CRACKER

Claude McKay’s use of the word cracker in this passage from his novel Home to Harlem fiercely illustrates the potent and derogatory punch this epithet has when employed to describe whites. However, the word’s etymology is slippery. It is also a designation used by and for Southerners many of whom self-identify proudly as crackers, especially whites from Georgia and sometimes from Florida. ( At the same time, much of the impact the word has on its recipients and their reactions depend on who’s doing the calling and where the people doing the calling are from. Indeed, one study identifies 21 kinds of crackers , all but one identified with the South. (McDavid, 96) While the word cracker has varied and shifting definitions, and while "cracker culture" is a major field of study all by itself, the word cracker actually holds mostly negative connotations stemming back to its first usage. In fact, in Florida, the word cracker when used as a racial epithet is a violation under the Florida Hate Crimes Act. (Hendrickson, 52).

1625 B. JONSON Staple of News Prol. for Crt., To scholars..above the vulgar sort Of

nut-crackers, that only come for sight. (OED)

1842 DICKENS Amer. Notes (1850) 14/1 A teller of anecdotes and cracker of jokes. (OED)

1594 SHAKES. John II. i. 147 What cracker is this same that deafes our eares With this abundance of superfluous breath? (OED)

1652 ASHMOLE Theatr. Chem. cx. 208 Beware..Of Boasters and Crackers, for they will thee

beguile. (OED)

1746 Brit. Mag. 48 Crackers against you are hang'd in Effigy. (OED)

1766 G. COCHRANE Let. 27 June (D.A.), 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. (OED)

1871 Daily News 24 July, Learning to tell lies, and call them ‘crackers’. (OED)

5. Cracker U.S. A poor white Southern person ( also "rustic", "countrified", "backwoods"

(Cassidy, 825) "uneducated"(Major,119), "low-down’(Rowan,99) and "white trash." ) The area of Southeast Georgia, and North Central Florida are most closely associated with word. (Hill 223)

According to some, cracker is short for corn-cracker, which was a name for a Southern highlander in the nineteenth century (Allen, 50); but early quotes leave this doubtful. There are several other compounds besides corn-cracker associated with the word cracker.

and Florida. After the Civil War, many were too poor to buy corn meal and had no choice but to make their own. (Hendrickson, 76). Corn-cracker is first atttested to only in 1835. (Wordorigins).

The theme of crack corn for the purpose of making liquor is found in the folk song Blue Tailed Fly "Jimmy crack corn." (HALIFAX) in which a slave sings about how is master got drunk, fell, hit his

Head, and died. And the slave ‘don’t care’. (Burke)

1767 Allen D. Chandler, Let. A parcel of people commonly called Crackers, a set of Vagabonds often as bad or worse than the Indians themselves (OED)

1783 McWhiney, XIV A German visiting the Carolina backcountry found longhorn cattle, swine, and

slovenly people whom he identified as "Crackers." (OED)

1784 Lond. Chron. No. 4287 Maryland, the back settlements of which colony had

since the peace been greatly disturbed by the inroads of that hardy banditti well known by the name

of Crackers. (OED)

1790. A Spanish official reported the "influx [into Florida] of rootless people called Crackers." He described them as rude and nomadic, excellent hunters but indifferent farmers who planed only a few patches of corn as people who kept "themselves beyond the reach of all civilized law." (OED)

1836. Knickerbocker 7, 453. It is the killing of the cattle of the crackers – as the souther backwoodmen are called- that is the most fruitful of disputes. (OED)

1850 Lyell 2nd Visit U.S. II. 73 Sometimes..my host would be of the humblest class of ‘crackers’, or some low, illiterate German or Irish emigrants. (OED)

1887 Harper's Mag. May 843/Numbers of lawyers would gather together and relate their observations of Cracker life. 1908 (OED)

1888 Harper's Mag. July 240 They will live like the crackers of Georgia or the moonshiners of Tennessee. (OED)

1926 Kephard Highlanders. 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." ( Cassidy, 826)

***********************

b. attrib.; the Cracker State, Georgia.

1872 SCHELE DE VERE Americanisms 659 Georgia..little deserves the name of Cracker State, by which it is occasionally designated. (OED)

1910 Washington Herald 27 Nov. 9 Through November the ‘Cracker State’ has occupied the center of motordom's stage. (OED)

This definition involves the whip, its pieces, its sound and those who used the whip. One theory is that cracker was coined by black people in reference to the whip-cracking during enslavement; by extension any white person. (Smitherman,100)

6. An attachment to the end of a whip-lash such as a piece of buckskin by which a cracking

sound can be produced. Wentworth, 85). Also, the hide string, end of a bull whip of a buggy

whip. (Green, 264) The sound of whips cracking was heard when Florida cattlemen

would drive the oxen that pulled their carts and wagons and when Florida cowboys

herded cattle. (Tonyan)

1835 MONETT in J. H. Ingraham South-West II. 288 To the end of the lash is attached a soft,

dry, buckskin cracker... So soft is the cracker, that a person who has not the sleight of using the

whip could scarcely hurt a child with it. (OED)

1842 BUCKINGHAM, The Slave States of American (London, 1842, p.210) They are called by the twos people "Crackers," from the frequency with which they crack their large whips, as if they derived a peculiar pleasure from the sound. (OED)

1880 A. A. HAYES New Colorado (1881) x. 140 Each wagoner must tie a brand-new ‘cracker’ to the lash of his whip. (OED)

1887 Beacon (Boston) 11 June, The word Cracker..is supposed to have been suggested by their cracking whips over oxen or mules in taking their cotton to the market. (OED)

1907 W. H. KOEBEL

Return of Joe 164 Fresh and efficient crackers swung continually at the ends of the stockwhips. (OED)

1966 ‘J. HACKSTON’ Father clears Out 64 I'd plaited a whip specially for the occasion with a new

green cracker on it. (OED)

This definition refers to the food stuff, but its coloring provides the context an added meaning.

1739 in New Eng. Hist. & Gen. Register (1868) XII. 296 Wee haue..sent a box of Crakers to

you. (OED)

1781 W. MOSS Essay Management & Nursing of Children 108 Hard biscuit,

commonly called crackers, are sometimes given; but they are heavy, owing to their being made

without yeast and not fermented. (OED)

1868 B. J. LOSSING Hudson 28 The hunters live chiefly on bread or crackers. (OED)

Interestingly, the word cracker in reference to white people by Blacks is possibly derived from association with the whiteness of soda crackers. (Talkin 252) as opposed to ginger cookies. (Juba 119)

( Synonyms: U.S Black-use and also slang, early l900s to present: Ball-face, Beast,

Blue-eyed Devil, Bright Skin, Buckra, Charles, Charlie, Chick, Clay-eaters Dap, Devil, Dirteater, Dog, Face, Fade, Fay, Frosty, Georgia Cracker, Gray, Gray Boy, Grey Boy, Hay-eater, Hinkty, Honky, Hoople, Hunky, Jeff, Keltch, Ju Kluxer, Lily-white, Long Knife, Marshmallow, Mean white, Mister Charlie, Mondy, Mule, Ofay, Oofay, Paddy, Paddy Boy Plae, Pale-face, Peck, Peckerwood, Peek-a-Woods, Piney-Woods People, Pink, Pinky, Redneck, Ridgerunner, Roundeye, Shitkicker, Silk, Snake, The Man, White Meat, White Paddy Whitey. (Spears, 88)

1928 McKay. Home to Harlem. 49. Buddy, I’ll tell you this and I’ll tell the wo’l – all the crackers, all the poah white trash, all the nigger-hitting and nigger-breaking white folks – I loves life and I got to live and I’ll scab through hell to live. (Cassidy 826)

1932. Stribling Store 473 AL, "We would do very well with white folks if it weren’t for these miserable

crackers", declared the tan girl passionately. (Cassidy 826)

1965 Little Autobiography of Malcom X 78. A big beefy, redfaced cracker soldier got up in front of me… and announced …"I’m going to fight you nigger." (Cassidy 826)

1977. Smitherman Talkin 252 Cracker, negative term for whites, especially those who are extremely racist. ( Cassidy 826)

1980 Sun Times (Chicago, IL) 5 Mar Letters [From R.I. McDavid), I must deplore…Jay McMullen’s tactless, racist designation of President Carter as a "Georgia cracker." It is one of the most offensive terms that can be used about whites, and it has been traditionally used by blacks to designate the poorest, most degraded whites with whom they come in contact. (Cassidy 826)

Ayto, John. The Oxford Dictionary of Slang. Oxford; New York: Oxford University

Press, 1998: 69.

Ayto, John and John Simpson. The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1992: 43.

Burke, Karanja. "Cracker."

<http://www.english.vt.edu/~appalach/essaysA/cracker.htm>

Cassidy, Frederic G. Dictionary of American Regional English. Cambridge, Mass.:

Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Vol. I, 1985: 825-26.

Chapman, Robert L. New Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Harper & Row,

1986: 76, 85.

Claerbaut, David. Black Jargon in White America. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1972.

Farmer, John S. A Dictionary of Slang: an Alphabetical History of Colloquial,

Unorthodox, Underground and Vulgar English. Ware, Hertfordshire [England: Wordsworth Editions, 1987: 201.

Green, Jonathon. The Cassell Dictionary of Slang. London: Cassell, 1998: 283.

Green, Paul. Paul Green's Wordbook: an Alphabet of Reminiscence. Boone:

Appalachian Consortium Press; Chapel Hill, N.C.: Paul Green Foundation, 1990: 264.

Grose, Francis. 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: a Dictionary of Buckish Slang,

University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence. Adelaide, Australia: Bibliophile Books, 1982.

Hendrickson, Robert. The Facts on File Dictionary of American Regionalisms. New

York: Facts on File, 2000: 52.

Hill, Mozell C and Bevode C McCall. "Cracker Culture: A Preliminary Definition."

Phylon; the Atlanta University Review of Race & Culture. Atlanta, Ga. : Atlanta University, 1950: 223-231.

 

Johnson, Ken. "The Vocabulary of Race," in Thomas Kochman, ed., Rappin’ and Stylin’

Out: Communication in Urban Black America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973: 143.

Major, Clarence. Juba to Jive: a Dictionary of African-American Slang. New York, N.Y.,

U.S.A.: Penguin Books, 1994: 119.

McDavid and McDavid. "Cracker." The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical

Magazine. Charleston, S.C. [etc.]: South Carolina Historical Society, Vol.22, No.3 (1921): 99.

McDavid, Raven I and Sarah Ann Witham. "Poor Whites and Rustics." Names: Journal

of the American Name Society. Potsdam, N.Y.: State University College, Vol.22, No.2 (1974): 93-103.

McDavid, Raven I and Virginia McDavid. "Cracker and Hoosier." Names: Journal of

the American Name Society. Potsdam, N.Y.: State University College, Vol.21, No.3 (1973): 161-167.

McWhiney, Grady. Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South. Tuscaloosa, Ala.:

University of Alabama Press, 1988.

OED Online. <http://dictionary.oed.com>

Otto, John Solomon. "Cracker: The History of a Southeastern Ethnic, Economic, and

Racial Epithet." Names: Journal of the American Name Society. Potsdam, N.Y.: State University College, Vol.35, No.1 (March 1987): 28-39.

Partridge, Eric. A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English: Colloquialisms and

Catch-phrases, Solecisms and Catachreses, Nicknames, and Vulgarisms. New York: Macmillan, 1984: 264.

Presley, Delma E. "The Crackers of Georgia." The Georgia Hstorical Quarterly.

Athens, Ga. : Georgia Historical Society: 102-116.

Rawson, Hugh. Wicked Words: a Treasury of Curses, Insults, Put-downs, and Other

Formerly Unprintable Terms from Anglo-Saxon Time to the Present. New York: Crown Publishers, 1989: 99.

Spears, Richard A. Slang and Euphemism: a Dictionary of Oaths, Curses, Insults, Sexual

Slang and Metaphor, Racial Slurs, Drug Talk, Homosexual Lingo, and Related Matters. Middle Village, N.Y.: David Publishers, 1981: 88.

Smitherman, Geneva. Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen

Corner. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000: 100.

Smitherman, Geneva. Talkin and Testifyin: the Language of Black America. Boston:

Houghton Mifflin, 1977: 252-253.

Tonyan, Rick. "Cracking Up Cracker Myths." Reprint from Halifax Magazine

(Sept. 1997). <http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~fcc/main/what’s_a_cracker.htm>

Wordorigins.org. "Cracker." <http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorc.htm>

copyright by Kevin Barry

July 18, 2001

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