Poll: Is Cracker a derogatory term? And can one be racist against white people?

[KissingSunlight]

Also, I am very sick and tired of people claiming you can't be racist or sexist against white people and men. I am a white male. No way in hell can you look at my life any and say that I am privileged and/or in power. I don't have time right now to look it up. There is an insightful and funny commentary about the myth of privilege from a book written in the late 90's. I'll find it and share with you tomorrow.

You're looking at the concept a little too simply. It most certainly is not a myth nor does its existence trivialize your relative lower standing to a caricatured, powerful white person. Here's a good example [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gina-crosleycorcoran/explaining-white-privilege-to-a-broke-white-person_b_5269255.html] of what I mean. Sad it comes from The Huffington Post of all places but whatever.

That said, white privilege does not mean you can't act discriminatory towards white men. However, racism and sexism in their most powerful forms depend on systemic discrimination against minorities, especially historically disenfranchised minorities. It often exists in spite of goodwill from majorities in the dominant party due to their ignorance on how the system continues to sustain it and their own casual racism and sexism. Like someone else said,

Yes, it's racist, yes you can be racist against whites.

BUT... who gives a shit? Racism in general is an issue when one group wields power over another, it's just about booboos on your feelings. If you're in a part of the world where you're a "cracker", chances are you can afford to shrug it off. Shit, chances are you can shoot the person and claim self defense... I'd say that's a bigger issue, but what do I know.

I skimmed the article that you posted the link to. I'll read it completely later on. Right now, I am tired after a long day. From what I understand, it's the argument that white and/or men are privilege because of history. The pushback to that argument is you can legally discriminate against white people and men right now in the present.

OK. I promised to share a book passage that address the issue of privilege that I've never heard anyone mention. The book is The Dilbert Future by Scott Adams. It was written in 1997.

Men live in a fantasy world. I know this because I am one, and I actually receive my mail there. We men like to think we're in charge because most of the top jobs in business and government are held by men, but I have a shocking statistical insight for you men-THOSE ARE OTHER MEN. The total percentage of men in those top spots is roughly .0000001 percent of the male population. I'm not one of them. I just draw cartoons and write these stupid books. Chances are, if you're a man reading this, you're not running the world, either.

I have about as much in common with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company as I have with my cat. It's not logical to say that I, as a man, run the world based on the fact that total strangers with similar chromosomes have excellent jobs. Yet that is exactly what many people believe.

When the Joint Chiefs of Staff are deciding whether to go to war, they do not call my house and say, "We're calling all the men who run the world to ask for their input." Believe it or not, they make those decisions without consulting me. That's probably a good thing...

(humorous digression about foreign policy)...

Someone might argue that men have access to the top jobs whereas women do not. There's some truth to that, but the mathematical fact is, 99.9999999 percent of all men can't get those top jobs, either. There aren't enough of those jobs to go around.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I skimmed the article that you posted the link to. I'll read it completely later on. Right now, I am tired after a long day. From what I understand, it's the argument that white and/or men are privilege because of history. The pushback to that argument is you can legally discriminate against white people and men right now in the present.

Er, no, the article is about the present. Now, the causes of the issues might have started some time way back in history, but the effects are felt to this day.

 

[kyp275]

"Nearly half of all victims of racially motivated murders in the last decade have been white, according to official figures released by the Home Office."

According to the UK census of 2011, 88% of the people in the UK are white. Thats disproportionately low, only proving my point.

For some reason I suspect you'd feel differently if you or your loved one were one of the murder victims. I doubt you'd say "Well, they killed my mom, but who gives a fuck, she's just a raindrop to a storm anyway".

If you had said that to the victim's family to their face, they'd probably be very tempted to make you into a raindrop too.

 

[MonsterCrit]

But its usage has no positive connotations whatsoever in that context?


To me slave trading and plantation ownership were very harmful things, I've never once in my life had anything to do with either.

Slave owners were rich and powerful. It's like when people taunt Jews about their 'Jewgold'. You're insulting them by referencing their wealth. Surely that's a poor insult?

Er slight correction. The Slave/Plantation owners were rich.. the people they had out in the fields overseeing and cracking the whips were just every day low class white people.

To put it in more modern terms. Factory owners .. rich... but the foremen who directly deal with the workers.. would you call them rich and powerful?

Yes the word Cracker is racist, but it doesn't really refer to the whip cracking... not it's basically a comment of the coloration of their skin. Take a look at any milk crackers, saltine, or water crackers or cream crackers and you can see where the parallels are drawn."Beke' and 'Honky' are lso similar terms referencing the shape of their noses. 'Beke' in case you couldn't tell was pretty much 'Beaky'.

As for, can you be racist against white people? Yeah, I am so waiting for the day we can email punches and slaps through the interwebs because I swear I would burn the servers out sending them to every one who even mentions such an asinine thing. Look, racism is racism. If the comment or treatment is based on the person's ethnicity or race. Then it is racist, no matter which direction or what action. Just as it just as sexist to expect a man to hold a door open for a woman or to give his seat on the bus up for a woman as it is to expect a woman to stay at home to cook and clean.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Kind of? I mean, a slave owner is in a position of power. Can that really be considered offensive? If anything it seems like anyone who'd call someone else 'Cracker' is kind of disrespecting themselves. Unless they're trying to inspire some feelings of white guilt?

I'm not saying minorities can't be racist, but I'm not sure cracker is a... bad term for lack of a better phrase.

I guess you could say it ranks up there calling your boss a tyrant or slave driver. Though if it does mean someone who cracks a whip it might also mean someone who wields unrecognised power through their access to capital then the person says it?

If you have no money, and you see a white person who obviously has money, the could 'cracker' then be used to delineate or expose someone to the concept that they wield power in a fashion that is not immediately obvious to the person?

I don't know ... not American. How common is it for people to be called 'cracker' in the US? I think that kind of needs to be looked at. Not only that, but is cracker reserved for middle class and higher white people? If it's just reserved for a certain socioeconomic class of white people, then it might not be racist at all?

It could be kind of like saying 'white trash' ... given that multiple racial background types of people seem to wield it against white people living in trailer parks (incl. wealthier white people) ... one of the first places I encountered 'White trash' was on the show Becker from said protagonist. Danson seems pretty white to me.

 

[one squirrel]

"Nearly half of all victims of racially motivated murders in the last decade have been white, according to official figures released by the Home Office."

According to the UK census of 2011[footnote]http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/census/2011/index.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter[/footnote], 88% of the people in the UK are white. Thats disproportionately low, only proving my point.

Yes and no. Each single instance of racial aggression is bad, and comparing it to "a raindop in a storm" is still downplaying and dismissive of the problems of a few, because others supposedly have it worse.

Which they do. Its shrewd calculus. If you don't like it, you have a problem with math, not myself. I didn't say "white people don't experience racism", I just said that its not on a scale comparable to other races in nations where the populace is pre-dominantly white (and a few that aren't), which is where most of the people who visit the forums here are from.

snip

(50%/12%)/(50%/88%)=7.3 times more likely to be killed for racial reasons if you are not white. That's well within the same order of magnitude. And that is only if you assume that you can divide all murders trough the aggregate population, again assuming that murders and races are distributed equally on the map.

That means that there can be white people who experience more racism, just because they happen to live in the wrong city district.

 

[NiPah]

Racist? Yes. Is it possible to be racist against white people? Yes, but it'll never be as substantial as people who aren't white will experience in many if not all of the pre-dominantly white nations of the world. A raindrop to a storm.

That's quite a bold statement to make, also completely unprovable since we don't have a way to measure substantiality of amount of racism centered on a certain group.

 

[Areloch]

These threads are always magical.

Because they ALWAYS devolve into people attempting to swing statistics around and math out who is more oppressed in ever-more specific and minute contexts to "win" than anyone agreeing that being racist is kinda awful.

Nope, it's all about who's MORE racist, and therefore being racist AGAINST them is fine.

 

[Ishal]

These threads are always magical.

Because they ALWAYS devolve into people attempting to swing statistics around and math out who is more oppressed in ever-more specific and minute contexts to "win" than anyone agreeing that being racist is kinda awful.

Nope, it's all about who's MORE racist, and therefore being racist AGAINST them is fine.

I tend to agree. Racism is bad.

Anything resembling "Racism can occur against [X], BUT" is a part of the problem

No but. It's bad, it's wrong. Don't do it.

 

[EvilRoy]

"Nearly half of all victims of racially motivated murders in the last decade have been white, according to official figures released by the Home Office."

According to the UK census of 2011[footnote]http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/census/2011/index.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter[/footnote], 88% of the people in the UK are white. Thats disproportionately low, only proving my point.

Yes and no. Each single instance of racial aggression is bad, and comparing it to "a raindop in a storm" is still downplaying and dismissive of the problems of a few, because others supposedly have it worse.

Which they do. Its shrewd calculus. If you don't like it, you have a problem with math, not myself. I didn't say "white people don't experience racism", I just said that its not on a scale comparable to other races in nations where the populace is pre-dominantly white (and a few that aren't), which is where most of the people who visit the forums here are from.

Well yes, but the problem with that outlook is that everyone has it shittier than you, making it a useless point. Somewhere on Earth there is one asshole, and I know he is an asshole because it is basically a necessity for his existence, who has it worse than everyone else in every way. On that basis, and by the same logic, we can determine that every single problem we have in the first world - rasim, classism, transphobia, sexism - is a raindrop in a storm compared to the shit this asshole has to deal with. Even if we back it off a bit and just talk about his shithole country, they still guaranteed have it so bad compared to us that so many of the problems that this forum covers are absolutely and ultimately meaningless compared to the shit they sit in.

The point is: it either all matters, or none of it matters.

 

[Politrukk]

These threads are always magical.

Because they ALWAYS devolve into people attempting to swing statistics around and math out who is more oppressed in ever-more specific and minute contexts to "win" than anyone agreeing that being racist is kinda awful.

Nope, it's all about who's MORE racist, and therefore being racist AGAINST them is fine.

That wasn't the point of the thread when I made it though :/

 

[jamail77]

OK. I promised to share a book passage that address the issue of privilege that I've never heard anyone mention. The book is The Dilbert Future by Scott Adams. It was written in 1997.

So, none of that is obvious? People who actually know what they're talking about when they talk about white male privilege acknowledge this as I already said in my post.

nor does its existence trivialize your relative lower standing to a caricatured, powerful white person.

I literally don't know anyone who argues HashtagAllMen have the power of world leaders or CEOs when they talk about privilege. That's not what the term is for. That passage really doesn't paint the book in a good light honestly. It's awfully rambly and low on practical, in-the-know insight let alone relevant knowledge to the conversation. He sees the conversation in a much more simplified manner than it actually is as if both the adults educated to study these issues and those who have to live with those issues talk about them like that. I can see why his Dilbert comic strips come up more than that book if that is what the whole book is like.

[snip]From what I understand, it's the argument that white and/or men are privilege because of history. The pushback to that argument is you can legally discriminate against white people and men right now in the present.

Er, no, the article is about the present. Now, the causes of the issues might have started some time way back in history, but the effects are felt to this day.

Exactly. When you get around to reading the article in full Sunlight she goes into the concept of intersectionality, how the systems of oppression, domination, and discrimination overlap and always interrelate with each other. Despite her very poor childhood she came to recognize there are privileges she had nonetheless and remained secure enough that people who tell her of her privileges USUALLY (there are always people who don't know what they're talking about) don't say it to attack her personally or belittle her issues. The concept of intersectionality actually demands that people acknowledge overall how her childhood was worse than certain subsections or individuals in minorities that tend to be less well off as a whole. And, even then she still had certain privileges over those otherwise more well off, more privileged minority individuals and subsections simply for collecting unearned social benefits to being white.

Anybody who gets to her level of knowledge of the issues and continues to be personally offended when people discuss white privilege are very insecure frankly. They probably lack understanding of the analysis despite the knowledge of it and, in some cases, lack complete empathy in these spheres of life. The latter probably tend to be sociopathic though. I can respect someone who gets to that point and nonetheless disagrees with the conclusion, but if they understand where the opposing argument is coming from and take offense despite that understanding? Yeah...

These threads are always magical.

Because they ALWAYS devolve into people attempting to swing statistics around and math out who is more oppressed in ever-more specific and minute contexts to "win" than anyone agreeing that being racist is kinda awful.

Nope, it's all about who's MORE racist, and therefore being racist AGAINST them is fine.

I tend to agree. Racism is bad.

Anything resembling "Racism can occur against [X], BUT" is a part of the problem

No but. It's bad, it's wrong. Don't do it.

I see quite a few people pointing that out and still arguing racism is bad regardless. Those arguments are not meant to excuse racism towards the usually more dominant. It's not about a racism contest. It's about the acknowledgment. Understanding that context is important in dealing with racism because it's inherently not equal. The worst of racism is systemic, the much rarer racism towards the usually less oppressed is not except maybe as a systemic response to systemic racism. That does not make it okay. It's just that the understanding will help societies overcome it.

Not talking about this and simply handwaving the complexity of these issues with the "It's all bad" excuse is what is actually part of the problem. Few are arguing it's not all bad. It takes more than that to tackle the issue. Literally all discrimination I've dealt with is monumentally easier to shrug off and less dire than that people of other groups have to deal with. That scale matters. Yet, I've never felt that discrimination towards me is overly trivialized because of that prioritizing.

 

[Areloch]

These threads are always magical.

Because they ALWAYS devolve into people attempting to swing statistics around and math out who is more oppressed in ever-more specific and minute contexts to "win" than anyone agreeing that being racist is kinda awful.

Nope, it's all about who's MORE racist, and therefore being racist AGAINST them is fine.

That wasn't the point of the thread when I made it though :/

Didn't mean to imply that was the intention of the thread, but unfortunately that's where they always seem to go. It's definitely a bummer

To the topic itself, yes, cracker is generally used as a racial term in a derogatory manner, and yes you can be racist to white people.

Captcha: Leave Me Alone
Geeze, what did I ever do to you, captcha?

 

[EvilRoy]

Well yes, but the problem with that outlook is that everyone has it shittier than you, making it a useless point.

No, it doesn't. You're employing the fallacy of relative privation [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation], more commonly referred to as "there are children starving in Africa". We could go down a checklist of every major problem that exists in my country, United States, and there's going to be another country in the world where any one of those problems listed are worse. That doesn't mean its unimportant to deal with them in my nation. Of course I never said that we can only deal with one of these, thats an assumption on your part.

No, no. You are. You are implying that racism against white people matters less because they don't get racisted as much as other people. "A raindrop in a storm". It doesn't matter how many of these you are capable of dealing with at a time - I am capable of both watching my back and saving the starving African children at the same time, but at no point will I ever show up in a thread and mention that "yes, homosexual people suffer a lot, but it will never really be substantial compared to the suffering of children in Africa".

All I said is that the problem effects different groups to different extents, and that's what everybody quoting me has their knickers in a twist about. I pointed out a fact, period.

And what I'm saying is that this fact is ubiquitous across every issue possible in life, and is therefore useless. "Racism against black people is worse than racism against white people." "Starving children in Africa suffer more than trans people in the US." Same statement, different dressing.

The point is: it either all matters, or none of it matters.

But some of it is more pressing than others. There's racism that negatively effects white people in the United States and racism that negatively effects black people in the United states. The racism that effects people who are white is significantly less lethal than the racism that effects people who are black. They're not comparable to each other. To use another litmus for comparison, homophobia directly results in homelessness, violence and death towards non-heterosexual people. "Heterophobia" is somebody angrily ranting on their internet blog. Which of those two do you think is more pressing, more important to address? While you shouldn't neglect some times, as is common, that doesn't mean you shouldn't prioritize.

Exactly. And you should prioritize by spending your energy helping starving children in Africa instead of spending time worrying about first world problems like homophobia.

See the thing is, until you actually DO something, you're just talking. And as long as you're just talking, deciding that this or that thing matters less than this or that other thing is both insulting and useless to all parties involved.

 

[WhiteNachos]

"Nearly half of all victims of racially motivated murders in the last decade have been white, according to official figures released by the Home Office."

According to the UK census of 2011[footnote]http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/census/2011/index.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter[/footnote], 88% of the people in the UK are white. Thats disproportionately low, only proving my point.

Wait a minute if 88% of the population is white then in a perfect world wouldn't 88% of the racial hate crimes be coming FROM white people? The fact that are more than half the victims means proportionately they have it harder than everyone else.

 

[EvilRoy]

No, no. You are. You are implying that racism against white people matters less because they don't get racisted as much as other people.

Matters less? No. Less significant? Yes, mathematical significance. I never said "a white person being a victim of racism isn't a problem", but it is, however, less common, less mathematically significant, and statistically racism against white people is going to be less harmful. Its math, plain and simple.

Well we live in a world with limited resources and limited time in our lives, so yeah it does. Do you save a bus filled with fifty ordinary people from rolling off the bridge or the bus with five ordinary people from rolling off the bridge? In an ideal world, you can do both, but we don't live in an ideal world.

Because that would be an unrelated non-sequeter. Racism that people who aren't white experience is relevant in a thread about the racism white people experience because it gives contrast.

I never said it didn't matter. It is, however, of lesser mathematical significance, which means that resources need to be distrubted as such. We live in an imperfect world world where the options at hand are usually less than ideal, and its irresponsible to act otherwise.

What I think you're not getting is that when I call for you to save the African children, I am simply following your logic to its natural conclusion. If you want to talk about statistical significance we can, but you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that you don't get to square things in such a way that the only two statistics shown are "racism against black people vs racism against white people". There are other statistics, and if we're talking real suffering then black people and white people suffering racism in the first world are going to have to figure out how to split a penny while everybody else works on portioning out the other $9,999.99 that was given.

Talking is how you figure out what the best course of action is. Talking is how you deal with the problems that arise after you've chosen a course of action. Talking is how you convince somebody that one plan is action is better than other. Talking is important. All talk, no walk is, of course, bad, no duh, but talking has its place, its necessary.

Talking is plenty important, after individual priorities have been determined. Prior to that, talking is essentially an exercise in guilting people into changing those priorities.

 

[KissingSunlight]

I skimmed the article that you posted the link to. I'll read it completely later on. Right now, I am tired after a long day. From what I understand, it's the argument that white and/or men are privilege because of history. The pushback to that argument is you can legally discriminate against white people and men right now in the present.

Er, no, the article is about the present. Now, the causes of the issues might have started some time way back in history, but the effects are felt to this day.

I told you I didn't read the whole thing. Now that I have, I still say the author has missed the mark.

First, she quoted this essay about white privilege. Here are some of the things the author quoted from the essay: "If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race."

"I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time."

Really? No white person ever been harassed by the cops. I know I had. No minority can arrange to be in the company of their own race? That's BS! I see people of all races hanging out with people of their own race.

The one point that she did made I agreed with. When you break down social issues like race and gender, it really does come down to class. You can't tell me that Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan experiences the same problems as other black people and women who aren't millionaires.

Which is why I liked what Scott Adams say about privilege. Just because, I share some physical traits to someone better off than me. It doesn't mean that I have the same power, prestige, and money as that person.

Even if you checked off every category that she list in the end of her blog, that doesn't mean you have won the lottery. Everybody have their cross to bear. To ignore and minimized their problems, because you believe that they are "privilege". That is bigotry.

 

[J Tyran]

Cracker refers to slave owners (crack of the whip).

I guess it's racist in that it's a racial term?

I was never really offended when people called me 'Beaner' and 'Jewbagel', but I guess it's a personal thing.

Agreed but isn't calling a white man today a slaver or well 'cracker' a bit inapropriate?

Kind of? I mean, a slave owner is in a position of power. Can that really be considered offensive? If anything it seems like anyone who'd call someone else 'Cracker' is kind of disrespecting themselves. Unless they're trying to inspire some feelings of white guilt?

I'm not saying minorities can't be racist, but I'm not sure cracker is a... bad term for lack of a better phrase.

It's a racist term in as much as its usually aimed at Caucasian people only, European and Caucasian where not the only slave owners and they where not the only people involved in that particular era (let alone the whole breadth of Human history).

It ignores all of the Black African slave traders, the Islamic African Caliphates and everything else. Caucasians where not the ones catching slaves or buying them and they where not the only ones profiting from it yet "Cracker" is always thrown at white people. Considering its also thrown at people that don't own slaves and find it disgusting (mostly anyway, you never know about a few) its doubly prejudicial, if it was directed at a real slave owner your argument would hold true I agree.

 

[SquidSponge]

/sigh.

Long answer:
"Cracker", as many have already said, refers to the crack of a slave-owner's whip. Its use when addressing a white recipient is typically intended in the same way as the use of "******" against a black recipient, though it lacks the same metaphorical "weight" that the latter has attained due to historical events that I'm sure I don't need to detail here. My personal take? The intent is what is important, and sincere use of either word is the sure mark of a racist.

As for the "[insert demographic here] cannot be [x]ist against [insert demographic here]" argument, that's Tumblr channeling Orwell's Newspeak - a cute attempt to redefine certain words, most notably "racism" and "sexism", to something that better suits them - typically in a way that better fits some narrative pushed by their ideology. The "racism = power + prejudice" definition came, as best I can tell, out of a research paper from one of the the social sciences and has since gained traction as a way to rationalise one's own [x]ism (and thus ease a guilty conscience) - effectively, a case of "it's OK that I'm prejudiced, because without the power to act on that I cannot be [rac]ist", using their own personal prejudice but, conveniently, their demographic's historical amount of power relative to their target's demographic's historical amount of power ("historical" often being anything between 1960 and 1750 AD). Intellectual dishonesty of the highest order. Essentially it boils down to the fallacy of equivocation, like how the word "organic" means something different to a chemistry major than it does to a farmer - likewise, "racism = power + prejudice" is perhaps a useful summary in the specific contexts within certain fields of social sciences, but it's not the same definition (nor, technically, the same word) as "racism" used in common parlance and therefore cannot with any validity be used as such.

Short answer:
The term "cracker" is racist, and anyone can be racist.

Captcha:
"Nut case" - Damn right, Captcha, I'm just not sure whether it's all of them or if it's just me going crazy out here.

 

[Passive Aggression]

Matters less? No. Less significant? Yes, mathematical significance. I never said "a white person being a victim of racism isn't a problem", but it is, however, less common, less mathematically significant, and statistically racism against white people is going to be less harmful. Its math, plain and simple.

It seems a pretty racist ideal to minimize the suffering of a group of people based entirely on the color of their skin.

I mean, there's all you're basing it on, you're not looking at them as individuals, you're simply saying that all suffering of people of a certain race is just "Less significant" because they are that race.

That's pretty much the definition of racism.