creepy ass cracker" was an offensive term, to which she responded "no". The testimony and response brought about both media and public debate about the use of the word "cracker". A CNN report referred to the regional nature of the term, noting both that "some in Florida use the term in a non-derogatory, colloquial sense" and that it is sometimes regarded as a "sharp racial insult that resonates with white southerners even if white northerners don't get it". [32]
A 1783 pejorative use of crackers specified men who "descended from convicts that were transported from Great Britain to Virginia at different times, and inherit so much profligacy from their ancestors, that they are the most abandoned set of men on earth". [33]
Benjamin Franklin, in his memoirs (1790), referred to "a race of runnagates and crackers, equally wild and savage as the Indians" who inhabit the "desert[ed] woods and mountains". [34]
In his 1964 speech "The Ballot or the Bullet", Malcolm X used the term "cracker" in reference to white people in a pejorative context. [35] In one passage, he remarked, "It's time for you and me to stop sitting in this country, letting some cracker senators, Northern crackers and Southern crackers, sit there in Washington, D.C., and come to a conclusion in their mind that you and I are supposed to have civil rights. There's no white man going to tell me anything about my rights." [35]
On November 29, 1993, in a speech given at Kean College in New Jersey, Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Abdul Muhammad called Pope John Paul II "a no good cracker". [36]
In 2012, in Jacksonville, Florida, Michael Dunn murdered Jordan Davis in an argument over loud music coming from a car. Dunn alleged that he had heard the word "cracker" coming from the vehicle occupied by high school aged teenagers. [37] [38] [39] This claim, along with other details in Dunn's testimony, was not substantiated by other witnesses in the criminal proceedings. [40]
In a positive connotation, a hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals by non-standard means. Though the term hacker has become associated in popular culture with a security hacker – someone with knowledge of bugs or exploits to break into computer systems and access data which would otherwise be inaccessible to them – hacking can also be utilized by legitimate figures in legal situations. For example, law enforcement agencies sometimes use hacking techniques to collect evidence on criminals and other malicious actors. This could include using anonymity tools to mask their identities online and pose as criminals. Likewise, covert world agencies can employ hacking techniques in the legal conduct of their work. Hacking and cyber-attacks are used extra-legally and illegally by law enforcement and security agencies, and employed by state actors as a weapon of legal and illegal warfare.
Software cracking is an act of removing copy protection from a software. Copy protection can be removed by applying a specific crack. A crack can mean any tool that enables breaking software protection, a stolen product key, or guessed password. Cracking software generally involves circumventing licensing and usage restrictions on commercial software by illegal methods. These methods can include modifying code directly through disassembling and bit editing, sharing stolen product keys, or developing software to generate activation keys. Examples of cracks are: applying a patch or by creating reverse-engineered serial number generators known as keygens, thus bypassing software registration and payments or converting a trial/demo version of the software into fully-functioning software without paying for it. Software cracking contributes to the rise of online piracy where pirated software is distributed to end-users through filesharing sites like BitTorrent, One click hosting (OCH), or via Usenet downloads, or by downloading bundles of the original software with cracks or keygens.
White trash is a derogatory racial and class-related slur used in American English to refer to poor white people, especially in the rural areas of the southern United States. The label signifies a social class inside the white population and especially a degraded standard of living. It is used as a way to separate the "noble and hardworking" "good poor" from the lazy, "undisciplined, ungrateful and disgusting" "bad poor". The use of the term provides middle- and upper-class whites a means of distancing themselves from the poverty and powerlessness of poor whites, who cannot enjoy those privileges, as well as a way to disown their perceived behavior.
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. Cattle drives ensure the herds health in finding pasture and bring them to market. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of special significance and legend. A subtype, called a wrangler, specifically tends the horses used to work cattle. In addition to ranch work, some cowboys work for or participate in rodeos. Cowgirls, first defined as such in the late 19th century, had a less-well documented historical role, but in the modern world work at identical tasks and have obtained considerable respect for their achievements. Cattle handlers in many other parts of the world, particularly South America and stockmen and jackaroos in Australia, perform work similar to the cowboy.
Lamer is a jargon or slang name originally applied in cracker and phreaker culture to someone who did not really understand what they were doing. Today it is also loosely applied by IRC, BBS, demosceners, and online gaming users to anyone perceived to be contemptible. In general, the term has come to describe someone who is willfully ignorant of how things work. It is derived from the word "lame".
A whip is a tool or weapon designed to strike humans or animals to exert control through pain compliance or fear of pain. They can also be used without inflicting pain, for audiovisual cues, such as in equestrianism. They are generally either a firm stick designed for direct contact, or a flexible line requiring a specialized swing. The former is easier and more precise, the latter offers longer reach and greater force. A hunting whip combines a firm stick with a flexible line.
A bullwhip is a single-tailed whip, usually made of braided leather or nylon, designed as a tool for working with livestock or competition.
Florida crackers were colonial-era British, American pioneer settlers in what is now the U.S. state of Florida; the term is also applied to their descendants, to the present day, and their subculture among white Southerners. The first crackers arrived in 1763 after Spain traded Florida to Great Britain following the latter's victory over France in the Seven Years' War, though much of traditional Florida cracker folk culture dates to the 19th century.
The Atlanta Black Crackers were a professional Negro league baseball team which played during the early to mid-20th century. They were primarily a minor Negro league team; however in the brief period they played as a major Negro league team, they won the second half pennant of the Negro American League in 1938 but lost the play-off for the overall season title.
The Atlanta Crackers were Minor League Baseball teams based in Atlanta, Georgia, between 1901 and 1965. The Crackers were Atlanta's home team until the Atlanta Braves moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1966.
Grady McWhiney was a historian of the American south and the U.S. Civil War.
The Florida Cracker Horse is a critically endangered horse breed from the state of Florida in the United States. It is genetically and physically similar to many other Spanish-style horses, especially those from the Spanish Colonial horse group, including the Banker horse of North Carolina, and the Carolina Marsh Tacky of South Carolina.
Georgia crackers refer to the original American pioneer settlers of the Province of Georgia, and their descendants.
A stockwhip is a type of whip made of a long, tapered length of flexible, plaited leather or nylon with a stiff handle and thong able to pivot along the handle easily. Stock whips are used when mustering cattle.
Redneck is a derogatory term mainly, but not exclusively, applied to white Americans perceived to be crass and unsophisticated, closely associated with rural whites of the Southern United States.
Cracker, crackers or The Crackers may refer to:
Poor White is a sociocultural classification used to describe economically disadvantaged Whites in the English-speaking world, especially White Americans with low incomes.
Prawn crackers are a deep-fried snack made from starch and prawn. They are a common snack food in Southeast Asian cuisine, but they are most closely associated with Indonesia. They have also been adapted into East Asian cuisines, where the similar Japanese kappa ebisen (かっぱえびせん) and Korean saeukkang are popular snacks.
Florida cracker or Florida Cracker may refer to:
Specific
In the southern states of America, "cracker" is a term of contempt for the "poor" or "mean whites," particularly of Georgia and Florida
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