Why are white people called crackers? what is the root of this? just curious?

Question

i heard it said all the time and do not know the meaning

Answer 1

"Originally the white slave driver because he would "crack" the whip, hence the noun cracker."

Answer 2

The origins of the term are uncertain, though there are a few conjectures. Dave Wilton, who studies etymology as a hobby, presents the idea that the term may have come from the word corncracker, which describes someone who cracks corn for liquor, a common practice especially in early Appalachia. Wilton writes, "The song lyric 'Jimmy Crack Corn' is a reference to this. In the song, a slave sings about how his master got drunk, fell, hit his head, and died. And the slave 'don't care.' (This was a pretty subversive song for its day.) This usage, however, is probably not the origin of the ethnic term cracker" (Wilton, par. 1). Wilton also suggests that the term may have come from 16th century Old English, where "to crack" meant to boast. There isn't much to reinforce this belief, however.

Going along with the cracked corn theory, Delma Presley, a noted scholar, believes that "cracker" came from as far back as the 18th Century, where cracked corn was actually consumed by the Scots-Irish (Allen 50). As those settlers came to Appalachia, the practice of cracking corn to produce liquor became popular, and the term thus followed them. Then, while the Scots-Irish and several other ethnic groups populated Appalachia, cracker was applied to all of the white inhabitants.

Clarence Major, in his Dictionary of Afro-American Slang, lists two rather interesting ideas about the origin of the term. The first is that a "cracker" was a slang term used by 19th Century Georgian slaves to refer to the slavemasters. If this were in fact, true, then the term would come directly from the cracking of the slavemaster's whip. This is quite a peculiar theory, because it would immediately explain the negative connotation that the word has taken. However, there seems to be little or no support for this theory, and no other source that was studied mentions it.

The other theory Major suggests is that, in light of the extreme racial tension of the 19th Century, "cracker" came straight from "the white soda cracker as opposed to say, ginger cookies" (Major 42). Again, this would explain where the derogatory undertones could originate. But as with Major's first explanation, there seems to be no reinforcement for this, and this was the only source that made any mention of such an origin. The former of Major's etymologies does seem to somewhat hint back to the popular cracked corn theory, but it is the only theory investigated that gave such an assertion. Major's definition of cracker is simple: "a white person" (Allen 42). One particular thing to note is that Major's Dictionary was published in 1970, towards the end of the civil rights era, which, along with years of Reconstruction, mark arguably the two most tense ages with concern to relations between Blacks and Whites.

Answer 3

On the plantation the white man or the master would crack the whip on the slaves in the field. The slaves referred to him as a cracker. This term is used in reference to white people who might be bosses. Or in slang form from cracking corn. This is how corn was cracked manually rather then at a mill.It is also used to mean the master died. Jimmy cracked corn and I don't care. It is also used to describe those homes in Florida, Georgia and down South where they have those hurricane porches and french windows all along the back porch. They are called cracker houses. The white whip crackers lived there on the tobacco plantation.

Answer 4

The term "cracker" was and is used most frequently in the southern U.S., 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 or irony.

Historically the word suggested poor, white rural Americans with little formal education. Historians point out the term originally referred to the strong Scots-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, a prominent landscape architect from the northern United States, visited the South as a journalist in the 1850s and noted that some crackers "owned a good many negroes, and were by no means so poor as their appearance indicated." [McWhiney xvi]

Other origins of the term "cracker" are linked to early Florida cattle herders that traditionally used whips to herd wild Spanish cattle. The crack of the herders' whips could be heard for great distances and were used to round cattle in pens and to keep the cows on a given track. Also, "cracker" has historically been used to refer to those engaged in the low paying job of cracking pecans and other nuts in Georgia and throughout the southeast U.S.

The "cracker" would be similar to the accepted term of cowboy in the Western United States. (Smith. A Land Remembered)

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 for whites. (The OED cites the 1830s origin of white trash as a word used by slaves on rich plantations to ridicule poor whites.)

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.

Answer 5

New it was from the slavery era, was not sure my self of the true meaning looked it up here it is


Crackers

The epithet cracker has been applied in a derogatory way, like redneck, to rural, non-elite white southerners,
Crackers
more specifically to those of south Georgia and north Florida. Folk etymology claims the term originated either from their cracking, or pounding, of corn (rather than taking it to mill), or from their use of whips to drive cattle. The latter explanation makes sense, because in piney-woods Georgia and Florida pastoral yeomen did use bullwhips with "cracker" tips to herd cattle.

The true history of the name, however, is more involved and shows a shift in application over time. Linguists now believe the original root to be the Gaelic craic, still used in Ireland (anglicized in spelling to crack) for "entertaining conversation." The English meaning of cracker as a braggart appears by Elizabethan times, as, for example, in Shakespeare's King John (1595): "What cracker is this . . . that deafes our ears / With this abundance of superfluous breath?"

By the 1760s the English, both at home and in colonial America, were applying the term to Scots-Irish settlers of the southern backcountry,
Crackers
as in this passage from a letter to the earl of Dartmouth: "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 word then came to be associated with the cowboys of Georgia and Florida, many of them descendants of those early frontiersmen.


Crackers
Among African Americans cracker became a contemptuous term for a white southerner; among some southern whites it has become a label of ethnic and regional pride, boosted by the election of south Georgian Jimmy Carter to the presidency in 1976. This led to the coining of the word crackertude as a not entirely serious answer to negritude.

Suggested Reading

Kay L. Cothran, "Talking Trash in the Okefenokee Swamp Rim, Georgia," in Readings in American Folklore, ed. Jan H. Brunvand (New York: Norton, 1979).

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.

Delma E. Presley, "The Crackers of Georgia," Georgia Historical Quarterly 60 (summer 1976): 102-16.

Answer 6

well we black people call crackers becuz maybe they something wrong 2 us. Crackers is just another name for white people.

Answer 7

Because of the color of a saltine cracker. What do you expect? Something complicated? Ignorance is bliss, right? LOL

Answer 8

Cracker comes from the slave owners "cracking" the whip.

Answer 9

i once asked a black friend of mine and she said it is cause our skin is about the shade of a saltine cracker, the root i belive it is there version to the n word we use so much when we describe them

Answer 10

some whities like white crackers and the name stuck

Answer 11

Cuz crackers are white.