Calling all Southern "Crackers"

[Chicago Jake]

This isn't really about a book, but rather about language, which also seems popular round these parts.

I was chatting with my buddy Ron (of Ron and Diana) last week at Hedo, about the origin of the term "cracker" for a white-trash southerner. He said it came from a kind of candy that they used to make in a pan, and then "cracked" into pieces. (Am I remembering that correctly, Ron?). Since he lives in Georgia, I figured he ought to know.

However, I always thought it came from "whip cracker" like the boss on a plantation, cracking the whip at the slaves.

But.... the Online Etymology Dictionary offers yet another theory:

Cracker, Southern U.S. derogatory term for "poor, white trash" (1766), is from c.1450 crack "to boast" (e.g. not what it's cracked up to be), originally a Scottish word. Especially of Georgians by 1808, though often extended to residents of northern Florida

"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 ch-ch-change their places of abode." [1766, G. Cochrane].

So, my question: anyone know the real scoop? Or at least have some interesting hypotheses? Or maybe Gordon or Jeremy can fill us in on the Scottish connection......Jake

[innit Geezer]

When I was a young boy of about 7, a black kid referred to me as a "white cracker". I was a very accepting and kind child who was shocked to hear such talk.

(dissolve to 1968, the same year the gorilla through shit at me at the Bronx Zoo, it was a terrible year for me) Nixon won, gorilla shit, realizing my crackerness but than I was rescued to suburbia were the kids were just hillbillies.

I used this phrase today to describe me and Geri!

tnmc.proboards42.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1144841692&page=1

I couldn't win.

[Chicago Jake]

Yes, your use of it in that thread is what made me remember the conversation with Ron......Jake

[innit Geezer]

I'm a cracker and I'm proud, even if it's derogatory. A low salt cracker because I'm health conscious.

[Hedo69]

And here all these years I thought it was merely the color of crackers (like white bread) that the name derived from. And you know, I didn't even know it was a "southern" name, I thought it was more widespread.

What I want to know is where Honky (is it spelled honkEy) derived from. That one has always made me wonder.

[Ardbeg... innit]

I personaly know nothing about this, but in poking around I did find this...

"The epithet cracker has been applied in a derogatory way to rural, non-elite white southerners. Linguists now believe the original root to be the Gaelic craic, still used in Ireland (anglicized in spelling to crack) for "entertaining conversation."

AND, I did find an interesting site that proposes that the roots of goepel music can be found in Gaelic music (introduced to slaves), apparently ...

" ... Gaels, who emigrated to the Americas, maintained their language and worship style, and taught it to their slaves, who then continued the tradition. He has found evidence of black churches in the deep South worshipping in Gaelic up to 1919. "

www.edu-cyberpg.com/NCFR/roots.html

[Just Mike]

I think the term "honkey's" must be a northern term..cause every time i'm back up north every friggin car in the entire state seems to be honking their damn horn all the time.

Guess we southerners are just too polite to honk??? hehehehe

[Cosmic Don]

Right up front I'll tell you I do not know the definitive answer to this
question.
However, I have heard the term "Cracker" applied to candy.

Up until I was 7 my family lived in LA.
However, my extended family lived (still does) in Texas.
My great grandmother always had a house keeper.
She was a black woman, I don't believe I ever knew her real name.
We always called her Mammy, racist I know, but I was just a kid and had no
idea about such things.
Mammy made hard candy, mostly out of sugar, in cast iron skillet.
She'd pour it onto wax paper to cool.
Once it had solidified, she slap it with her skillet and break it into
pieces.
She called it Cracker and it was off white in color.
Which confused the hell out of me (a kid from SoCal) because I only knew
crackers as saltines.
I called it "Candy Crackers" probably because I liked Candy Cigarettes.
As a side note, my grandmother got the recipe, but modified it by adding
food coloring and sometimes flavors.
I always preferred Mammy's because it was like a cross between a caramel
and a sugar cube that "melts in your mouth".


I had heard that the term "Honky" was coined by Black Americans
living in the north.
Apparently a reference to the way some northerly Midwestern whites seem to
speak through their nasal passages.

[Cosmic Don]

admin said:

about the origin of the term "cracker" for a white-trash southerner.

Jake,

Y’all know, at least in Texas, we got rules as to just exactly who can be “white trash”.
I mean, that club ain’t just open to anybody, there are rules of exclusivity.
First, you have to be white, at least as far back as your grandparents.
Truth to tell, any real white trash, can’t trace their lineage any farther than their grandparents.
Next rule is Christmas lights.
Gotta have ‘em.
If you live in a trailer house (mobile home to all y’all Northerners), you have to keep them up until March 1, at a minimum.
All other dwellings require they stay up until June.
At Halloween, the Jack-O-Lantern must remain on the front porch until early December, mold and all.
There must be a dog tied to a tree, with a rope, in the front yard at all times.
Every family member must own at least 3 pairs (yes, they are called pairs) of bib overalls.
Sock and underwear are not to worn with bib overalls, except to church.
Once these standards are met there are a few status rules involved.
These center around empty beer can piles “out back”, pick-up trucks, old pick-up truck bench seats used a lawn furniture, animals fit to eat and bringing grandma a carton of Marlboros for Mothers Day, but they’re purely optional and only for the purest of White Trash.

[Lady Irie]

admin said:

So, my question: anyone know the real scoop?

Maybe you should ask swflcpl.

[Hedo69]

sunlovers said:

admin said:

So, my question: anyone know the real scoop?

Maybe you should ask swflcpl.

Heh heh heh.......love it.

I wish they would come back and visit!

[Tex]

I was in the last generation of southern white boys to have a mammy, and I had mine. This relationship was not as one-sided as it might have appeared on the surface. She changed diapers, fixed meals, taught me to speak, etc. but when I was forty years old, if her phone was cut off or she needed a new water heater, guess who she called. She was a second mom more than a servant and entitled to be treated as such. I have been around a lot of black folks my whole life. The "cracker" term that I heard used by blacks when I was a child was frequently used with "soda" as in "soda cracker". It was not a compliment. Believe me, the black folks in town knew more about the personal lives of the white folks than the other white folks did.

[Tex]

cosmicdon said:

admin said:

about the origin of the term "cracker" for a white-trash southerner.

Jake,

Y’all know, at least in Texas, we got rules as to just exactly who can be “white trash”.
I mean, that club ain’t just open to anybody, there are rules of exclusivity.
First, you have to be white, at least as far back as your grandparents.
Truth to tell, any real white trash, can’t trace their lineage any farther than their grandparents.
Next rule is Christmas lights.
Gotta have ‘em.
If you live in a trailer house (mobile home to all y’all Northerners), you have to keep them up until March 1, at a minimum.
All other dwellings require they stay up until June.
At Halloween, the Jack-O-Lantern must remain on the front porch until early December, mold and all.
There must be a dog tied to a tree, with a rope, in the front yard at all times.
Every family member must own at least 3 pairs (yes, they are called pairs) of bib overalls.
Sock and underwear are not to worn with bib overalls, except to church.
Once these standards are met there are a few status rules involved.
These center around empty beer can piles “out back”, pick-up trucks, old pick-up truck bench seats used a lawn furniture, animals fit to eat and bringing grandma a carton of Marlboros for Mothers Day, but they’re purely optional and only for the purest of White Trash.

An old Buick on blocks and a gazing ball are nice touches. And I would give a special dispensation and allow the dog to stay under the porch (assuming there was a way to get under the porch). Old refrigerators turned into worm beds are good. Aluminum foil in the windows is OK. Using a KFC bucket for something other than the original purpose is nice.

[Hedo69]

Don't forget the obligatory worn out recliner on the porch, it usually sits next to the washer (we like to call them warshers).

[Tex]

Those cheesy yard gizmos that have a windmill which works a kicking donkey are nice. I always thought it would be nice to make one of those with two people having sex and put it in some real serious preacher's yard while he was out of town.

[Dan]

And the "pièce de résistance" - the broken toilet doubling as a flower pot in the front yard.

But don't mess with my gazing ball - thats what I use to shave by.

[Ardbeg... innit]

I dont know if these qualify as southern traits, but I have always enjoyed backyard wildlife refuges made of concrete animals... ALSO any "Our Lady of the Bath Tub" displays

[Tex]

bornagaindruid said:

I dont know if these qualify as southern traits, but I have always enjoyed backyard wildlife refuges made of concrete animals... ALSO any "Our Lady of the Bath Tub" displays

If you hang laundry on them, that will qualify.

[innit Geezer]

We have an excessive whitetail deer population. It has become a problem, yet a few homes have out of scale and accurate size concrete deer in the yard.

[viperess]

danandpatty said:

And the "pièce de résistance" - the broken toilet doubling as a flower pot in the front yard.

Got one on the curb if'n you want it ;D

[Hedo69]

Does the wheelbarrow come with it?

[Christinko]

I'm looking in my tiny 20x20-ft. backyard...I have 2 concrete frogs, 1 metal frog, 2 metal lizards, and a couple metal sticks in the ground with metal animals at the top and two windchimes hanging...could I be a cracker too and didn't even know it?

[Ardbeg... innit]

Chris, you HAVE GOT to get a bathtub Madonna back there pronto.

[Christinko]

Does the fact that I'm an ex-catholic matter?

[Ardbeg... innit]

From what I have seen... thats the LAST thing that matters.

[viperess not logged in]

christinko said:

I'm looking in my tiny 20x20-ft. backyard...I have 2 concrete frogs, 1 metal frog, 2 metal lizards, and a couple metal sticks in the ground with metal animals at the top and two windchimes hanging...could I be a cracker too and didn't even know it?

No.....you're a damn yankee....
DD

[viperess]

hedo69 said:

Does the wheelbarrow come with it?

Sorry...it's got the keg in it.
DD

[Hedo69]

Party at your house this weekend!! Little Rock isn't so far from Alabama!

[viperess]

Chris....I was kidding! I like yankees!
with hot sauce ;D...

I didn't say the keg was full, Hedo69