"White cracker," or simply "cracker," was originally a pejorative term for a white person mainly used by blacks in the Southern United States, a usage that is now somewhat archaic. With the huge influx of new residents from the North, the term is now also used informally as a self-description by some white residents of Florida and Georgia ("Florida cracker" or "Georgia cracker") to indicate that their family has lived there for many generations.
As an insult, "cracker" was typically invoked against a white American, particularly (though not necessarily) lower-income, uneducated rural men in the South. The term did not have quite the extreme derisive power of the word "nigger," presumably due to the vastly lopsided social situation between southern whites and blacks when the term was common.
There are various theories about the origin of the term "cracker." The term has been traced to the 1760s, when it was used by the Earl of Dartmouth to refer to frontiersmen who were "great boasters." It may be derived from the Gaelic "craic," meaning "entertaining conversation." Other theories include references to the slavemaster term "whipcracker" and to the 18th century practice of cracking corn to make liquor.
Politics
On August 20, 2000, Internet gossip columnist Matt Drudge claimed that Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager, called George W. Bush a "white cracker" while talking to New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams at the 2000 Democratic National Convention.
Pop culture
When used in pop culture, the term "white cracker" or "cracker" is sometimes intended to be humorous, though the distinction is not always clear.
An example of this would be the animated television series South Park. One episode features the character "Chef" (who is black) planning to get married. His friends (white grade-school children from the school where he works as a cook) are at his home, waiting to see him to warn him off from 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."
The rustic lives of crackers were the topic of the novels of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
In the John Boorman 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 he and his urban friends.
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 Florida Cracker Trail is a route posted across southern Florida by the Florida Department of Transportation.
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