"White cracker" or more often just "cracker" was originally a pejorative term for a white person, mainly used in the Southern United States. Look up pejorative in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... The U.S. Southern states or the South, also known colloquially as Dixie, constitute a distinctive region covering a large portion of the United States, with its own unique heritage, historical perspective, customs, musical styles, and cuisine. ...

Label depicting a barefoot cracker boy eating peaches from a straw hat

Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (900x301, 106 KB) Summary University of Georgia Website [1] Licensing This is a logo of a corporation, sports team, or other organization, and is protected by copyright and/or trademark. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (900x301, 106 KB) Summary University of Georgia Website [1] Licensing This is a logo of a corporation, sports team, or other organization, and is protected by copyright and/or trademark. ...

Usage

The term "cracker" was and is used most frequently in the South, especially in Georgia and Florida. Since the 1870s a nickname for Georgia is "The Cracker State", which is displayed proudly with no hint of insult. The U.S. Southern states or the South, also known colloquially as Dixie, constitute a distinctive region covering a large portion of the United States, with its own unique heritage, historical perspective, customs, musical styles, and cuisine. ... Official language(s) English Capital Tallahassee Largest city Jacksonville Area  Ranked 22nd  - Total 65,794 sq mi (170,451 km²)  - Width 162 miles (260 km)  - Length 497 miles (800 km)  - % water 17. ...

Historically the word suggested poor, white rural Americans with little formal education. Historians point out the term originally referred to the strong Scotch-Irish of the backcountry (as opposed to the English of the seacoast). Thus a sociologist reported in 1926, "As the plantations expanded these freed men [formerly bond servants) were pushed further and further back upon the more and more sterile soil. They became 'pinelanders,' 'corn-crackers,' or 'crackers.'" [Kephard Highlanders] Frederick Law Olmsted, an observant Yankee who visited the South in the 1850s, noted that some Crackers "owned a good many negroes, and were by no means so poor as their appearance indicated." [McWhiney xvi]

Usage of the term "cracker" generally differs from "hick" and "hillbilly" because crackers reject or resist assimilation into the dominant culture, while hicks and hillbillies theoretically are isolated from the dominant culture. In this way, the cracker is similar to the redneck. In the African American community, "cracker" is a disparaging term synonymous with "white trash." (The OED cites the 1830s origin of white trash as a word used by slaves on rich plantations to ridicule poor whites.) Hick (also country hick or country bumpkin) is a derogatory term for a person from a rural area. ... Hillbilly is a term for people who dwell in remote, rural, mountainous areas. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... OED stands for Oxford English Dictionary Office of Enrollment & Discipline This page concerning a three-letter acronym or abbreviation is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... White trash is an American ethnic slur with a social class component. ...

Since 1900 "cracker" has become a proud or jocular self-description. With the huge influx of new residents from the North, "cracker" is now 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. Official language(s) English Capital Tallahassee Largest city Jacksonville Area  Ranked 22nd  - Total 65,794 sq mi (170,451 km²)  - Width 162 miles (260 km)  - Length 497 miles (800 km)  - % water 17. ...

Caution: the term "white cracker" is usually not used self-referentially and remains a disparaging term. [1]

Etymology

There are various theories about the origin of the term "cracker."

The term cracker was in use during Elizabethan times to describe braggarts. The original root of this is the Middle English word crack ¹ meaning "entertaining conversation" (One may be said to "'crack' a joke"); this term and the alternate spelling "craic" are still in use in Ireland and Scotland. It is documented in Shakespeare's King John (1595): "What cracker is this . . . that deafes our ears / With this abundance of superfluous breath?" The Elizabethan Era is the period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558 - 1603) and is often considered to be a golden age in English history. ... Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion in 1066 and the mid-to-late 15th century, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the... Crack [krak] is a word in common usage in Ireland and in some parts of Scotland meaning fun, enjoyment, or good times, often in the context of drinking or music. ... Craic is a word in common usage in Ireland meaning fun, enjoyment, or good times, often in the context of drinking or music. ... Motto: Nemo me impune lacessit (English: No one provokes me with impunity) Scotlands location within Europe Scotlands location within the United Kingdom Languages English, Gaelic, Scots Capital Edinburgh Largest city Glasgow First Minister Jack McConnell Area - Total - % water Ranked 2nd UK 78,782 km² 1. ... William Shakespeare (National Portrait Gallery), in the famous Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed. ... King John is one of the so-called Shakespearean histories, plays written by William Shakespeare and based on the history of England. ...

By the 1760s, this term was in use by the English in the British North American colonies to refer to Scots-Irish settlers in the south. A letter to the Earl of Dartmouth 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." Events and Trends King George III ascends the British throne in 1760. ... The English are an ethnic group associated with England and the English language. ... British colonization of the Americas began in the late 16th century. ... Ulster-Scots is a term mainly used in Ireland and Britain (Scotch-Irish or Scots-Irishis commonly used in North America) primarily to refer to Presbyterian Scots, or their descendents, who migrated from the Scottish Lowlands to Ulster (the northern province of Ireland), largely across the 17th century. ... The title of Earl of Dartmouth was created in the Peerage of Great Britain in 1711 for William Legge, 2nd Baron Dartmouth, who was then Secretary of State for the Southern Department. ...

A folk etymology claims the term cracker originated from piney-woods Georgia and Florida pastoral yeomen's use of whips to drive cattle. The word then came to be associated with the cattlemen of Georgia and Florida. Cattlemen of the state of Florida (and some native born Floridians) take pride in being called "crackers", "Florida Crackers", or "Cracker Cowboys". The Cracker culture included using the bullwhip as a form of communication between cattle drivers, using "Cracks" and pauses to send messages.

Other less likely theories include references to cracking a whip over oxen when driving to market, the 18th century practice of cracking corn to make liquor, or to poor whites having had to crack their grain because they couldn't afford to take it to the local mill to have it ground. There may also be another possible origin - the first residents of Georgia were British convicts. In this setting the word takes on an illegal or criminal context. The term was used by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species to refer to "Virginia squatters" (illegal settlers) (p. 35). Binomial name Zea mays L. Maize (Zea mays ssp. ... Spirits redirects here. ... In his lifetime Charles Darwin gained international fame as an influential scientist examining controversial topics: portrait by Julia Margaret Cameron. ... The title page of the 1859 edition of On the Origin of Species. ...

Examples of usage

When used in pop culture, the term "white cracker" or "cracker" is sometimes intended to be humorous, though the distinction is not always clear. Popular culture, or pop culture, is the vernacular (peoples) culture that prevails in a modern society. ...

The Florida Cracker Trail is a route posted across southern Florida by the Florida Department of Transportation. The Florida Cracker Trail runs from just East of Bradenton, and ends in Ft. ... Official language(s) English Capital Tallahassee Largest city Jacksonville Area  Ranked 22nd  - Total 65,794 sq mi (170,451 km²)  - Width 162 miles (260 km)  - Length 497 miles (800 km)  - % water 17. ... The Florida Department of Transportation, or FDOT, is a decentralized agency charged with the establishment, maintenance, and regulation of public transportation in the state of Florida[1]. // Achievements In 1974, FDOT completed Floridas Turnpike, a 450-mile system of limited access toll highways. ...

The rustic lives of crackers were the topic of the novels of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings photo taken by Carl Van Vechten, 1953 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (August 8, 1896 – December 14, 1953) was an American author who lived in remote rural Florida and wrote novels with rural themes and settings. ...

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 came in a red tin with a picture of "The Crescent", an antebellum plantation house in Valdosta, Georgia. Winn-Dixie OTCBB: WNDXQ is a supermarket chain based in Jacksonville, Florida. ... Ritz crackers are a type of cracker produced by Nabisco. ... Antebellum is a Latin word meaning before the war (ante means before and bellum war). ... A plantation is an intentional planting of a crop, on a larger scale, usually for uses other than cereal production or pasture. ... Valdosta is a city in, and the county seat of Lowndes County, Georgia, United States. ...

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. Ironically, an Atlanta team in Negro League Baseball was known as the "Atlanta Black Crackers." The Atlanta Braves are a Major League Baseball team based in Atlanta, Georgia. ... A view of the playing field at Busch Stadium II St. ... Flag Seal Nickname: Hotlanta, The Big Peach Location Location in Fulton and DeKalb counties in the state of Georgia Coordinates , Government Country State Counties United States Georgia Fulton County, Georgia DeKalb County, Georgia Mayor Shirley Franklin (D) Geographical characteristics Area     City 132. ... Minor League Baseball, formerly the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues and also known in the past as NAPBL, National Baseball Association, and NA, is the organization which oversees the governing and organization of minor league baseball in North America. ... The Atlanta Crackers were a minor league baseball team that played in the Southern League for several decades until the Atlanta Braves moved from Milwaukee in 1966 and became the first major league baseball team based in the Southeastern United States. ... 1901 (MCMI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... 1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1965 calendar). ... The Southern Association was a higher-level minor league in American organized baseball from 1902 through 1961. ... 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1961 calendar). ... The International League (IL) is a minor league baseball league which operates in the eastern United States and Canada. ... Flag Seal Nickname: River City Motto: Sic Itur Ad Astra Location Location in the Commonwealth of Virginia Coordinates , Government Country State County United States Virginia Independent City Mayor L. Douglas Wilder Geographical characteristics Area     City 62. ... Part of the History of baseball in the United States series. ... The Atlanta Black Crackers were a team in the Negro League that played from approximately 1921 to 1949. ...

A puppet named "Colonel Crackie" played the stereotypical Southern gentleman in the children's television show Kukla, Fran and Ollie which aired on NBC from the late 1940s to the late 1950s. Kukla, Fran and Ollie was an early television show using puppets, originally created for children but soon watched by more adults than children. ... NBC, (Formerly an acronym for the National Broadcasting Company until 2004), is an American television and radio network based in New York Citys Rockefeller Center. ...

Curtis Mayfield uses the word "crackers" twice in his cautionary anti-racist anthem "If There's A Hell Below (We're All Going To Go)" - once in the opening spoken introduction ("Niggers, whiteys, jews, crackers/If there's a hell below...") and once in the first verse ("Blacks and the crackers, police and their backers.") Curtis Mayfield (June 3, 1942 – December 26, 1999) was an American soul, funk and R&B singer, songwriter and guitarist probably best known for his soundtrack to the blaxploitation film Superfly. ...

In John Boorman's 1972 film Deliverance, Lewis, played by Burt Reynolds, derisively refers to the rural people they encounter as being "crackers," implying that they were slow-witted hillbillies who lived in a world much different from that of him and his friends from a southern city. (However, a northerner would be just as likely to call Lewis/Reynolds a cracker.) John Boorman (born January 18, 1933 in Shepperton, Surrey, United Kingdom), is a British filmmaker, currently based in Ireland, best known for his feature films such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, and The General. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Burt Reynolds in 2005 Burt Reynolds (born Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. ... This article needs cleanup. ...

In the 1984 movie "Tank" starring James Garner, the white, southern sheriff was derisively referred to as a "cracker" multiple times. James Garner (born April 7, 1928) is an American film and television actor of partially Cherokee Indian descent. ...

An example is found in the popular American satirical cartoon television series South Park. One episode features the character "Chef" (who is black) planning to get married. The white children from the grade school where he works as a cook are at his home, waiting to see him to warn him off the marriage. While they wait on the sofa, Chef's elderly black father, as he is telling them a long-winded story about the Loch Ness Monster, refers to them as "little crackers" - something that Chef affectionately addresses the show's main young characters as in the show's first episode. Chef also refers to many people in South Park as "crackers" in several other episodes. South Park is an American animated television series created, written and voiced by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. ... The famous Surgeons photo (1934). ...

In the 2000 film O Brother Where Art Thou?, the upper class white character "Pappy" O'Daniel, candidate for the Governor of Mississippi and host of the radio show "Flour Hour", meets a lower class and uneducated white character as he arrives at the radio station for his program. Pappy is told that he can make $10 for singing into a can inside, whereupon he snaps, "I'm not here to make a record, you dumb cracker." O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a musical comedy film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, set in Mississippi during the Great Depression. ... Official language(s) English Capital Jackson Largest city Jackson Area  Ranked 32nd  - Total 48,434 sq. ...

Musician Matthew Shafer uses the stage name Uncle Kracker (the second word being an obvious, and clearly intentional, misspelling of "cracker"). Stand-up comedian Chris Rock frequently uses this term in his performances. Uncle Kracker (born Matthew Shafer 9 November 1974 in Mount Clemens, Michigan) is an American rock and roll musician. ... Chris Rock Chris Rock (born February 7, 1965 in Andrews, South Carolina) is an American stand-up comedian and actor. ...

Politics

On August 20, 2000, Internet gossip columnist Matt Drudge reported that Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager, called George W. Bush a "black hating cracker" while talking to New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams at the 2000 Democratic National Convention. August 20 is the 232nd day of the year (233rd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... This article is about the year 2000. ... Matt Drudge with ever-present fedora Matthew Drudge (born October 27, 1966) is an American Internet personality and talk radio host. ... Donna Brazile (born December 15, 1959) is an American author, educator, and political activist and strategist affiliated with the Democratic Party. ... Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. ... George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is the 43rd and current President of the United States and a former governor of Texas. ... The New York Post is one of the oldest newspapers published in the United States. ... Al Gore and Joe Lieberman at the 2000 Democratic National Convention. ...

In recent years, members of the American Left from the West Coast and New England have taken to calling Christian Conservatives as "Crackers" presumably as a sort of insult. In politics, left-wing, political left, leftism, or simply the left, are terms which refer (with no particular precision) to the segment of the political spectrum typically associated with any of several strains of socialism, social democracy, or liberalism (especially in the American sense of the word), or with opposition... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

A political machine that dominated city politics in Augusta, Georgia for most of the first half of the 20th century was known as "The Cracker Party." Nickname: The Garden City (of the South), Masters City, The AUG Motto: We Feel Good Location Location of the consolidated areas of Augusta and Richmond County in the state of Georgia. ...

References

• Roger Lyle Brown. Ghost Dancing on the Cracker Circuit: The Culture Festivals in the American South (1997).
• Cassidy, Frederic G. Dictionary of American Regional English. Harvard University Press, Vol. I, 1985: 825-26.
• De Graffenried, Clare. "The Georgia Cracker in the Cotton Mills." Century 41 (February 1891): 483—98.
• George Gillett Keen and Sarah Pamela Williams. Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives: The Florida Reminiscences of George Gillett Keen and Sarah Pamela Williams edited by James M Denham and Canter Brown. U of South Carolina Press 2000/
• Grady McWhiney, Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1988).
• John Solomon Otto, "Cracker: The History of a Southeastern Ethnic, Economic, and Racial Epithet," Names' 35 (1987): 28-39.
• Frank L. Owsley. Plain Folk of the Old South (1949)
• Delma E. Presley, "The Crackers of Georgia," Georgia Historical Quarterly 60 (summer 1976): 102-16.
• Burke, Karanja. "Cracker." [2]

See also

• Hillbilly
• Honky
• Redneck
• List of ethnic slurs
• List of pejorative political slogans
• Trailer park trash
• White trash

Hillbilly is a term for people who dwell in remote, rural, mountainous areas. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... This article or section contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable. ... See also Alternative political spellings and the list of pejorative political puns. ... Trailer park trash (or trailer trash) is a derogatory U.S. English term for people who live in trailers or mobile homes, especially in trailer parks. ... White trash is an American ethnic slur with a social class component. ...

External links

• Cracker entry in the New Georgia Encyclopedia
• Etymology of "cracker" by Professor Kim Pearson
• Cracker - essay by Karanja Burke
• Florida Cracker Trail Association
• The Straight Dope on "Jimmy crack corn"

Footnotes

Note 1: The word "craic" was in itself, adopted into modern Irish Gaelic from the word crack.